Francis Danby – { feuilleton }

Albert Goodwin’s fantasies

Viriconium (Millennium/Gollancz, 2000). Painting: The Gates of the Inferno (no date).

The web continues to be an incomparable treat for anyone interested in art history. One of the great advantages of the BBC’s Your Paintings site is having the opportunity to see pictures by artists whose output would rarely be deemed important enough to appear in a book. Albert Goodwin (1845–1932) is one such artist, a painter of landscapes and seascapes with a sideline in fantastic scenes, some of which may have been inspired by the apocalyptic canvases of John Martin. The cover of the Viriconium anthology was my first sighting of anything by Goodwin. That particular painting appears to be in private hands so to date this is the only copy I’ve seen. The combination of minatory architecture and a nebulous atmosphere is just the kind of thing I enjoy so it’s disappointing to not find him producing anything similar.

The paintings below show some of Goodwin’s other forays into the fantastic, mostly illustration of one sort or another. The two final pictures wouldn’t be out-of-place on a collection of William Hope Hodgson sea stories; the devastated Armada isn’t fantastical per se but it reminds me of Hodgson’s descriptions of the Sargasso Sea.

Apocalypse (1903).

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1901).

Sinbad Entering the Cavern (1879).

Continue reading “Albert Goodwin’s fantasies”

The art of Thomas Cole, 1801–1848

The Titan’s Goblet (1833).

Thomas Cole’s Titan’s Goblet isn’t featured at the Google Art Project, unfortunately, but the following paintings are, and all benefit from being able to explore their details. Cole’s colossal vessel predates Surrealism by a century, and is one of many paintings which always has me mentally labelling him as the American John Martin (1789–1854). Having thought of him for years as an American artist–not least because he founded the Hudson River School–it’s a surprise to learn he was born in Bolton, a town not far from Manchester, with his parents emigrating to the US when he was 17. John Martin also grew up in the north of England so there’s another similarity, although the more important comparison concerns their use of painting to convey the spectacularly vast and unreal scenes common to the imaginative side of Romantic art. The Titan’s Goblet is unusual in not having any particular symbolic or moral significance, unlike the pictures below, it’s Magritte-like in its careful depiction of the impossible. The Subsiding of the Waters of the Deluge, on the other hand, could be exhibited beside Francis Danby’s The Deluge (1840) for a “before and after” effect. Like Martin, Cole enjoyed painting architecture of an exaggerated scale. The Architect’s Dream features an Egyptian temple of stupendous size, while the pyramid looming in the background is closer to William Hope Hodgson’s seven-mile-high Last Redoubt than any structure on the Nile plain.

Of equal interest are Cole’s two well-known series: The Course of Empire (1833–36) and The Voyage of Life (1842), both of which I’d love to see at Art Project size.

Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (1828).

The Subsiding of the Waters of the Deluge (1829).

The Architect’s Dream (1840).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• John Martin’s musical afterlife
• Albert Bierstadt in Yosemite
• Danby’s Deluge
• John Martin: Heaven & Hell
• Darkness visible
• Two American paintings
• The apocalyptic art of Francis Danby

John Martin’s musical afterlife

Angel Witch (1980) by Angel Witch. Art: The Fallen Angels Entering Pandemonium (1841).

It’s been a busy week so the posts just now are tending towards haste and laziness. The paintings of John Martin (1789–1854) make such good album covers you’d expect that there were more than this handful. Perhaps there are (Discogs.com contains numerous omissions), in which case leave a comment if you know of any. It’s no surprise that three of these are metal albums when the artist depicted so many apocalypses and scenes from Paradise Lost. Given the recent reappraisal of Martin’s work these won’t be the last albums we see borrowing his art.

Heresy (1990) by Lustmord. Art: The Great Day of His Wrath (1851).

This is the reissue of Lustmord’s excellent album of doomy volcanic rumbles. Both CDs use the same painting but the new edition has a better type layout.

Cradle (1992) by Suns of Arqa. Art: Manfred and the Witch Of The Alps (1837).

A good painting, a decent album (I have this one on CD) by a musical collective from Manchester originally, unfortunately spoiled by dreadful design. The group eventually saw sense and reissued this one with a better layout. The painting is the only example of Martin’s work in Manchester and features a ghostly figure where the artist had painted over an earlier Manfred.

The Closed Eyes of Paradise (demo, 1999) by Draconian. Art: Pandemonium (1838).

Bombs (2006) by Faithless. Art: The Great Day of His Wrath (detail, 1851).

