Gerhardt Sy

Gerhardt Sy

(1886-1936)

German painter and printmaker.

Last week the occasion to research an interesting artist arose from Ebay. Two interesting monochrome woodblock prints came up together. Here's a summary of  what I've found:

I'd never heard of Gerhardt Sy before. Sadly, other then some very nice examples scraped from auction sites and the years of the beginning and ending of his 50 years on the planet nothing turned up. Readers are invited to add and send information because looking at these few examples of his work he definitly deserves some more attention.

The print showing a circular theater performance is quite charming and the light used in a way Rembrandt certainly would approve with a smile. The colourful children singing around the church organ is also very desirable. The gruff face looking so directly at me, the hidden face of the woman, the gloomy room with iconic lamp, well ........it's making me think: a selfportrait, his parents, childhood memories ?  What a great portrait, what an intrigueing  print. 

Looking closer at these prints again I think I maybe should have tried a bit harder bidding. But although living in the more prosperous parts of the €-zone financing a luxury and afterall a hobby lately is affected by irresponsible money grabbing bankers and self imposed, pompous but hopelesly incompetent "investors" of entrusted community and pension deposits. 

"O fortunatas nimium, sua si bona norint, / agricolas!"

Alfred Hartley, Silver moon

Alfred Hartley

(1855-1933)

British painter, etcher and portraitist

Sometimes there’s no real reason choosing an artist to research, just a fortuitous encounter will do, but in the case of Hartley’s atmospheric aquatints there is an actual (and probably more than one) explanation, a link to what has drawn my eye and attention in the first place.

It’s these "sheep and green poplars" I discovered first,  reminding me of this little woodblock print by Frank Morley Fletcher (1866-1949), printmaker, treated recently by Charles in Modern Printmakers.

As Charles correctly points out in an early comments (below) the probable influence of William Giles' (1872-1937) 1901 woodblock print "September Moon" on Hartley's aquatint print (of which I have no date) cannot be denied. The artists knew each other most probably through teacher Frank Short. William Giles featured in multiple posting in Charles' Modern Printmakers.

  

Alfred Hartley was taught engraving by Sir Frank Short (1857 - 1945) the great etcher, while in the Royal College of Art at South Kensington Art School. The influential and famous Frank Short was a great admirer of William Turner (1775-1851), certainly Englands and without any doubt one of the greatest painters the world ever saw, and studied his idol to great extent. 

Frank Short and Turner are on my list of heroes on Mount Olympus too. Malcolm Salaman dedicated an Album of the Studio’s Modern Masters of  Etching (Vol.5) to Sir Frank Short. An affordable copy is still  on my books searchlist.

Alfred Hartley was a painter of landscapes, etcher in line and aquatint and a notable portraitist and I now can see where his love for Nocturnes or moonscapes has originated. The genre, said to have been invented by James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) was a favorite of Frank Short too.

Here's Shorts' atmospheric 1914 “Orion over the Thames at Ranelagh (above) and this 2010 photograph of Orion over Thames by one Peter Meade I discovered and borrowed from the Internet. I love looking at the stars and  the  constellation of Orion only is to be seen in winter in our Northern hemisphere.

But the real inventor of this type of representations, even before Whistler,  probably was William Turner himself considering this “Moon over Millbanks” (above). Millbanks on River Thames, a mile upstream of the Houses of Parliament and two miles downstream of Lord Ranelagh’s Gardens and House.

William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) (above "the Thames at Chelsea") sat here too in 1853 as did Canaletto (1697-1768) 100 years before him although not under the moon but under full sun overlooking River Thames, Ranelaghs Gardens, The Royal Hospital and the Rotunda still situated at the rivers front. Where 9 year old Mozart played a few years later in 1765. The Rotunda was demolished in 1804 and the Chelsea Embankment build in 1867.

