Frederick Ronald (Fred) Williams OBE (23 January 1927 – 22 April 1982) was an Australian painter and printmaker. He was one of Australia’s most important artists, and one of the twentieth century’s major painters of the landscape. He had more than seventy solo exhibitions during his career in Australian galleries, as well as the exhibition Fred Williams – Landscapes of a Continent at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1977.

Fred Williams was born in 1927 in Melbourne. From 1943 to 1947 he studied at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, at first part-time and then full-time from 1945 at the age of 16. The Gallery School was traditional and academic, with a long and prestigious history. He also began lessons under George Bell the following year, who had his own art school in Melbourne. This continued until 1950. Bell was a conservative modern artist but a very influential teacher.

Between 1951 and 1956, Williams studied part-time at the Chelsea School of Art, London (now Chelsea College of Art and Design) and in 1954 he did an etching course at the Central School of Arts and Craft. He subsidised his art practice by working in a picture-framer’s shop. He returned to Melbourne in 1957.

He had work included in the ‘Recent Australian Painting’ exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and ‘Australian Painting: Colonial, Impressionism, Modern’ at the Tate Gallery.

He married Lyn Watson in 1960, and they had three daughters: Isobel, Louise and Kate. In 1963 the couple moved to Upwey, Victoria in the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne, a location that would have a decisive impact on his work. In 1964 they travelled through Europe on a Helena Rubenstein Scholarship. In 1969 Williams moved to Hawthorn, an inner suburb of Melbourne.

In 1976 he was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), and awarded a Doctorate of Law (Honoris Causa) by Monash University in 1980.

Williams won the Wynne Prize for landscape painting twice; in 1966 with Upwey Landscape and in 1976 with Mt. Kosciusko.

His painting Upwey Landscape (1965) sold for $1,987,700 in one of the final auctions of Christie’s in Australia in April 2006, which was the second highest price for an Australian work. The previous highest price for one of Williams’ paintings was $5,875,000 for You Yangs Landscape in 1963.

He died in 1982, in Hawthorn from lung cancer at age 55.

Juan Luna y Novicio (October 23, 1857 – December 7, 1899) was one of the great heroes of the Philippine Revolution and one of the first internationally-recognized Philippine painters. A native of Badoc, Ilocos Norte, Juan Luna was the third among the seven children of Joaquin Luna de San Pedro y Posada and Laureana Novicio y Ancheta. Both parents were from families that were well-off, thus each brought to the family a modest fortune.

Personal Background

In 1861, the Luna family left the north for Manila, believing that in this progressive city their children would receive a good education. Juan Luna was sent to Ateneo Municipal de Manila where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree (equivalent to the present-day high school diploma). His parents seemed to have envisioned him entering an ecclesiastical career; however, Juan had shown early interest in painting and drawing, influenced by his brother, Manuel Luna, who, according to Dr. José Rizal, was a better painter than Juan himself.

Luna later enrolled at Escuela Nautica (Academia Naval) and became a sailor. With Manuel, he sailed the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean and saw the picturesque views and scenic places in Hongkong, Amoy, Singapore, Batavia, and Colombo. Nevertheless, Luna’s passion for the arts continued. Whenever he was anchored in Manila Bay, he took drawing lessons under the illustrious painting teacher of Ermita, Manila, Lorenzo Guerrero. He also enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts (Academia de Dibujo y Pintura) in Manila where he was influenced and taught how to draw by the Spanish artist Agustin Saez. Unfortunately, Luna’s vigorous brush strokes displeased the maestro, and this probably was the reason why Luna was discharged from the Academia. However, Guerrero was impressed by his skill and urged Luna’s parents to send him to Spain for further study.

