ART & ARTISTS: 2022-06-05

Friday 10 June 2022

F. Hugo d’Alési - part 1

Romanian-born Frédéric Hugo d'Alési was one of the earliest artists to design posters for the French railway companies. They were printed using a process akin to chromolithography, called simile-aquarelle ("faux watercolour"), that required up to 20 different colours to render the final image, making them much more richly printed, detailed and painterly than the travel posters from subsequent decades. By some accounts, he designed "hundreds for the railway companies." It was such an expensive process that it drove the artist into bankruptcy shortly before his premature death. D'Alési's posters caught the eye of many in France and around the world, including Paul Cézanne, who commented, "I should like to do decorative landscapes like Hugo d'Alési, yes, with my small sensibility."

This is part 1 of 3 on the works of Frédéric Hugo d'Alési:

c1882 Bou Amana et son Coursier Grand Galop by J. Bach
sheet music cover

1889 P.L.M. Aix-les-Bains
(Chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée)

c 1890s Le Dauphiné
Les Gorges de la Bourne
103.5 x 72.5 cm

c 1890s Mer de Glace
(Mont Blanc, Savoie)
103 x 72.5 cm

1892 Tunisie
103.5 x 72.5 cm

1894 Centenaire de la Lithographie

D’Alesi, who was one of the organisers of the exhibition “Centenary of Lithography,” offers an elegant timeline of the medium’s history, from the early black-and-white works of Nicholas-Toussaint Charlet to the contemporary, colourful designs of Jules Chéret. This is the original maquette for the poster, which “represents the ambiguities that were inherent in the evolving status of the contemporary middle-class woman, who may visit galleries and even collect prints yet also knows that she herself is looked at and therefore orchestrates her appearance and gestures.

1894 Centenaire de la Lithographie - Galerie Rapp
A looser version maquette for the finished poster - see below:

1894 Centenaire de la Lithographie - Galerie Rapp
The finished poster as published

1894 Chemin de Fer d'Orléans
Excursions en Auvergne

1894 Chenins de fer P.L.M.
La Turbie

1895 Chemin de Fer de l'Est,
Hte. Engadine (Suisse)

1895 Schweiz, Rhône-Thal (Switzerland)
J.-S. Bahn (Jura - Simplon Railway)

1898 Engrais, Joudrain & Cie.
(Fertiliser)

1898 Vichy - P.L.M.
(A Spa in France)

1900 Exposition Universelle de 1900 (Paris)

c1900 Midland Great Western Railway of Ireland
Tours in Connemara, Galway, Achill and West of Ireland

1901 Port de Guerre, Toulon
(Port of War, Toulon, France)

1903 Automobiles Bayard
A. Clément, Constructeur, Paris

1904 "Griffon" ( motorised bicycle)

c 1980s Le Mont Cervin P.L.M
Paris & Zermatt (Mont-Rose)
63.5 x 45.7 cm

n.d. Aix les Bains
(Spa town on Lake Bourget in the Savoie, France)

n.d. Allevard les Bains (Isère)
(A commune in the Isère department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France)

n.d. Belle-Ile-en-Mer
Côte de la Mer Sauvage, Bretagne
(Brittany)

n.d. Chemin de fer d'Orléans
L'Auvergne, Région du Lioran

n.d. Chemin de Fer d'Orléans
Bordeaux

n.d. Chemin de fer de l'Est
De Paris a Venise

n.d. Chemin de Fer du Nord et de P.L.M.
Côte d'Azur - Cannes, Nice, Monaco

n.d. Chemin de fer J.S
Suisse - A Travers le Jura

n.d. Chemin de Fer P.L.M.
Genève

n.d. Chemin de fer Viège-Zermatt
Mont-Cervin, Mont-Rose

n.d. Chemins de Fer d'Orléans
Gouffre de Padirac
(The Padirac Chasm is a cave located near Gramat, in the Lot department, Occitanie region, France)

n.d. Chemins de Fer d'Orléans. Les Pyrénées

n.d. Chemins de Fer d'Orléans
Touraine et Berry

Chemins de Fer d'Orléans
Vic-sur-Cère, Auvergne

Wednesday 8 June 2022

Edward William Cooke - part 11

Edward William Cooke (1811–1880) was an English landscape and marine painter. He was born in London, the son of well-known line engraver George Cooke; his uncle, William Bernard Cooke (1778–1855), was also a line engraver of note, and Edward was raised in the company of artists. He was a precocious draughtsman and a skilled engraver from an early age, displayed an equal preference for marine subjects and published his "Shipping and Craft" when he was 18, in 1829. Cooke began painting in oils in 1833 and first exhibited at the Royal Academy and British Institution in 1835.

He went on to travel and paint with great industry at home and abroad, indulging his love of the 17th-century Dutch marine artists with a visit to the Netherlands in 1837. He returned regularly over the next 23 years, studying the effects of the coastal landscape and light, as well as the works of the country’s Old Masters, resulting in highly successful paintings. He went on to travel in Scandinavia, Spain, North Africa and, above all, to Venice. In 1858, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician.

He also had serious natural history and geological interests, being a Fellow of the Linnean Society, Fellow of the Geological Society and Fellow of the Zoological Society, and of the Society of Antiquaries. In the 1840s he helped his friend, the horticulturist James Bateman to fit out and design the gardens at Biddulph Grange in Staffordshire, in particular the orchids and rhododendrons. His geological interests in particular led to his election as Fellow of the Royal Society in 1863 and he became a Royal Academician the following year. In 1842 John Edward Gray named a species of boa, Corals cookii, in Cooke's honour.

This is part 11 of 11 on the works of Edward William Cooke.

Note: Details were not found for the remainder of these images: