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PUGET, Pierre
French Baroque Era Sculptor, 1620-1694
French sculptor, painter, draughtsman and architect. Puget was one of the outstanding artists of his century, but his style, formed by the Italian Baroque, did not however always find favour in the classicizing atmosphere of the French court, where Jean-Baptiste Colbert would describe him in 1670 as 'a man who goes a little too fast, and whose imagination is a little too heated'. Although the son of a master mason, Simon Puget (d 1623), Puget was largely self-taught, as were his brother Gaspard Puget (1615-after 1683), an architect, and his son Fran?ois Puget (1651-1707), a painter. Apprenticed in 1634 to a wood-carver, Jean Roman, in Marseille, he left in 1638 for Italy, spending some years in Florence and Rome close to Pietro da Cortona, presumably as a stuccoist and painter, although his part in the decoration of the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Cortona's main project of these years, is not clear. From 1643 he practised sculpture and painting at the Toulon Arsenal, France's largest naval shipyard, where he was appointed to the wood-carving workshop: around 1645, for instance, he designed and supervised the decoration of the ship Le Magnifique (in 1646 renamed La Reine; destr.). According to some sources, in 1646 he made a second journey to Italy, Related Paintings of PUGET, Pierre :. | Self-portrait ag | The Education of Achilles by Chiron ar | Portrait of the Artist's Mother af | Great Vessel of War | Self-portrait in Old Age af | Related Artists: Cornelis Claesz. van WieringenHe was the son of a Haarlem captain, and drew, painted and etched with his friends Hendrick Goltzius and Cornelis van Haarlem. He also held important positions in the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, the painters guild, where he became a member in 1597.
He specialized in paintings depicting ships and sea battles, and received orders from the municipal councils of Haarlem and Amsterdam. He painted the most popular picture of the Damiate legend of Haarlem, showing how a Haarlem ship broke the protective chain at Damietta during the Fifth Crusade, resulting in an important victory over Islam. This painting was such a success that it was reordered in tapestry form, and both pieces are in the collection of the Frans Hals Museum.
The city of Haarlem archives still hold the original records of the 1629 order to Van Wieringen to make the tapestry, the largest made in the 17th century (10.75 meters long and 2.40 meters high). This tapestry still hangs on the wall of the Haarlem City Hall council meeting room known as the vroedschapskamer, where it was installed. It is on public display once a year on Monument Day.
John William GodwardEnglish
1861-1922
Godward was a Victorian Neo-classicist, and therefore a follower in theory of Frederic Leighton. However, he is more closely allied stylistically to Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, with whom he shared a penchant for the rendering of Classical architecture, in particular, static landscape features constructed from marble.
The vast majority of Godward's extant images feature women in Classical dress, posed against these landscape features, though there are some semi-nude and fully nude figures included in his oeuvre (a notable example being In The Tepidarium (1913), a title shared with a controversial Alma-Tadema painting of the same subject that resides in the Lady Lever Art Gallery). The titles reflect Godward's source of inspiration: Classical civilisation, most notably that of Ancient Rome (again a subject binding Godward closely to Alma-Tadema artistically), though Ancient Greece sometimes features, thus providing artistic ties, albeit of a more limited extent, with Leighton.
Given that Classical scholarship was more widespread among the potential audience for his paintings during his lifetime than in the present day, meticulous research of detail was important in order to attain a standing as an artist in this genre. Alma-Tadema was, as well as a painter, an archaeologist who attended historical sites and collected artefacts that were later used in his paintings: Godward, too, studied such details as architecture and dress, in order to ensure that his works bore the stamp of authenticity. In addition, Godward painstakingly and meticulously rendered those other important features in his paintings, animal skins (the paintings Noon Day Rest (1910) and A Cool Retreat (1910) contain superb examples of such rendition) and wild flowers (Nerissa (1906), illustrated above, and Summer Flowers (1903) are again excellent examples of this).
The appearance of beautiful women in studied poses in so many of Godward's canvases causes many newcomers to his works to categorise him mistakenly as being Pre-Raphaelite, particularly as his palette is often a vibrantly colourful one. However, the choice of subject matter (ancient civilisation versus, for example, Arthurian legend) is more properly that of the Victorian Neoclassicist: however, it is appropriate to comment that in common with numerous painters contemporary with him, Godward was a 'High Victorian Dreamer', producing beautiful images of a world which, it must be said, was idealised and romanticised, and which in the case of both Godward and Alma-Tadema came to be criticised as a world-view of 'Victorians in togas'. Alessandro Filipepe called botticelliFlorence ca 1445-1510
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