Juan Luna as an Artist

Probably it was in 1883 when Luna started the painting demanded of him by the Ayuntamiento. But it was some years before he would complete it. In May 1884, he shipped the large canvas of the Spoliarium to Madrid for the year’s Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes. There, he was the first recipient of the three gold medals awarded in the concourse. Luna’s triumph in this exposition heightened the spirit of the Filipino community in Madrid, and Luna gained recognition among the connoisseurs and art critics present. On 25 June 1884, the Filipinos organized an event celebrating the victorious Luna, attended by about seventy people, Filipinos and Spaniards alike. That night, Rizal prepared a speech for his friend, stressing two significant things: (1) the glorification of genius; and (2) the grandeur of the fatherland.

Luna developed a friendly relationship with the King of Spain and was later commissioned by the Spanish Senate to undertake a large canvas, the La Batalla de Lepanto, which greatly challenged him. He moved to Paris in 1885 and opened his own studio at No. 65 Boulevard Arago, near that of Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo. A year after, he finished the piece El Pacto de Sangre in accordance with the agreement he had with the Ayuntamiento of Manila. Depicted in this piece was the blood compact ceremony between Datu Sikatuna and Miguel Lopez de Legaspi. It now adorns the Malacañang Palace. He also sent two other paintings in addition to the one required. The second canvas sent to Manila was a portrait of Don Miguel Lopez de Legaspi reconstructed by Luna from his recollection of Legaspi’s portrait he saw in the hall of the Cabildo and the third was of Governor general Ramon Blanco.

In 1887, Luna once again traveled back to Spain to enter in that year’s Exposition two of his pieces, the La Batalla de Lepanto and Rendicion de Granada, which both won. He celebrated his triumph with his Filipino friends in Madrid, and Graciano Lopez-Jaena delivered a speech for him.

Luna’s paintings are generally described as being vigorous and dramatic. With its elements of Romanticism, his style shows the influence of Delacroix, Rembrandt, and Daumier.

Full Name: Vincent Willem Van Gogh
Born: March 30th 1853 in Groot Zundert, Brabant Holland
Died: July 27th 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise, France

Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. Some of his paintings are now among the world’s best known, most popular and expensive works of art.

The 19th century European society of Van Gogh’s time was not ready to accept his truthful and emotionally morbid way of depicting his art subjects. His internal turbulence is clearly seen in most of his paintings, which set the stage for the direction of a new style of painting called Expressionism. It is characterized by the use of symbols and a style that expresses the artist’s inner feelings about his subject. The whole of Van Gogh`s painted works – over 800 canvases – were produced in the very short time span of only 8 years. Indeed his total output of over 2000 drawings and paintings originate from the period 1880-1890.

Alongside these runs his great published correspondence of 800 letters, mainly to his brother Theo, and it is through this that we learn much about, although never fully understand, the tormented spirit of this eccentric genius, Vincent Van Gogh. They reveal how, having been unable to enter the ministry of the church, he gradually became taken over by his work, inextricably enslaved by its demands, in search of the ultimate `truth` and feeling “the positive consciousness of the fact that art is something greater and higher than our own adroitness or accomplishments or knowledge”.

This belief led him to a great modesty and he used to sign himself, if at all, only “Vincent”, always knowing that his life on earth would be very short. The parish priest of Auvers-sur-Oise called him accursed and even refused to provide his hearse for Vincent`s funeral. Therefore, an understanding of the paintings by Van Gogh requires insight into his turbulent life, because his style of painting is exemplified by a projection of the painter’s inner experience onto the canvas he paints. In Vincent Van Gogh’s own words, he said, “What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter, and then the painting.” To understand an artist of Expressionism we must first explore their biography.

Many of us can identify with the roadblocks that Vincent Van Gogh experienced in his many career and romantic pursuits, all ending in failure. His reaction to these experiences however, demonstrates a biological and psychological abnormality, causing behaviors that alienated those around him. As he became more isolated from society and began to pour all of his energies into painting, his eccentricities and outbursts developed pathological traits, which caused him first, to be institutionalized, and second, it led to his suicidal death at the young age of 37.

His career in the art world began in 1869 when, on the recommendation of his uncle `Cent`, a founder and shareholder, he was employed by the Goupil & Co art gallery as a clark in their Hague branch. Theo joined the Brussels office in 1873. Being transferred to London to complete his training, he fell in love with Eugénie, the daughter of his landlady, but was rejected. This led him to a period of great despair and depression, so much so that he could not attend to his duties effectively and he was transferred to Paris in 1875, where he lived in a small room in Montmatre. He was forced to resign in 1876 and immediately returned to England.

Vincent`s emotional turmoil did however bear artistic fruits in the form of a remarkable gift for perception – seeing powerfully what most others did not observe at all – “sad but always cheerful” he described himself and he turned to the religious scriptures for solace, secretly harbouring the ambition to become a clergyman like his father. However, he did manage to find employment in Ramsgate, on the south coast, where he tough French, spelling and arithmetic in a small school – and was able also to linger on the beach and watch the sea. From there he found employment as assistant to the Methodist preacher Reverend Jones at Isleworth, where he came into close contact with the great squalor and poverty of his parishioners, inspiring him to a desire to live in the service of the most destitute. However, returning home to Holland for Christmas, his parents managed to talk him out of this impecunious existance and again his uncle Cent obtained for him a clerk`s job in a booksellers in Dordrecht.

Fernando Amorsolo y Cueto (May 30, 1892 – April 26, 1972) is one of the most important artists in the history of painting in the Philippines. Amorsolo was a portraitist and painter of rural Philippine landscapes. He is popularly known for his craftsmanship and mastery in the use of light. Born in Paco, Manila, he earned a degree from the Liceo de Manila Art School in 1909.

Biography

Fernando Amorsolo was born on May 30, 1892 in Paco, when Manila was still under Spanish sovereignty, to Pedro Amorsolo, a bookkeeper, and Bonifacia Cueto. Amorsolo spent his childhood in Daet, Camarines Norte, where he studied in a public school and was tutored at home in Spanish reading and writing. After his father’s death, Amorsolo and his family moved to Manila to live with Don Fabian de la Rosa, his mother’s cousin and a Philippine painter. At the age of 13, Amorsolo became an apprentice to De la Rosa, who would eventually become the advocate and guide to Amorsolo’s painting career. During this time, Amorsolo’s mother embroidered to earn money, while Amorsolo helped by selling watercolor postcards to a local bookstore for 10 centavos each. Amorsolo’s brother, Pablo, was also a painter.

Amorsolo’s first success as a young painter came in 1908, when his painting Leyendo el periódico took second place at the Bazar Escolta, a contest organized by the Asociacion Internacional de Artistas. Between 1909 and 1914, Amorsolo enrolled at the Art School of the Liceo de Manila, where he earned honors for his paintings and drawings.

After graduating from the Liceo, he entered the University of the Philippines’ School of Fine Arts, where De la Rosa worked at the time. During college, Fernando Amorsolo’s primary influences were the Spanish court painter Diego Velazquez, John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, but mostly his contemporary Spanish masters Joaquín Sorolla Bastida and Ignacio Zuloaga. Amorsolo’s most notable work as a student at the Liceo was his painting of a young man and a young woman in a garden, which won him the first prize in the art school exhibition during his graduation year. To make money during school, Amorsolo joined competitions and did illustrations for various Philippine publications, including Severino Reyes’ first novel in Tagalog, Parusa ng Diyos (God’s Punishment), and Iñigo Ed. Regalado’s Madaling Araw (Dawn). He also illustrated for the religious Pasion books. Amorsolo graduated with medals from the University of the Philippines in 1914.

“As an art-hungry child growing up on the wrong side of the world, I shall be forever grateful to a man called Albert Felton who, when he succumbed to prostate cancer in Melbourne in 1904, left his entire fortune to be managed as a bequest fund. Half the income was to go to public charities, and the other half to the Melbourne picture gallery, later the National Gallery of Victoria.

