Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Move to Paris

"El Dolce Farniente" by Franz Winterhalter

"In August 1834, Franz Xaver Winterhalter was appointed court painter to the Grand Duke, no doubt as a result of his Italian trip. Then suddenly, in December, Winterhalter packed his bags and departed for Paris, settling at no. 17 rue des Petits Augustins, an area in which he would reside for the next thirty-six years. He had made his decisive move, not within Germany, but to the capital of a foreign country. We can only guess at the reasons for this dramatic move. Even with the support of patrons, the chances of success for a foreign painter, in a city not short of native talent, were decidedly risky. 

Instinct must have told Winterhalter that his sympathies lay overwhelmingly with French painting, and that the prospects of patronage for a court painter were much greater in this cosmopolitan centre than in any of the German capitals. Paris would be his testing ground.

Within months of arrival, Winterhalter had sent his first contribution to the Salon, a portrait of an unidentified woman. During 1835, he was devoting his energies to a more substantial contribution. 'Il Dolce Farniente,' a dreamy siesta scene set in Naples and staffed by an unusually large cast of handsome girls and young men, was a full-scale academic composition, dressed up as a genre scene. The harmonious disposition of the figures on two levels, the studied poses, and the mood of dreamy reverie, were inspired by Raphael's 'Parnassus.' Winterhalter was creating a Golden Age in modern dress, with exotic Italian props, and here lay the secret of its success. When the Salon of 1836 opened, 'Il Dolce Farniente' scored an immediate success; it was widely noticed in the press and it established its author as an up-and-coming man.

At the 1837 Salon, he followed up his earlier success with 'The Decameron,' a picture of Boccaccio's circle of storytellers. The recipe was the same as before, a tightly controlled academic composition in the style of Raphael, this time in a picturesque historical setting. Once again he scored a success. It was decorative and colourful, and formed a welcome contrast to the violent productions of the Romantic School. The picture was sold for 10,000 francs to a wealthy wool merchant and philanthropist, the Deputé Paturle, a fact sufficiently well publicized to reach the ears of Baron Eichtal, who relayed it at once to Menzenschwand."

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")

 

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Italy

"Study of Italian Girl"
by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"There is no doubt of the liberating effect which Italy had on Franz Xaver Winterhalter's imagination. In his only surviving letter from Rome, written from the Caffè Greco, on 12 March 1833, he wrote of his delight in the country: 'I will be glad all of my life that I came here.' Free for the first time from the pressures of lithographic work and portrait commissions, he raised his sights to academic composition and embraced new subject matter. His pencil was never still; a surviving sketchbook includes copies from the Old Masters, figure studies, landscapes, and ideas for compositions. Six of his drawings after Michelangelo's figures of prophets and sybils in the Sistine Chapel were later lithographed by Josef Anton Selb and published in a portfolio by Anton Werder in Munich. 

The apparently simple, sensual, uncomplicated lives of the Italian peasants of the south, resplendent in native costume, provided excellent copy for Romantic, Northern painters in love with the Mediterranean. Numbers of German painters, and those of other nationalities, devoted themselves to this popular and profitable genre. Winterhalter threw himself into this enchanted world with enthusiasm, developing a new richness of palette, a new fluency of technique and subtle effects of lighting.

Winterhalter left Rome early in 1834, returning to Karlsruhe not only with saleable pictures but with plans for several large-scale pictures in his mind. Events in his life now moved rapidly." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")  

 

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: To Karlsruhe and Beyond

"Portrait of a Young Architect, 
Probably Karl Josef Berckmüller"
by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"In the summer of 1828, Franz Xaver Winterhalter visited Karlsruhe and began to cement his relations at court. Karlsruhe was a political and cultural backwater, and the Grand Duchess Sophie must have found the presence of a talented young artist a distraction from the stifling provincialism of court life. It was no doubt at her instigation that Winterhalter was employed on Royal commissions, an early instance of his adroitness in cultivating the feminine interest at court.

