Monet's Garden and Fairweather's Island

Monet's Garden at Giverney

When I popped this DVD in and sat back with a cup of tea and an anticipatory smile, I expected to see lots of Monet's paintings, intercut with shots of the bits of garden that inspired them. Instead, I saw a very interesting and informative film about the garden itself, and as the camera roamed the familiar settings, I saw the paintings in my head rather than on the screen.

The film follows the life of the garden through a year, from the first spring flowers, through the riotous summer colours, to the winter season when the garden closes to the public and the eight gardeners do their essential mantenance.

There are fascinating interviews with artists, gardeners and members of the Monet family. I liked the Japanese landscape gardener who explained that the famous bridge is not really the right shape for a Japanese bridge, and in any case Japanese bridges are not green, but red for contrast!

The garden is in two parts: the flower garden and the water garden which was only built later. Monet was a passionate gardener and created the garden with great consideration and an artist's eye for colour and design.

The gardeners among our members will especially like this DVD.

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Fairweather Man
"Fairweather Man" is an intimate portrait of the life and work of Ian Fairweather, an eccentric, reclusive, driven artist. It runs for 52 minutes, bringing his story to life through letters, diaries, archival footage and interviews. I particularly liked the inclusion of so many of his paintings: we are able to see his talent unfold, the development of his oeuvre reflecting the influence of events in his life and places he lived.

Abandonment as a child and the horrors of active service in World War I gave him a good nudge toward a habit of reclusive introspection. He could not settle, and China became the first stop in a life of wandering. Chinese culture had an overriding and lifelong influence on his art.

At 60 years of age, Fairweather experienced an epiphany. He built himself a flimsy raft and set sail from Darwin on a foolhardy, death-defying trip across the Timor Sea. For 16 days he drifted in a semi-conscious and hallucinogenic state. It is said that before that journey he was an extremely talented artist, but afterwards he became an extraordinary one.

For the last 20 years of his life Fairweather lived a hermit-like existence in a grass hut on Bribie Island, off the coast of Queensland. It was there that he created his greatest work, despite the primitive and unhygienic conditions. When he died in 1974, Australia lost a great painter, but you can see some of his best work at the Ian Potter Gallery any time you like. Go and treat yourself, it's free!

Pinups and Prophesies

The pin-up is interesting as a portrait genre, peculiar to the Second World War.




This DVD traces the evolution of the Australian pin-up, through interviews with some of the girls who posed for the pictures and some of the servicemen for whom they were true morale-boosters.


The film also gives a fascinating insight into the different social values and mores of those more innocent times.


Man Magazine first hit the newsstands in 1936 - it was based on the American Esquire, and featured excellent fiction and articles, cartoons and artwork. Some of Australia’s best writers and artists contributed to it.


At two shillings, it was a bit more upmarket than its sixpenny cousin, Pix Magazine, established two years later. Pix, as its name implies, was heavily illustrated and it featured a mix of human-interest stories, fashion and politics. Both magazines became more risqué in later years, but at the beginning of the war they were very much family fare.


The magazines ran "Beach Girl" competitions to encourage the idea of healthy outdoor living, with readers invited to send in their photographs. The chosen bathing beauties had their pictures published, captioned with their names and addresses! See what I mean by "more innocent times"?


Many of the girls received letters from servicemen abroad, and penpal correspondence flourished. One of the former pinup girls tells how devastated she was when one whole platoon, whose mascot she was, was wiped out. She had never met any of the Diggers, but the letters she exchanged with them had forged close friendships: they confided in her and she felt protective of them.


As the war progressed, so the pinup evolved from pretty picture to propaganda material. The film uses archival footage, artwork and interviews to capture the spirit and mores of the time. I particularly liked the interviews with the men and women, now in their seventies and eighties, who were pinups and soldiers at the time, with flashback photos of how they looked then. No question, good bone structure tells! Those lovely girls are lovely old ladies now.


The film runs for 52 minutes and is narrated by Claudia Karvan.

