TeaWithTater.com

Today is the birthday of Richard Parkes Bonington (Arnold (near Nottingham) 25 October 1802 – 23 September 1828 London); Romantic landscape painter, who moved to France at the age of 14.  He brought aspects of English style to France.  Becoming after his very early death one of the most influential British artists of his time, the facility of his style was inspired by the old masters, yet was entirely modern in its application.  His landscapes were mostly of coastal scenes, with a low horizon and large sky, showing a brilliant handling of light and atmosphere.  He also painted small historical cabinet paintings in a freely-handled version of the troubadour style.

• 

  Rouen

• 

  Normandy, c. 1823

• 

  View of the Lagoon Near Venice, 1827. Louvre

• 

  Venice, Grand Canal.

• 

  Charles V. visits François Ier after the Battle of Pavia, c. 1827

   

Pablo Picasso
Picasso in 1908

Today is the birthday of Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, also known as Pablo Picasso (Málaga; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973 Mougins, France); painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright.  In my opinion, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century.  He is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore.  Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the Bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian air forces at the behest of the Spanish nationalist government during the Spanish Civil War.

Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev’s troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Erik Satie’s Parade, in Rome; they spent their honeymoon near Biarritz in the villa of glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia Errázuriz.  Khokhlova’s insistence on social propriety clashed with Picasso’s bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict.

In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her.  Picasso’s marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth.  The two remained legally married until Khokhlova’s death in 1955.  Picasso carried on the affair with Walter and fathered a daughter with her, named Maya. Walter lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picasso’s death.  Throughout his life Picasso maintained several mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner.  Photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso.  The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.

In 1944, after the liberation of Paris, Picasso, then 63 years old, began a romantic relationship with a young art student named Françoise Gilot, who was 40 years younger than he was.  In her 1964 book Life with Picasso, Gilot describes his abusive treatment and myriad infidelities which led her to leave him.

Picasso had affairs with women of an even greater age disparity than his and Gilot’s.  While still involved with Gilot, in 1951 Picasso had a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who was four years younger than Gilot.  By his 70s, many paintings, ink drawings and prints have as their theme an old, grotesque dwarf as the doting lover of a beautiful young model.  Jacqueline Roque (1927–1986) worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted ceramics.  She became his lover, and then his second wife in 1961.  The two were together for the remainder of Picasso’s life.

Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner.  He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962.  Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque killed herself by gunshot in 1986 when she was 59 years old.

La Vie (1903), Cleveland Museum of Art

The Old Guitarist (1903), Chicago Art Institute 

• 

  1909, Femme assise (Sitzende Frau), oil on canvas, 100 × 80 cm, Staatliche Museen, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin

• 

  1909–10, Figure dans un Fauteuil (Seated Nude, Femme nue assise), oil on canvas, 92.1 × 73 cm, Tate Modern, London.

• 

  1910, Woman with Mustard Pot (La Femme au pot de moutarde), oil on canvas, 73 × 60 cm, Gemeentemuseum, The Hague.

• 

  1910, Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier), oil on canvas, 100.3 × 73.6 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York

• 

  1910, Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, The Art Institute of Chicago.

• 

  1910–11, Guitariste, La mandoliniste (Woman playing guitar or mandolin), oil on canvas

• 

  c.1911, Le Guitariste. Reproduced in Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, Du “Cubisme”, 1912

• 

  1911, Still Life with a Bottle of Rum, oil on canvas, 61.3 × 50.5 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

• 

  1911, The Poet (Le poète), oil on linen, 131.2 × 89.5 cm (51 5/8 × 35 1/4 in), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

• 

  1911–12, Violon (Violin), oil on canvas, 100 × 73 cm (oval), Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands.

• 

  1913, Bouteille, clarinet, violon, journal, verre, 55 × 45 cm.

• 

  1913, Femme assise dans un fauteuil (Eva), Woman in a Chemise in an Armchair, oil on canvas, 149.9 × 99.4 cm, Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art

• 

  1913–14, Head (Tête), cut and pasted colored paper, gouache and charcoal on paperboard, 43.5 × 33 cm, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

• 

  1913–14, L’Homme aux cartes (Card Player), oil on canvas, 108 × 89.5 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York

• 

  1914–15, Nature morte au compotier (Still Life with Compote and Glass), oil on canvas, 63.5 × 78.7 cm (25 × 31 in), Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio

• 

  1916, L’anis del mono (Bottle of Anis del Mono), oil on canvas, 46 × 54.6 cm, Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan

Nils Dardel
Nils Dardel in Tokyo 1917

Today is the birthday of Nils Dardel (Nils Elias Kristofer von Dardel, Bettna, Södermanland 25 October 1888 – 25 May 1943 New York City sometimes known as Nils de Dardel); Post-Impressionist painter, grandson to Swedish painter Fritz von Dardel.

In 1919 he proposed to Nita Wallenberg, but her father, a Swedish diplomat, disapproved of Dardel and the marriage was not to be.

Nils Dardel married the author Thora Dardel (1899–1995 – née Klinckowström), which lasted between 1921–1934.

After the marriage to Thora, sometime in the 1930s Nils meets Edita Morris (1902–1988, née Toll), a Swedish writer with whom he shares his remaining life.

Portrait of Nita Wallenberg in 1917, when Dardel met her in Japan.

• 

  Self-portrait 1906

• 

  Gosshuvud 1908

• 

  Mansporträtt Portrait of a man 1908

• 

  Torparflicka Farm girl 1909

• 

  Flicka i blå klänning Girl in blue dress 1910

• 

  Två flickor Two Girls 1911

• 

  Turisthotellet i Rättvik Tourist hotel in Rättvik 1915

• 

  Den döende dandyn The Dying Dandy 1918

• 

  Den döende dandyn (1st version) 1918

• 

  Visit hos excentrisk dam 1921

• 

  Svarta Diana Black Diana 1929

• 

  Drömmar och fanstasier #1 Dreams and fantasies 1922

• 

  En dans med döden A dance with Death 1920

• 

  Familjeidyll Family idyll 1923

• 

  Return to the Playgrounds of Youth 1924

• 

  Marthe 1930

• 

  Ett hjärta i brand A heart in flames ca. 1930

• 

  Fiskaren The angler 1931

• 

  Gräshoppan The Grasshopper 1931

• 

  Den bortrövade ormen ca. 1931

• 

  Autoportrait 1935

• 

  Edita Morris 1936

• 

  Mexican boy ~1940

• 

  Mexican girl ~1940

• 

  Mexikansk kvinna med korslagda händer Mexican woman with crossed hands ~1940

• 

  Hustrumördaren The wife murderer ~1940

• 

  Mexican girl ~1940

• 

  Gammal mexikansk kvinna Old Mexican lady

• 

  Mexikansk Indian