Many of his commissions also served as the source of prints as Winterhalter capitalized on his skills as a lithographer to earn extra income. Although he came to Karlsruhe each year for a specified period, his base was Munich. He told his parents in a letter of 16 January 1830, 'We both keep painting portraits but otherwise nothing else. . . I expect I shall be coming to Karlsruhe in three months' time, but I am not yet certain. I still have to write and ask if I may come.'

Late in 1832, he set out on a long postponed visit to Italy, in part funded by Grand Duke Leopold, arriving in Rome early in 1833. No serious German artist could consider his education complete without a visit to Rome, the centre of a large, polyglot community of artists. Winterhalter had a number of friends in Rome. A drawing by the architect, H.W. Schüle, dated 4 March 1833, includes the painter among a group of convivial drinking companions. Winterhalter did not, however, share the fervent idealism or nationalism common to so many German artists in Rome. In matters of taste he leaned, by instinct, towards Horace Vernet and the French Academy, earning the nickname of 'der Französische' among his contemporaries. His introduction to Vernet came from the Count Jenison, the Bavarian ambassador in Paris, and the young German assiduously cultivated his friendship."

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")  

 

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Progress

"Sophie, Grand Duchesse of Baden"
by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"Franz Xaver Winterhalter had arrived in Munich for studies at a momentous period of its history. The new King, Ludwig I, was a Maecenas* of the arts, intent on turning his capital into a new Athens. Architects were commissioned to design prestigious public buildings in the Classical style and artists employed to decorate them. Two of the leading luminaries of German art, Peter Cornelius and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld came to Munich in the 1820s to carry out monumental mural schemes and their achievements raised Munich's prestige to unparalleled heights. Cornelius took up the post of Director of the Munich Academy in 1825, soon after Winterhalter had begun to study drawing and painting there.

In July 1825, Winterhalter received a modest and welcome acknowledgement of his progress. He was given a pension of 200 florins** by the Grand Duke of Baden in return for executing an annual drawing. Writing in the same year, he described the work he was doing:

'I have drawn a few other portraits, partly because I have been paid for them, partly because I had to do them out of complaisance and courtesy. But now I am going to work continuously at the portrait for the Grand Duke. By the 8 February he has to have it in the room. When this is finished I must attend the Academy and work diligently under the direction of the new director, Cornelius, if I am in time to have good references, and how necessary these are for Karlsruhe [the capital of the Grand Duchy of Baden]! For academic study is what really matters, and if in time I should wish for favour from the court, or an appointment, they would look for an academic education. So now we have to sit down and work like schoolboys beside a crowd of others. We now have one hour's lecture on anatomy every afternoon from three o'clock till four. We often have to tear ourselves away violently from our lithography, for although we are earning money, the actual learning is not making progress. When my drawing is finished for the Grand Duke, I will quite definitely paint both portraits.'

Winterhalter also traveled in Germany to look at works of art, and wrote sententiously, 'An artist needs to see other men's work if he would himself create.'  He had received patronage from the Grand Duke, Ludwig, but in the near future it would be the his half-brother, Prince Leopold, and his beautiful wife, Sophie, that the artist would owe his advancement." 

* a generous patron

** "In 1825, 30 florins could buy a pair of boots, and 60-70 florins could buy a coat. A salary of 4,000 florins was considered a very high, upper-class income. Therefore, 200 florins represented several months' to a year's wages for a skilled worker." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction, by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")  

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Munich

"Woman Reading a Letter"
by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"The decision that Franz Xaver Winterhalter should train in Munich had been taken on Baron Eichtal's advice and with his support. He finally left the Herder Institute early in 1823. An emotional letter of farewell from a young priest who taught there is dated 23 January 1823. He warned the young artist to be sincere, God-fearing and diligent, to avoid the company of inferiors, and not to raise himself in the world by a liaison with a fashionable woman and to steel himself against desire and lust. Winterhalter was said to have carried the letter with him wherever he went, an indication of his simple and pious outlook on life that changed little with age.