But see the pupil surpassing the master. Silver Night 1913, definitely is my favorite Hartley print. It is strikingly reminding of a view from one of my most treasured spots on the Island of Ameland. Looking at the distant sea pines, the dunes dropping into to the North Sea. Only a few weeks ago on a rainy day, still unaware of Alfred Hartley's print I turned my 2012 photograph into a genuine Hartley aquatint with the use of some simple Photoshop fiddling. I shall return on a moonlit night, with the sheep Alfred Hartley met grazing. Under the moon and in the dunes.

Hartley married 1896 fellow artist Leonora Locking (1856-1943) and the couple lived in St. Ives until 1931. Occasionally they travelled and painted in Italie and Switserland. Along they've obviously visited Switserland:

Le Chateau de Blonay in Switserland, etching by Alfred Hartley and a woodblock print I remembered by Isobel de Bohun Lockyer (1895-1980) and borrowed from Campbell Fine Art. She's featured in Charles' Modern Printmakers too.

Then in 1931 they moved to Wales. Alfred Hartley, who painted and portrayed many famous people of his time but also this sturdy St. Ives fisherman, died only two years later crippled with arthritis. 

New: have a look in my new Gallery-Sale room for exclusive prints 

Sijctghen (1627-1650)

Sijctghen (*1627- † 23/10-1650)
(portrait 1647)

From Paulus Potters’ etchings of cows (before posting) to his colleague Albert Cuyp (1620-1722) isn’t a big leap. They were contemporaries, both renowned Dutch landscape and animal painters. Both famous in their lifetime. Doing my best giving at least the impression of a logic and coherent build-up of my Blogging endeavours, here goes.

 Cows etchings and drawings by Albert Cuyp. Compared with similar works by contemporaries like Paulus Potter, Karel Dujardin and Nicolaes Berchem they appear very "modern". 

You’ll find his sketches and prints used and worked into his and others' paintings: National Museum stuff. His Dutch landscape paintings are as famous as the 17^th century Dutch landscape are itself.  Carefully arranged cows and other cattle. Bucolic and panoramic river views of cities and arcadisch landscapes stretching endlessly beneath famous and dramatic “Dutch skies”. The Golden Age of Landscape painting.

But the portrait of Sijctghen the Duck is an altogether other story. Its owner probably commissioned the painting for her 20^th birthday. Which was already pretty remarkably old for a duck, even a tame one.  He was no doubt one rich and proud farmer. Click here to find a 1Mb picture of the painting. Sijctghen was a production duck. Laying 100 eggs each year in her long life, as she proudly claimes. Her biography is told, by her self, in the form of a poem painted left in the painting in a beautiful handwrighting. She is telling us about her virtuous and productive life, that she never mated, lived her life in chastity, virtue and servitude. The life of a nun. A sanctimonious message ordered by her owner perhaps, the commissoner, her jailer? Had she only be free. Have you ever seen free ducks "at it" in spring ?

She tells us also she survived and healed from broken legs. Probably describing “the treatment” undergone in her youth preventing her ever to fly (away). The fact she never mated is maybe giving another clue because these production ducks were kept in the pen and no sooner they've laid their eggs in the morning they were fed and freed keeping them more or less farm bound. All over Europe, ownership tagged in the bill or flippers. Eggs were sold to bakers, sometimes even as far away as London. These ducks often wandered about and are known to have mated with wild ducks. Today their tame genes are spread in every begging bread-fed duck in the park all over Europe.

No males around meaning she maybe was kept in a closed aviary just with other nuns. Sijctghen asks the poem to be finished after her death. It was. She came into this world the year the population of nearby city of Delft was decimated by the Plaque and she met her maker on the 27^th day of October 1650, aged 23. Using chickens for mass egg production came into fashion centuries later after the discovery of the causes of salmonella and paratyphoid spreading.

This sentimental and moving portrait is all the more remarkable if you see what Cuyp was otherwise world famous for. Like this View on Dordrecht, his native city. Abraham van Calreat (1642-1722), probably a pupil of Cuyp, and the 17^th century specialist in painting horses, whom’s paintings sometimes were mistaken for Cuyp’s because he used the monogram A.C., is winking at us even after 400 years. He was born and lived in the same city of Dordrecht. He shows Syctghen, the subject of his teachers unique painting, in this horse painting. Maybe it was commissioned by the same no doubt wealthy owner.