Someone did this painting… but who?
“The gallery staff have bought wisely with the billion dollars or so that the bequest has brought. I can still remember the first time when, as a small girl, I tiptoed towards a small panel of the Mother and Child limned in jewel colours, set in a dimly lit room of its own, as if upon an altar. It was acquired in 1923 as by Jan van Eyck; it is now reattributed to the Flemish school, on no better grounds than that the Madonna doesn’t sit upon a throne, as she does in other Van Eycks, but upon a cushion. A Monk With a Book in the style of Titian is actually a Titian. A self-portrait by Rembrandt isn’t, but the portrait of Doge Pietro Loredano, thought to be a copy of a Tintoretto, turns out to be the original, after which all the other versions of this famous portrait have been made. Few provincial galleries have had the chance to play for such high stakes, and it is to the credit of the gallery’s directors that they have so often found themselves on the winning side…”

Germaine Greer: Not a Van Gogh, but is it a Rubens? Guardian Unlimited.

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Fompesca 2006

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“It used to be that good-looking waiters and cold plonk were the sole essentials of a good museum opening. Maybe there were some crackers on a tray. These days, though, no such fete is complete without a little curbside controversy, some wacko bit of theater, a harried staff of professional-event duennas and a guest list that can often seem as if it were composed by shredding the White Pages and picking names out of a hat.

Eva Herzigova and Marc Jacobs at the Brooklyn Museum

“Here, then, at the gala opening of the Takashi Murakami retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum on Thursday, an evening of unseasonal chill and spitting rain, was the obligatory chorus of protesters on Eastern Parkway, raising voices against the developer Bruce C. Ratner, who was being honored that night for his support of the arts at the annual Brooklyn Ball.

To those on one side of the museum’s new glass-walled addition, Mr. Ratner is a deep-pocketed patron and, as the museum’s director, Arnold Lehman, said, “a nice boychick from Cleveland, Ohio.” To those at curbside on Eastern Parkway, he was viewed less benignly, as Satan. Most developers are.

“Atlantic Yards is truly going to make a lot of people miserable,” said one protester, Eleanor Price, referring to Mr. Ratner’s $4 billion plan to refashion downtown Brooklyn into a commercial wonderland of shops, a basketball arena and fanciful buildings by Frank Gehry. “They’re using eminent domain to get rid of a lot of people and to close businesses,” Ms. Price said. “Where are they going to go?”

This Is Not a Sidewalk Bag, The New York Times.

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“Next month in New York, for the first time ever, Christie’s is including a house in a sale of post-war and contemporary art. Along with some multi-million-dollar Rothkos and Warhols will be the Kaufmann House, a minimalist 3,200-square foot residential house in the Californian desert designed in 1946 by one of the leading modernist architects of the day, Richard Neutra.

The Kaufmann House is a minimalist 3,200-square foot residential house in the Californian desert.

“In doing this, Christie’s is marketing architecture as art and expecting the buyer to pay the premium – in this case between $15 million (£7.3 million) and $25 million (£12.4 million).

“Andrea Fiuczynski, Christie’s president in Los Angeles, says they are including it in an art sale because, “not only is it a timeless masterpiece, and the last important example of modernist architecture in the Americas to remain in private hands, but it is also symptomatic of the trend to include design in contemporary art sales. The barriers between the two disciplines have now become blurred…’”

Art sales: is it a house, or a work of art?, The Telegraph UK.

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“David Hockney has given the largest painting he has ever made – a landscape 12 metres long by five metres tall (40ft by 15ft) – to the Tate.

“The work, Bigger Trees Near Warter (2007), is a monumental-scale view of a coppice in Hockney’s native Yorkshire, between Bridlington and York. It was painted on 50 individual canvases, mostly working in situ, over five weeks last winter.

Old bloke and painting.

“Although Hockney settled in Los Angeles in 1978, he has always spent Christmas at his mother’s house in Bridlington. Four years ago, he began to work there seriously, splitting his time between Yorkshire and California, with the rolling chalk hills around Bridlington the focus of his art…”

Hockney donates huge work to Tate, The Guardian.