It had been decided that his brother, Hermann, should join him in Munich, after a second fracas with Herder, and the older brother wrote to advise his father as to what things Hermann should bring with him:

'His shirts must be of fine linen. The best you can do and must do is to ask Frank's sisters to cut them out and sew one of them as a pattern. They must have many pleats and very fine collars. For you must not imagine that things are the same here as they are at home or in Freiburg: here one has to be very well dressed simply to be ordinary. But my brother, through us, is going to become acquainted with people of such station. It is happening to us more and more every day, and at the same time our business is very good. It is natural: where the common people give a guilder, the important people give a thaler, and they are no better informed. He will see for himself how good things are. If he has got decent waistcoats at home he should bring them and his coat, too. He might also have some boots made in Freiburg, so that they are not Menzenschwand clodhoppers; they must be elegant boots.'

Winterhalter had gotten work as a lithographer which enabled him to keep himself, as well as earning small sums from portrait commissions. Over twenty lithographs by him from this Munich period are known, mostly after the work of other artists. By 1825, he had joined the Munich Academy where he continued to draw from life. He had also joined the studio of the fashionable portrait painter, Josef Stieler. Winterhalter must have been useful as an assistant, and he is also known to have lithographed several of Stieler's portraits."

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction, by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")  

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Apprenticeship

"Self-Portrait" at 17 years of age
pencil on paper
by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"Within a year of the young Winterhalter's arrival, his teacher, Karl Ludwig Schuler, was appointed as Director of the Institute for the Arts established by the publishing house of Herder. His eight apprentices went with him, and boarded at Herder's, to become part of a team of engravers and lithographers producing the illustrated books for which Herder was famous. 

The young Winterhalter wrote to his parents of the bullying he suffered from the other apprentices, of the bad language they used, of Bartholomaus Herder's rages at their ingratitude and of his own determination to be a religious painter. He worked on copper-plate engravings of peasant scenes, religious subjects for Bible illustrations and on lithographic reproductions of famous works of art. His artistic training was not neglected, and there are several surviving drawings by him from plaster casts of Classical busts, as well as animal studies and sporting scenes. 

In 1819, Winterhalter was joined by his eleven-year-old brother Fidel, or Hermann, as he would become known. Their lives were simple and circumscribed. By 1822, the two brothers were living in lodgings in the town and beginning to draw from life. Winterhalter's surviving life studies show a stronger grasp of form, and a surer technique, than his drawings of busts. His sense of his own achievement and his self-evident talent, coupled with an ambition to get on, soon made his restive at the Herder Institute. He wanted to pursue his career in less restrictive and provincial surroundings, and he was encouraged in his desire to move by Baron Eichtal. 

The irascible Herder, however, was not prepared to release his gifted apprentice without a fight. He complained to Winterhalter's father: 

'For some time now, the disgusting ingratitude of my apprentices has made me positively ill, and it gets worse and worse...the revolutionary conduct in my Institute I will not tolerate. I would sooner dismiss all my ungrateful and unwilling apprentices at once than allow myself to be played with. The parents are very much to blame.' 

But a compromise was worked out. Winterhalter would be allowed to leave the following year to train in Munich, while Hermann remained with Herder at the Institute." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction, by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")  

 

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Beginnings

"Portrait of a Lady with a Fan"
by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"Franz Xaver Winterhalter was born in Menzenschwand, a small village in the upper reaches of the Black Forest in Germany, on April 20, 1805. Though considerably altered, the Winterhalter family house still stands to this day in the village and the painter is commemorated by a public memorial and a room at the local inn named in his honor.

Franz Xaver, known in youth as Xaver, had four brothers and four sisters, of whom only four survived beyond infancy.  The passionate interest shown by Fidel in the careers of his sons, and his anxious solicitude for them long after they had grown up, is evidence of this. So is the reciprocal interest shown by Winterhalter himself in events at home. Year after year he returned to Menzenschwand, followed the fortunes of his sisters and their children, and contributed financial assistance. His character had been formed by the independence, conservative outlook, simple morality and deeply-held Catholic beliefs of the rural community in which he had been raised. These qualities continued to exert a determining influence on him throughout his life.

Franz Xaver and his brother Hermann were both taught at the local Pfarr-schule by the priest, Father Lieber. Lieber was interested in the arts, and had acquired his own modest picture collection. He encouraged the two brothers to draw, nurtured their talent and drew their work to the attention of a local grandee, Daniel Seligmann, Baron Eichtal, who ran a textile factory. He had become one of the leading industrialists in the Grand Duchy of Baden, and a prominent figure at court in Karlsruhe.

Between them, Father Lieber and Eichtal persuaded Winterhalter's father to allow his son to train professionally as an artist. They may well have helped to raise the initial premium necessary to apprentice him for four years, and to pay for his board and instruction. He left Menzenschwand in 1818 at the age of thirteen to study drawing and engraving in the studio of an established Freiburg artist, Karl Ludwig Schuler."

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction, by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")   

Pietro Annigoni: The Last Word

Pietro Annigoni's self-portrait as "Gulliver"

We now leave Pietro Annigoni's autobiography, which was published in 1977, eleven years before his death in Florence on October 28, 1988, of kidney failure. He was a controversial figure - definite in his classical approach, searching for the raison d'etre behind his subject matter, unabashedly expressing his thoughts on art and not caring overmuch what his critics thought.

In "Pietro Annigoni: A Retrospective," a catalogue for a 1969 exhibition, it is observed:

'Annigoni is a 'rara avis' [rare bird] among contemporary artists; a painter who has never abandoned his faith in the importance of humanist traditions, and who derives his strength as an artist directly from the inspiration of the Renaissance. He is an extraordinarily gifted draughtsman, and he has applied his talents during the last twenty years to the business of painting portraits - and so he is known to the world at large. His admirers - those who know the man and his work in depth - and his critics who do not respond to the substance of his art, are both taken by his mastery of drawing. 

The admirers largely fall into the category of votaries - those who seek him out because he can render a portrait or a landscape with all the apparent virtuosity of a living Old Master; those, who, as students, find his re-assurances of the values of realism nourishing to their own ambitions; and those who see him as the exponent of a wished-for artistic 'revanche*' against the tide of modern taste. 

His detractors tend to view him with dismay, seeing his career as the misguided use of a prodigiously talented hand spending itself in the pursuit of discredited ambitions. But Annigoni seems to care very little for all of this. He is content with his friends and he is sufficiently intellectual to deal with the hostile theories that assail his position. He makes but one request of the world: despite differences of opinion, his integrity be not doubted.' 

* revanche: a policy or movement aimed at achieving the return of a nation's lost territory.

(Excerpt from the introduction, by Donelson F. Hoopes, in "Pietro Annigoni: A Retrospective Exhibition," 1969.)

Pietro Annigoni: Man of Convictions

"St. Jerome" by Pietro Annigoni

Pietro Annigoni was a man of strong convictions, and is known as the author of the "Manifesto of Modern Painters of Reality," for his "Essay on Impressionism," and for his public outcry against the destruction that painting conservators were wreaking on historic works through their lack of understanding on the artists' process of painting. Here is his essay on "The Picture Cleaning Controversy."

"A few days ago, at the National Gallery, I noticed once more the ever-increasing number of masterpieces which have been ruined by excessive cleaning. 

This procedure, which, in former times, created at Munich a veritable scandal, and at the same time a reaction as vigorous as it was beneficial, recommenced, at the close of the last war, not only in England, but in Italy, France, Germany - everywhere and was received, alas! with almost total indifference.

The war did not destroy a greater number of works of art. Such is the power of a group of individuals, nowhere numerous, whose proceedings may be compared to the work of germs disseminating a new and terrible disease. 

I do not doubt the meticulous care employed by these renovators, nor their chemical skill, but I am terrified by the contemplation of these qualities in such hands as theirs. The atrocious results reveal an incredible absence of sensibility. We find no trace of the intuition so necessary to the understanding of the technical stages employed by artists in different pictorial creations, and which cannot possibly be restored by chemical means.