This film was made when The Da Vinci Code was a best seller. Waldemar Januszczak gets on the bandwagon by seeking coded messages by Michelangelo in the frescoes of the Sustine chapel.


His tortuous theory drags in the ark of the covenant, the invention of the printing press and the prophet Zachariah among others. I don't know why he didn't throw in alien abductions, Elvis and the Loch Ness monster while he was about it. The burden of his message seems to be that Michelangelo prophesied the massacre of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians at Waco in 1993.


Anyway, ignore all that silly stuff and you are left with a very interesting history of the Sistine Chapel. The Della Rovere family produced two Popes: Sixtus IV, who built the chapel, and Julius II, who decorated it. This is their story.


The history of the papal battles and politics of the time is quite fascinating. It is not only our own building industry that has trouble coming in on time and on budget!


Mr Januszczak had access to the Sistine Chapel during cleaning and restoration operations, so we get right up close to the frescoes, on the scaffolding of the workers. It is interesting that the surface of the ceiling is not smooth, but rather rough undulations. He points out the obscene gesture that one of the little cherubs is making: a naughty joke by the painter - it is too small to be seen from any distance. It is also really thrilling to see Michaelangelo's mucky thumbprints on the edges.


Mr Januszczak knows his subject and when he is not airing his weird theories, he is very entertaining and informative.


He puts Michaelangelo's position among the other artists of the time in perspective, and we see some lovely works by other Renaissance painters and sculptors, notably the magnificent Raphael portrait of Julius II (above). Michaelangelo lived to 89. Thirty years elapsed between his painting the first and last parts of the Chapel.

The Germans Are Coming!

Hard on the heels of the Viennese exhibition, the NGV is about to give us another treat: an extensive collection of avant-garde art from Germany, spanning the first three decades of the 20th century. The exhibition is currently at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and will open here on 25th November.



Sparing no effort or expense, I selflessly travelled all the way to Sydney last weekend in order to go and preview the exhibition for our members. L.P. Hartley remarked that the past is a foreign country - they do things differently there. The same can be said of Sydney. For one thing, the taxi drivers are not afflicted wth B.O. and they know where they are going. I flagged down one of this fine body of men (and women, for all I know) outside my hotel, just like they do in the movies, and he took me straight to the Art Gallery with no prompting.

Felix Nussbaum's painting gave its name to the exhibition: "The Mad Square - Modernity in German Art 1910-37". These were tumultuous years, socially and politically. The eponymous "Mad Square" refers to Berlin's famous Pariser Platz, a place that embodies the crazy and fantastic zeitgeist of the times.


The Mad Square is not only a place but also evokes the edginess of the times - the atmosphere of the exhibition rooms made me think of of Joel Grey's sly, louche Master of Ceremonies in "Cabaret", Peter Lorre's sinister paedophile in "M" and Walter Sickert's "Ripper" paintings.

In the time span covered by the exhibition, Germany went through the horrors of WW1, followed by economic disaster, the political turmoil of the abdication of the Kaiser, the establishment of the decadent Weimar Republic and the gradual rise of Fascism. All this is embodied in the range of artistic experimentation and creative freedom that saw artists move away from figurative work towards inceasingly abstract forms.

To give an overview of the scope of the exhibition: the starting point of the show is the Expressionism that flourished until the beginning of the world war, moving on to Dada by 1916, which was overtaken by the golden age of Walter Gropius' Bauhaus school of art and design from 1919 until its end in 1933, when the Nazis raided the school and closed it down. The Bauhaus was essentially a school of design that sought to fuse the aesthetics of fine arts with the technical skills of crafts. The exhibition includes some beautiful examples of furniture, ceramics and textiles.


There is a very interesting collection of photographs and drawings representing the brief period of Constructivism in 1922 and '23, that saw art fused with technology - lots of photographs of machines.