Vast Oceans Lachrymose (2010) by While Heaven Wept. Art: Christ Stilleth The Tempest / Storm On The Sea Of Galilee (1867).

This American metal band appeared in the earlier post about Odilon Redon with the cover of their debut album.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Odilon Redon’s musical afterlife
• Danby’s Deluge
• John Martin: Heaven & Hell
• Darkness visible
• Aubrey Beardsley’s musical afterlife
• Death from above
• The apocalyptic art of Francis Danby

Danby’s Deluge

Since John Martin’s tumultuous canvases are back in the news it’s worth remembering another 19th-century painter of Biblical cataclysm, Francis Danby (1793–1861), whose enormous The Deluge (1840) used to hang in the same room as the Martins at Tate Britain. Danby was a contemporary of Martin although not as enthusiastic about this kind of subject matter. Visions of apocalypse proved to be popular, however, so Danby painted his Flood and similar works with reluctance. (Even Turner wasn’t above painting the occasional disaster.) Danby’s Deluge impressed me as much as Martin’s work when I first saw it not least for its having some believable human figures which give the vast canvas a tragic dimension. Martin’s figures are perfunctory and invariably dwarfed by the scale of events.

These details are from the Google Art Project which unfortunately don’t show us as much detail as they might. This is one of those paintings which encourages a lengthy contemplation, with a composition that draws the eye away from the swirling waters to a glowering sun and the shape of Noah’s ark on the distant horizon.

I’ve always been intrigued by the curious detail of the angel caught in the flood, and the even more curious detail of a drowned giant beside it. For the first time, however, I’ve noticed that the angel is peering into the face of a dead woman draped over the giant’s body. Paintings such as these often toured the country accompanied by the artist responsible who would lecture a paying audience about the various details. Besides the storytelling Danby gives the water in the foreground an astonishing transparent quality which Google’s photos can’t replicate. All the more reason to see his paintings for yourself if you’re in London.

• Francis Danby at Tate Britain

Previously on { feuilleton }
• John Martin: Heaven & Hell
• Darkness visible
• Death from above
• The apocalyptic art of Francis Danby

John Martin: Heaven & Hell

The Great Day of His Wrath (1851) by John Martin.

I’ve written on a couple of occasions about having been a precocious youth when it came to art appreciation. My first visit to the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) when I was 13 was of my own volition during one of our annual school visits to London. I wanted to see Modern Art (capital M and capital A), and especially my favourite Surrealist and Pop artists. Those works were present, of course, and it was a thrill to discover artists I hadn’t heard of such as Brâncusi and Moholy-Nagy, but the greatest shock came in the room reserved for the enormous canvases filled with apocalyptic scenes by Francis Danby and John Martin.

The Last Judgement (1853) by John Martin.

Some of these paintings have become more visible over the years, especially Martin’s startling chef-d’oeuvre, The Great Day of His Wrath, which has found a new lease of life decorating various music releases. Yet for a long time these works were never seen in art histories, being dismissed as a kind of religious kitsch, interesting perhaps for their Romantic connections (he also depicted scenes from Milton and Byron) but with Martin regarded as deeply inferior compared to his contemporary JMW Turner. If you only look at painting as being about the surface of the canvas then Martin is inferior to Turner whose nebulous works contain the seeds of Impressionism and much 20th century art. But there’s more to art than the surface. What I saw was an astonishing audacity—this artist had dared to paint the end of the world!—and three deeply strange paintings, two of which feature deliberately confused perspectives which are almost Surrealist in their effect and quite unlike any other work produced in the 19th century.

The Plains of Heaven (1851) by John Martin.

Well things change, not least critical opinion, and with the emergence in recent years of (for want of a better term) Pop Surrealism, and also the current vogue for crappy disaster movies and apocalyptic chatter, Martin’s paintings have been deemed interesting enough to warrant an exhibition at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, which has been the permanent home of other Martin works for many years. The show will run there until June then travel to Sheffield (where I may pay it a visit) and Tate Britain. Of note for Martin enthusiasts will be the emergence from a private collection of the vast and lurid Belshazzar’s Feast, the painting which inspired some of the set designs in DW Griffith’s Intolerance. I once read that if the insanely huge banqueting hall in that picture had been a real construction it would have extended for at least a mile. Visitors to the new exhibition will be able to judge for themselves in close-up. And speaking of close-ups, Google’s Art Project has the three paintings above in their Tate collection; click the pictures for links.

Belshazzar’s Feast (1820) by John Martin.

• Derided painter John Martin makes a dramatic comeback

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Darkness visible
• Death from above
• The apocalyptic art of Francis Danby