The most essential part of the completion of a picture by the Old Master was comprised in light touches, and above all in the use of innumerable glazes, either int he details or in the general effect - glazes often mixed even in the final layers of varnish. Now, I do not say that one should not clean off crusts of dirt, and sometimes even recent coats of varnish, coarsely applied and dangerous, but I maintain that to proceed further than that, and to pretend to remount the past years, separating one layer from another, till one arrives at what is mistakenly supposed to be the original state of the work, is to commit a crime, not of insensibility alone, but of enormous presumption.

What is interesting in these masterpieces, now in mortal danger, is the surface as the master left it - aged, alas! as all things age, but with the magic of the glazes preserved, and with those final accents which confer unity, balance, atmosphere, expression - in fact all the most important and moving qualities in a work of art.

But after these terrible cleanings little of all this remains. No sooner, in fact, is the victim in the hands of these 'infallible' destroyers, than they discover everywhere the alterations due, at different times, to the evil practices of former destructive 'infallibles'. Thus ravage is added to ravage in a vain attempt to restore youth to the painting at any price.

Falling upon their victim, they commence work on one corner, and soon proclaim a 'miracle'; for, behold, brilliant colours begin to appear. Unfortunately what they have found are nothing but the preparative tones, sometimes even of the first sketch, on which the artist has worked carefully, giving the best that is in him, in preparation for the execution of the finished work. But the cleaners know nothing of this, perceive nothing, and continue to clean until the picture appears to them, in ignorance, quite new and shining.

Some parts of the picture painted in thickly applied colour will have held firm; other parts (and these always the most numerous) which depended on the glazes, of infinitesimal fineness, will have disappeared; the work of art will have been mortally wounded.

Is it possible that those responsible for these injuries do not perceive them, do not understand what they have done? Clearly it is possible, for they are proud of their crimes, and often group the paintings they have murdered in special galleries to show their triumphs to the public - a public whose opinion, in any case, they care nothing for. 

For myself, I cannot express all the sorrow and bitterness I feel in the presence of these evidences of a decadence which strives to anticipate the destruction of civilisation itself by the atomic bomb. How long will these ravages in the domain of Art and Culture continue unrestrained and unpunished? The damage they have done is already enormous." ~ Pietro Annigoni 

(From "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.) 

Pietro Annigoni: The Last Supper

"The Last Supper" by Pietro Annigoni

"By 16th November, 1974, I had completed all of the fresco above the level of the table top, which, of course, included the heads and torsos of Christ and all the Disciples. Relief at having brought the work so far in a reasonably short time was overshadowed by some doubts about the quality of the wall. It was a very old wall and I had to hold my breath and wait for several months until the new plaster dried completely before I could be sure that it was entirely sound and free of treacherous saltpetre.

My fears for the wall were unfounded. The drying process went on at the desired snail's pace throughout the winter and when I returned in March to continue the work, all was well. After twenty-five days, on 15th April 1975, the fresco was finished. Elation ought surely to have followed, but my diary tells a different story: 

'I have finished 'The Last Supper'. But if I can say now that this, too, has been done, I say it with melancholy and not without a feeling of frustration. I don't know, in truth, if I had been expecting more approval from others or from myself.' 

In the middle of September it was unveiled and consecrated by the Bishop of Pescia. It was quite an exciting occasion and a big crowd gathered in the square outside the church where the band from a nearby village was playing. Senator Fanfani, who had shown interest in the fresco from the beginning and had spent some time watching me at work, turned up unexpectedly with his wife. The sun shone and a hot wind was blowing. Inside the packed church, where film and television crews were recording the ceremony by the light of their own enormously powerful light, the heat built up to such an intolerable level that I thought I was going to faint.

I have to confess that there were moments during the ceremony and the consecration service when my mind, and sometimes my eyes, wandered up to the dome high overhead, and I experienced a strange feeling of combined thrill and fear at the thought that I had committed myself to paint a fresco up there. It was to be a Pentecost, and at the end of the day, when I was at home again, I made my first sketch for it in my diary."

To be continued 

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.) 