The show moves on to the art of the 1920s - the sophisticated metropolis of Berlin providing a rich source of inspiration. Indeed, Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" is screened on a continuous loop and there are lovely contemporary film posters. Not only of "Metropolis" but also of "M" and of "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari". The latter, with its marvellous expressionist sets, is, for my money, the greatest movie of the silent era, and incidentally the one that hooked me on the beauty and magic of film beyond Hollywood and Disney. I first saw it at the impressionable age of eight, when my Auntie Ann who was babysitting me, took me with her to the local Film Society.

The decadent Berlin of this era is best described by Christopher Isherwood in his series of "Berlin Stories". Nothing was beyond the pale in the brothels, clubs and gambling dens; it would have been fertile soil for Krafft-Ebbing and his colleagues. From this section two pictures encapsulate the atmosphere of the city for me. In The Sex Murderer by Heinrich Davringhausen, I like the way he references Manet's Olympia and I am amused by the clichéd bogeyman lurking under the bed: he looks more terrified than his intended victim! Maybe he's new at the sex fiend trade.

I was also amused by The Powder Puff (George Grosz) - the wall text explains that the prostitute powdering her friend's bottom is helping her get ready for the next client. Clearly an upmarket establishment: each client gets clean sheets and a freshly powdered bottom!


By the mid-1920s, there was a move towards Objectivism, returning to more traditional modes of representation and away from modernity. In this area there is a fascinating range of photographic portraits of contemporary figures: Otto Dix, Max Beckmann and Paul Klee among them.

One of my favourite parts of the exhibition is the "Degenerate Art", singled out by the Nazis as representative of the moral decay and mental deficiency that had infiltrated modern art. There is a fine crop of works by moral degenerates and mental defectives such as Picasso, Max Beckmann, Franz Marc, Kandinsky, Paul Klee and others of their disgusting ilk. I also liked the posters advertising the exhibition of Degenerate Art that the Nazis had put on so that the German people could see for themselves the horror and feel the fear-and-loathing of it all. That backfired bigtime!

After a bit of lunch and a restorative cup of peppermint tea in the Members' Room (why doesn't the NGV's Members' Room do lunch?) I went to have a look at the permanent collection. I haven't been to the museum since the completion of the new contemporary galleries, so I thought I would suss them out. I saw some old favourites: for some reason I love the fat lady in the yellow dress by Matthew Smith - I was delighted to see her again, near another of my favourites: the still life by Giorgio Morandi.

There is some delightful Op Art and Pop Art that takes you right back to the Sixties, and I was fascinated by a wall-size abstract on a reflective surface, that caused me and the room behind me to become part of the picture. There was a dead clown lying on the floor at my feet, but I didn't let that spoil my day.

Three sculptures commanded my attention: Killing Time by Ricky Swallow, an exquisitely detailed carving of a table on which is displayed all the sea creatures that he can remember killing and eating in his life;

 The Comforter by Patricia Piccinini, a disturbing figure of what appears at first glance to be a teenage girl cuddling a baby, but on closer inspection you see that she is as hirsute as a Turkish navvy and the "baby" is her arms is a torso with a pair of baby feet at one end and a bunch of huge fingers at the other. Repellent yet mesmerising!

Spyrogyra by Tony Cragg is a ten foot tall spiral with bottles seeming to grow out of it. The black and white reproduction won't do it justice: the subtle shading of green, white and brown bottles with just the occasional blue evokes the embodiment of plant life: Christmas trees, pine forests, the waving tendrils of a spirogyra, last seen under a microscope in high school biology class!


As I was leaving, two rows of large photographs divided by fluorescent tubes caught my eye, and I recognised a portrait of Hannie Schaft, the sixteen year old Dutch girl who was shot by the Gestapo for helping the Resistance in Haarlem. I couldn't think what Hannie is doing in Sydney - she is not a well-known figure outside Holland. I only happen to know about her because I have spent time in Haarlem. So I wandered over to have a closer look.