But now the good news. Sijctghen is alive! I’ve found her, her family, her genes and even her reincarnation.

Believe it or not she's reappeared and German painter Alexander Koester (1865-1932) is my witness. All he ever did was painting ducks. And more ducks. Probably the same flock of ducks over and over again. He became so good at it he earned a gold medal in America. In St. Louis' World Fair of 1904..... and was nicknamed “Enten Koester” (Duck Koestner). He’s truly the Renoir of duck painting. In the end all he needed was a few brush strokes of paint to create a life duck. A true impressionist magician. And I have one, a genuine Duck Koester. Syctghen probably afterall did lose her virginity. Somewhere between 1647 and 1650 because here, her likeness, her great-great-great-granddaughter is swimming, lower right.  

Found in a recent car boot I ofcourse realize it’s not an oil painting, it’s a very nice 1930’s quality reproduction. But who cares, try finding one. To know what you must be looking for I'll intend showing  you some serious duck painting by Duck Koester in next posting. 

Pissing at the moon, an update

Today an update on the research and posting on the "pissing cow". I now think I’ve found the original source of the stream. Potters etching of the pissing cow was edited in 1650 in a small collection of 8 small etchings named "het Bullenboekje" (the bull booklet.) Potter wasn't the only Dutch Golden Age painter creating these small pastoral designs and etchings for bread and butter. Affordable art in contrast to his paintings which were Kings and Queens stuff even before the paint was dry. But Potters designs were copied und used the most. By himself in his paintings and by many other artist even during his short lifetime. He died 28 of tuberculosis, a desease often transmitted by .... cows.

With his booklet Potter followed the example of Italian painter Antonio Tempesta (1555-1630) before him. He edited likewise such a design booklet in 1600. It was also used by Rembrandt. Here are Potters original 8 etching of 1650. I couldn't find a site showing these little gems together (They are also in the book, below)

Juts recently I discovered that Potter, in the year before, painted his most elaborate, admired as soon it was ready, and complex work on commission for Princes Amalia van Solms (1602-1675). She was the widow of reigning Prince Frederik Hendrik of Orange (1584-1646) of the Netherlands. In 1649. The painting was supposed to decorate one of the chimney-walls in the same house that her royal descendant (12 generations later), our Queen Beatrix,  today calls her home: the Noordeinde Palace in the Hague. 

The painting is known as “het Boerenerf” (the Farm yard) or "the Pissing Cow" although there are many other animals doing all sorts of other interesting things. Try finding a picture of this painting on the www. Strange.. 

But to keep a long story short. The painting was denied, the order cancelled, because her ladyships’ inspector spoke of “the presence of an object too foul .....”. The painting, a few years later after some haggling over the price, was sold to the royal family of Sweden. It eventually ended up in 1815 in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, probably bought by the Tsar who couldn't have foreseen  he had so little time left to enjoy it.

It’s not however Potters most well known painting. That, of course, is “The Young Bull” permanently on display in te Mauritshuis Museum in the Haque. It was brought back with great ceremony in 1815, after the French stole it in 1795. Together with Rembrandts' The Nightwatch, probably Hollands most enigmatic paintings.

I think I was the very last generation who learned to read and spell with farmer "Teun", seen both leaning to the tree and on "het Leesplankje" (reading plank) obviously borrowed from Potters famous painting. I learned today.   

"The Farmyard" was back, on loan in the Netherlands in the Mauritshuis Museum 1994-1995 for the great Paulus Potter exhibition. The catalogue, written by Amy Wals, edited by Waanders, “Paulus Potter, schilderijen, tekeningen, etsen”, is still available.  New, 200 pages, with  many wonderful and rare pictures. Search the various pre-owned books sites (Amazon, Abebooks etc.) It's a must have for every lover of great (graphic) Art. The small price making up for being written in Dutch.