 

Pietro Annigoni: Preparations for "The Last Supper"

Studies for Pietro Annigoni's "Last Supper"

"Now I was going to concentrate on a sacred fresco, a huge "Last Supper" that I was going to paint for love alone in the church of a village called Ponte Buggianese. I resolved that I would devote myself entirely to this work for which I had already been preparing for a year. 

I have been asked if I do not think it was arrogant to attempt a subject for which Leonardo da Vinci is popularly believed to have provided the perfect composition (thereby, it is implied, making any later artists' essays irrelevant) and if I did not find it hard to get away from that 'perfect composition.' Leaving aside the fact that, personally, I prefer Tintoretto's 'Last Supper' in San Rocco, Venice, to Leonardo's, I think it is almost as absurd to suggest that Leonardo had the last word on the Last Supper as it would be to say that in his 'Mona Lisa' he had the last word on the human face, and that therefore no other artist should paint one.

I read and re-read the Gospels, trying to feel in my ordinary human way something of the absolute loneliness that Christ must have felt at that terrible moment. Finally, I had the idea of isolating the Christ figure, and suddenly the whole thing became my own. It symbolized the difficulty even the Church has in getting near to Christ, and the impossibility for human beings to be Christlike, especially in our time. After months of thinking about and concentrating upon that idea, the form taken by my composition followed instinctively.

For every day spent in the actual painting of a fresco, many times as many days have usually been spent in planning and preparation. The nature of fresco makes it absolutely essential that the artist knows in advance exactly what he is going to paint each day, so he will work from full-size, detailed studies that he can follow without faltering. Once the paint is applied no alterations, apart from minimal retouching, can be made. Before he can begin painting, the wall itself has to be prepared by a mason and plasterer. Upon this rough surface the artist then draws a bold outline of the principal masses of his composition.

Next he decides how much of the fresco he will be able to paint each day and marks these areas on his working drawing. And each day, a few hours before he starts painting, his plasterer prepares the appropriate area, covering it with a very smooth-surfaced layer of plaster. At the end of those few hours the plaster will be firm, and, after it has been given a coat of white-wash, the artist or his assistant traces on to it the appropriate part of the design. This is usually done by making perforations all along the main lines of a full-size drawing, fixing the drawing over the newly plastered area and dusting the lines with a loose-woven cotton bag containing charcoal dust or fine chalk power, thus leaving a dotted-line drawing on the plaster."

To be continued 

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.) 

Pietro Annigoni: 1969 Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, Pt. 2

"Queen Elizabeth II" by Pietro Annigoni

"So far I had done little more than prepare the large wooden panel on which I had decided to paint it. Now I drew with a brush the outlines of the composition and painted in the principal masses. Then, using the finished study I had made at Buckingham Palace, I began to work on the head of the Queen and continued until I could take it no further without more sittings. At the beginning of October, I had the panel crated and sent to Buckingham Palace to await my arrival there.

On 19th October I left Florence by train and arrived in London the next day, and the following morning I was at the Palace with Tim Whidborne to help me to unpack the portrait, when Sir Martin Charteris sent for me. Naturally, I assumed he wanted to discuss the schedule for the Queen's sittings but instead he upbraided me about an article in a woman's magazine which reported passages of the Queen's conversations with me. The Queen, said Sir Martin, was annoyed about it. I had to admit to myself that I had succumbed to the temptation of the publicity and the fee that the magazine had offered me, and in my heart I reproached myself for having done it. But I forgave myself, too.

A sitting had been arranged for that afternoon and I prepared to offer my apologies, but the opportunity to do so never arose. From the moment of her arrival her amiability was so evident that it would have been churlish to mar it with an obviously unwanted apology. She greeted me with a friendly handshake and showed much more than polite interest in the large picture that she was seeing for the first time. From then on we talked almost continuously, covering a great variety of subjects, [which was the pattern for the following sittings].

To facilitate my work when the Queen was not with me, I had the British Empire robe draped on a dummy figure that was crowned with a wig belonging to her. Now that I was painting her hair from life, I noticed how closely the wig resembled her own hair in colour and style, and commented upon it. 'Yes,' she said, 'it's an excellent imitation and it also cost a great deal!' According to my schedule the next sitting, the sixteenth, should have been the last and the Queen remembered, but with her usual thoughtfulness she asked if I needed more and acceded to my request for two. 