The installation is called Seven people who died the day I was born – April 18 1945. It is by Peter Kennedy and he uses it to illustrate the way in which individual lives are connected to political and historical events. I found it interesting and thought-provoking.
If you find yourself in Sydney, do try and spend a couple of hours in the Art Gallery of NSW: they have a marvellous collection and you will get VIP treatment of you flash your NGV card!

Roses

At the Flower and Garden show (where the WAS exhibit outshone everyone else's!) I noticed how many artists chose roses to paint
Ask anyone to name a flower and the first one to come to mind will probably be the rose. Their scent, their colour and their beauty entrance us. Most modern perfumes contain a trace of rose in their fragrance composition. A red rose is the ultimate symbol of love: on St Valentine's Day it is impossible to get hold of a red rose unless you have placed an order days in advance.

Perhaps the most famous rose of all time is the Peace Rose, one of the most beloved roses in the world. A warm yellow and pink-tipped bloom with a delicate, sweet scent, it has been the top choice of rose-growers in all countries since it was created just after World War II. There is a very interesting book by Antonia Ridge about the creation of the Peace Rose: "For the love of a Rose".

Rose leaf imprints have been found in 35 million year-old fossils in the Colorado Rockies, and roses are mentioned in Asian documents from as early as 3000 BC. The Greeks adorned their altars with roses and offered them to the gods. The Romans, who would feel right at home in Las Vegas, in their turn went right over the top with roses as a luxury item: at banquets, the guests would be sprinkled with rose water and have rose oil rubbed on their bodies. The floor, walls and ceiling would be carpeted in roses and rose-scented wine would be served. Talk about tacky!

In Alexandria, Cleopatra - famous for her lack of restraint - ordered a carpet of roses 30cm thick for her first meeting with Antony. One can only hope that everybody wore stout boots and thornproof leggings for the occasion.

The remedial powers of the rose were much prized: in ancient China roses were deemed effective for dropsy and constipation, the Egyptians chewed rose petals for toothache and in 17th Century Europe powdered rose petals were used to stop bleeding and to cure headaches.


Recently it has been found that rose flowers contain Vitamins A, C, and P and taken in capsules can relieve stress, depression and insomnia. It is not even necessary to eat them: a dozen red roses can make you feel great just by appearing on your doorstep.

The Couch Potato Takes to the Streets

In the fascinating DVD "The National Gallery's Grand Tour", art historian Tim Marlow takes us on a walk round the streets of London's Soho, Covent Garden and Chinatown. In the streets and alleyways, in the most unexpected and unusual places, we discover 44 of the National Gallery's most famous works of art.



Complete with frames and wall texts, these superb full-size reproductions delight passers-by, who stop to look, to whip out their 'phones for a picture and sometimes to call the number on the wall text for the audio-info.

In this DVD, we take a fresh look at the paintings in their temporary new hanging spaces. It's interesting to see them in a completely new context and Mr Marlow is an engaging and very knowledgable guide. The West End has become a giant art gallery: Vincent's Sunflowers is on a sidewalk café wall, Caravaggio's Salomé hangs next to the door of a sex shop. Stubbs' Whistlejacket prances on the wide expanse of a warehouse wall. Seurat's Bathers at Asniéres are sunning themselves beside the staff entrance to Hamley's and Holbein's Ambassadors solemnly regard the passers-by in Berwick Street, Soho. I wonder what they make of it all!

Amazingly, only four of the pictures disappeared overnight during the twelve weeks of the exhibition, including Belshazzar's Feast by Rembrandt. The theft of that huge work was captured on the ubiquitous CCTV cameras and is reproduced frame by frame in the book "Tiger Seen on Shaftesbury Avenue".

This book is a kind of catalogue of this unusual exercise: it is a National Gallery publication that documents the exhibition and viewers' effusive reactions to it. It features images of the paintings taken by passers-by, including Rousseau's "Surprised "on Shaftesbury Avenue. The book quotes insightful and witty comments from various members of the public and recounts amusing anecdotes regarding people's reactions.