During the last stages of the painting I worked for at least six hours every day at the Palace. The two extra sittings proved of little value. The portrait was already defined in a way quite different from that I had envisaged. The Queen was restless and nervous and I became exasperated as the truly Royal image that I aimed for eluded me. But before she left for the last time I thanked her for the many sittings and she replied, almost shyly, hoping that they had been enough. Then she left the room to the music of the slow march from the band in the courtyard below. I did not think she was entirely satisfied with the portrait, and I myself felt that yet again I had created a Royal portrait that was going to be liked by some and hated by others - and so it proved."

To be continued 

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.) 

 

Pietro Annigoni: Portrait of Queen Elizabeth, 1969, Pt. 1

"Self-Portrait, 1971" by Pietro Annigoni

"I had been surprised to get a letter from Dr. Roy Strong asking me if I would accept a commission to paint a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II for the National Portrait Gallery, of which he was then the Director. Work on the portrait did not begin until two years afterwards. I arrived in London on 19th February 1969, having travelled by train across by train across a snowbound Europe. I had to be in the Yellow Drawing-room at Buckingham Palace, with a clear head, at eleven-thirty in the morning for the Queen's first sitting. I arrived early and arranged my things, feeling completely calm and at home in the familiar surroundings. 

It had been arranged that my portrait would show the Queen wearing the mantle of the Order of the British Empire, but it was not until the seventh and eighth sittings that she made her appearance in it for me. Each time she had come straight from another sitting which was for a sculptor who was making a bust for the new 'Queen Elizabeth' liner. 'The poor man is rather desperate,' she said. 'He says that my face is extremely changeable.' I told her that he had my sympathy and I could understand his difficulty, and she smiled, amused, and went on: 'This morning's sitting was an extra to the six agreed upon but he has destroyed the clay head again. He does it every time; takes it up in his hands and' - she imitated his action vigorously with her own hands - 'reforms it.'

At the end of the eighth sitting, the Queen reminded me that it was the last she was able to give me until the following October. I explained that during that period I would be working in Florence on the final painting, and I tried to convey to her how I visualised the finished portrait. 'I see Your Majesty as being condemned to solitude because of your position,' I said, 'and I intend to let that be my inspiration. It goes without saying that, as a wife and mother you are entirely different, but I see you really alone as a Monarch and I want to represent you that way. If I succeed, the woman, the Queen and, for that matter, the solitude will emerge.'

She nodded earnestly in agreement and then came to look at the study I had made during the eight sittings. Although I watched her closely, she gave me no idea of her reaction to it until she spoke. 'One doesn't know one's self,' she said. 'After all, we have a biased view when we see ourselves in a mirror and, what's more, the image is always in reverse.'

'I hope Your Majesty has nothing against being depicted without jewellery, including earrings?' I said. She listened and nodded in agreement and before she left she held out her hand to me and said: 'I feel that the inspiration is there. Go ahead. I look forward to seeing you and the picture in October.'"

To be continued 

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.) 

 

Pietro Annigoni: Florence Flooded

"Drawing of a Man"
by Pietro Annigoni 

"On 5th November, 1966, just after I had begun a portrait, I learned from the New York papers that Florence was flooded. A photograph in the 'New York Times' showed the Piazza San Marco three feet under water, but down in the Santa Croce area, where I had my studio until 1953, the water was five times as deep and still rising. The following day I had a telegram assuring me that my family and friends were safe, and only as the days passed and more and more news came through did I realise the true extent of the calamity. I noted in my diary: 'The disaster is really of gigantic proportions. Poor people and poor Florence. In the last twenty-five years it has endured the war, with the bombing, shelling and mines; then the rebuilding and expansion, with the hideous impositions of of a vulgar, anti-Florentine building industry; and now - a flood which must be the most disastrous in its long history. The toll of the death bell?'