The National Gallery called this exhibition The Grand Tour. It celebrates the richness and diversity of the Gallery's permanent collection and its aim was to encourage people to visit the genuine works. In this it was successful, attracting not only tourists but many Londoners who had been unaware of the visual treasures that are available, free of charge, in their marvellous city.


Here in Marvellous Melbourne our very own NGV also has a wonderful collection of paintings and we are extremely lucky that the permanent collection is on view free of charge. Unlike many international art museums, where you have to hand over an arm and a leg before they let you clap eyes on so much as a small watercolour by a Sunday painter.


The NGV's annual blockbuster exhibitions of loaned masterpieces are great, but wouldn't it be a treat if our own masterpieces could go walkabout in our city? How exciting to come across Cleopatra in an alleyway or meet Dame Nellie Melba in Collins Street!


I borrowed the DVD from the Eastern Region Library system (Ringwood, Knox et al) and the book is available at the Whitehorse-Manningham Libraries.

Identity Crisis at the NGV

My fellow-Enid Blyton aficionados will know that her books often have a chapter called "A Shock and a Surprise". However, not one of the Famous Five (nor indeed their dog) could have sustained a greater shock and surprise than I received at the NGV last week.



The Gentle Reader will remember an article I wrote some time ago about the charming portrait of the princess Sophie, Fille de France, daughter of Louis XV. She is one of my favourites and as I ambled through the room where she sits, looking up from her book all pink-cheeked and pretty, I caught sight of the wall label next to her: "Louise-Marie de France", it brazenly declared, "formerly believed to be a likeness of her sister, Sophie." Impudent hussy! Usurping her sister's place!


Fruitlessly rummaging in my handbag for smelling salts, I was forced to retire to the Members' Room for a restorative tea and biscuit. Anyway, I am not going to do all that research again. Everything I told you about Sophie no doubt goes for Louise Marie as well - except that Louise became a nun while Sophie just lived to a spinsterish old age with her sisters. It must be hard when you are so well-born that nobody except a king is considered a suitable husband. Mind you, husbands being what they were in those days, perhaps that old snob Louis' daughters were better off without them.

Another aristocratic lady in the NGV with a bit of an identity problem, is Lucrezia Borgia. Lucrezia's father, Pope Alexander VI, had no problem marrying his daughter off to his best political advantage, and indeed he did so three times. Each of her husbands seemed to die just when it would really have been more convenient for His Holiness had Lucrezia been free to marry someone else.


The portrait in the NGV was painted about 1520, when Lucrezia was married to her third husband, the Duke of Ferrara. (Soon to be the late Duke.)


The painting was acquired by the NGV in 1965, through the Felton Bequest. For forty-three years it was titled "Portrait of a Youth", by an unknown Italian artist. It was only in 2008 that the NGV announced the portrait to be that of Lucrezia Borgia, and that the painter is famed Renaissance artist Dosso Dossi.


Not only identity crisis but gender confusion as well! Definitely not a tea-and-biscuit shock: this is more your vodka-and-valium type of situation.


I for one am delighted to welcome Dossi's Lucrezia to the NGV and I don't miss "The Youth" and his unknown Italian painter at all. I have to say, reluctantly, that she is a bit of a minger. Not as beautiful as legend has it. But then, all princesses are called beautiful and Lucrezia, if not an actual princess, was the nearest thing to a princess that Rome had at the time.


Apparently it is the dagger in her hand that led to the belief that the sitter was a man. However, on closer study it was decided that the subject is more likely to be a woman: the myrtle bush and flowers are symbolic references to Venus. The dagger refers to Lucretia, the heroine of ancient Rome, who stuck a dagger into her heart after she was raped, thus preserving the honour of her family. (Wouldn't the honour of her family have been better preserved had she stuck the dagger into the rapist's heart instead?)

I particularly looked at the Dossi portrait because I am enjoying "The Borgias", a TV mini-series of doubtful historical accuracy, in which Jeremy Irons does a louche and sinister turn as the Pope, and Lucrezia is played by the very beautiful Holliday Grainger, who would never have been mistaken for a young man!

Meret Oppenheim





Meret Oppenheim

I first became aware of Meret Oppenheim when I was about five years old. For some reason my mother took me with her to the art class she was teaching. Her subject that day was Surrealism, and she had some reproductions which she put in turn on an easel in front of the class to illustrate her talk.


I was given some crayons and told to sit quietly at a little table, which I did, until I happened to look up and see a picture of a furry cup and saucer, complete with a teaspoon, yet. I remember the horror to this day. Tea from that cup! I could just feel that wet, slimy fur on my lips and how the hairs would catch in my teeth if I put that teaspoon in my mouth. I freaked. Didn't get taken to school again.


Object: Breakfast in Fur


Meret was only 22 years old in 1936, when she created this memorable piece of art - once seen, never forgotten! "Object: Fur Breakfast" became an icon of the Surrealist movement, endlessly reproduced on posters and coasters, like Dali's "Persistence of Memory" and Magritte's "The Great War": the bowler-hatted man with a green apple covering his face.

Magritte: The Great War

"Object" was an overnight sensation at Surrealist exhibitions in both Paris and New York, and was immediately snapped up by the Museum of Modern Art.




Dali: The Persistence of Memory

In the same year, Meret created another important Surrealist work: "Mein Kindermadchen" (My Nanny) - a pair of high-heeled shoes, tied together, decorated with paper frills like a trussed chicken, and presented on a silver tray. The piece is full of latent eroticism. The rounded heels look like buttocks, evoking the image of a bound, nude woman on her back, legs apart.

Oppenheim: Mein Kindermadchen

With this image, Meret was raising questions about the way women were regarded as mere objects in the male-dominated art world. The Surrealists, mainly older men, surrounded themselves with women a generation younger than themselves, who were important to them as muses and lovers, but not taken seriously as artists. They were adored as the Surrealist ideal of the child-woman: sexual beings who inspired creativity.

At age 20, Meret was already a "muse", celebrated by the Surrealists as the "fairy woman whom all men desire". She was on intimate terms with Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamps and André Breton. Man Ray used her as the nude model for a series of photographs titled Erotique Voilée.

These photographs say a lot about the gender dynamics within the Surrealist movement. In the best-known one, Meret stands behind the wheel of a printing press, a black hoop round her neck, her eyes enigmatically downcast. Her arm is held up, palm gesturing outward to the viewer. The hand and arm are covered with printer's ink. The gesture ambiguously seems to ward off approaches while defiantly displaying the stain. Her pubic region is obscured by a blatantly phallic wooden handle which protrudes from the printer's wheel in front of her.

The acclaim that "Object: Fur Breakfast", and to a lesser extent, "Mein Kindermadchen", received, catapulted Meret into overnight fame when she was really too young to cope with the spotlight. Not unlike many young footballers of today! Many art historians feel that this spectacular early success blighted her future career - she was constantly trying too hard to live up to her early triumph.

It was not helpful that several of her fellow-Surrealists, perhaps with a touch of envy at the success of a mere young female, frequently tried to disparage and trivialise her. She lost confidence, failed to finish projects and even destroyed many works.

In the 1950s she seemed to come to terms with the pressure of expectations engendered by her almost mythical status as the quintessential Surrealist. She went on to create a rich and varied body of work: she designed objects, wrote film scripts and poetry, made masks and costumes. She set up a studio in Berne and became a source of inspiration for many younger artists.

She died of a heart attack at age 72, on the very day that her latest book of poems and etchings was launched.

Meret Oppenheim contributed greatly to the recognition of women as artists in their own right.

Rosalba Carriera

With so many of our talented members working in pastels, I thought it would be a good idea to showcase that pioneer of pastel portaiture, Rosalba Carriera.

Rosalba Carriera painted almost as many selfportraits as Rembrandt. Many show her as a very attractive young woman, but for some reason, "Winter", showing her at the age of 56 and wearing white fur, is the one that has become synonymous with her.


She was born in Venice in 1675 - the daughter of the steward to a noble house and a lacemaker. Her father realised that his three daughters would have to earn their own living, so he gave them the best education he could. Rosalba and her sisters studied Italian, French and Latin. All three were accomplished musicians, Rosalba playing the violin and harpsichord.


She was still very young when she started drawing patterns for her mother to use in her lacemaking. Venice was always a tourist magnet, as it still is today, and Rosalba turned her talent to decorating snuffboxes for the tourist trade. At first she painted pretty patterns, but hit on the idea of "personalising" the snuffboxes by painting miniature portraits on the lids.


Her miniatures were in great demand, and she soon dispensed with the snuffboxes and concentrated on executing orders for miniature portraits. She pioneered the use of ivory rather than vellum for miniatures - an innovation that was popular with the public and copied by other artists. Nobody gave any thought to the unfortunate pachyderms or picketed her studio. The Animal Liberationists are never there when you need them!

Rosalba moved on to pastel portraiture, and indeed was a pioneer in that field. She pioneered more than just her chosen medium - until then, male artists were regarded as the professionals; women were considered to be mere hobbyists. Early in her career, Rosalba, as a woman, was often offered payment in kind: gloves or embroidered sachets, rather than money, by people who looked upon her as something less than a "real artist".

However, her portraits were in great demand. A Carriera portrait became a must-have for prominent foreign visitors to Venice, diplomats and the nobility. No more talk of the little woman hobbyist - she was regarded with respect by her fellow artists. The great Watteau paid her the ultimate compliment by asking her to paint his portrait: the very portrait which is most commonly used today to illustrate any article about him.

Rosalba's portraits were done in the rococo style and were almost always bust length, the sitter's head facing the viewer and the body turned slightly away. She liked to spend time with her subjects, getting to know them. She made preliminary sketches and took a great deal of trouble to reproduce the textures and fabrics accurately. One of her most recognizable techniques was to drag the flat side of a chalk over a contrasting color to simulate lace.


Perhaps her rendering of the sitters' faces was not quite as accurate: she was sometimes criticised for being too kind to her subjects, glossing over blemishes and glamorising their features a little. Well, she wouldn't be the first or last portraitist to employ a bit of judicious PhotoShopping. Painful honesty is all very commendable, but it doesn't pay the bills!


She travelled to Paris in 1721, where she painted Watteau and received so many commissions that her sisters helped her to execute them. She was the first foreign woman to be admitted to the French Academy and in the same year she was elected to the Italian one as well.

She visited Vienna, Modena, Parma and Poland, garnering enthusiastic acclaim and being feted by royalty. At the Court of Poland, she gave lessons to the Queen. The Polish King Augustus III was one of the most ardent admirers of her work and she refused several times to become the full-time Court painter. In the event, the king acquired hundreds of her pictures.

King Augstus III of Poland is an old friend of ours at WAS. (You can refresh your memory about him if you have kept your back numbers of the erstwhile WASP, or you can check the blog archive.

We knew him when he was still Crown Prince Frederick Augustus of Saxony: his magnificent portrait by Nicolas de Largillierre hangs in the NGV. He was the first owner of our very own Tiepolo Cleopatra but through unfortunate circumstances (unfortunate for him, but very fortunate for us!) Cleopatra slipped through his fingers and eventually came to rest on the walls of the NGV. Where you can see both of them, free of charge, any time you like.


Crown Prince Frederick Augustus and his father, Augustus the Strong, between them amassed over 800 magnificent paintings, which form the nucleus of the collection at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden. Their collection includes major works by the entire First Team of Old Masters, and of course the unrivalled collection of Carrieras.


Rosalba Carriera, attractive, intelligent and successful, had many suitors, but unlike her sisters, she never married. In later life her eyesight deteriorated, perhaps as a result of the years of miniature work, until she was completely blind. She outlived her entire family and died in Venice at the age of 82.