I accepted the face that a great many of my own works must have been destroyed, but I had reckoned without the foresight of a stalwart friend, Palmiro Meacci, who is now my indispensable secretary and manager of my business affairs. For many years before the flood, he, together with Riccardo Noferi, used to do a little art dealing and he kept a small stock of my drawings and paintings in the backroom of a bar, of which he is part-owner, near my studio. The floodwater reached the ceiling of the bar but not before Palmiro had saved the paintings in the back room. 

He also remembered, before it was quite too late to save one of my biggest works from a warehouse where it was stored. This work, called 'Life, measures 3.5 by 5.5 metres and is painted in oil tempera on Japanese paper laid down on canvas, but although it was submerged in the water the paint remained fast, and it was possible to lift the paper and re-lay it on a new background canvas. The restored picture is now in the Pinacoteca Accademia d'Arte at Montecatini, Pistoia.

To be continued 

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.) 

Pietro Annigoni: Margot Fonteyn

Drawing of Margot Fonteyn
by Pietro Annigoni

Painting of Margot Fonteyn
by Pietro Annigoni

"A few months after my work at Buckingham Palace ended I began the portrait of the ballerina Margot Fonteyn, which was commissioned by her husband and shown at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition the following year, 1956. She gave me sixteen sittings and, as was to be expected, she held the pose extremely well, but I often wished she would relax a little from her role of prima ballerina. After all, I was not painting her as a prima ballerina, but as the Señora Doña de Arias, wife of the Panamanian ambassador in London, and she wore, not a tutu, but a tight-waited, wide-skirted, white dress embroidered with scarlet flowers, that was said to be the national costume of Panama. She snowed no interest in the progress of the portrait and conversation between us was such hard going that, until 1969, when I saw her dance for the first time - with Nureyev in 'Swan Lake' at Covent Garden - I had only rather unpleasant memories of the whole episode.

That experience of her art changed, magically, all my earlier feelings about her, and I went home and wrote a 'rave notice' in my diary.

 'Margot Fonteyn is great. They say she is in her fifties. If it's true she is an amazing phenomenon; not only because of the virtuosity of a perfect ballerina but, above all, her mime, mime that is a language impossible to misunderstand, an explosion of love, an outburst of overwhelming, young, virginal love - wasted, however, on that dolt of a Siegfried. After the performance I saw her in her dressing-room. Banal cordiality on both sides. She told me that the portrait I painted of her thirteen years ago, had returned to London, having been for some time in Panama and then in New York. I had never seen her on the stage until this evening, and I didn't really like her because of her prima ballerina manner offstage. Now I've changed my mind. She is entitled to give herself all the airs she likes, she is a great artist.'"

To be continued 

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.) 

 

Pietro Annigoni: The Witch

"La Strega (The Witch)
by Pietro Annigoni

"In 1959 I painted the portrait that came to be known as 'La Strega (The Witch)'. The model was an English girl, Patricia Rowlings, and was painted in Florence. She came to me first of all to sit for a pen-and-ink portrait commissioned by her father, a wealthy textile manufacturer. When that was done I asked her to sit again so that I could paint her for myself. She came to Florence twice, for two or three weeks each time, and sat for me every day at the same hour.

One day, when she was combing her hair during a break from posing, I told her that she looked like a witch, and I painted a little witch in the background of the portrait. So the picture got its title, the title under which it was exhibited the following year at the Royal Academy. 

What happened to it then was reported by William Hickey in the 'Daily Express':

'Textile magnate Mr. Louis Rawlings and his wife were hoping to buy the Annigoni portrait of their beautiful daughter, Patricia, which has been creating such a stir at the Royal Academy. Now they find that the picture has been sold for 5,000 pounds right from under their noses. The buyer? Thirty-year-old Mayfair company director, Mr. Adrian Jacobs, who lives a few doors from the Rawlings' town house in Grosvenor Street.

The picture is called 'La Strega - The Witch.' Mr. Jacobs told me last night: 'I sort of fell in love with the painting at the Royal Academy and thought it very good. Patricia Rawlings rang me as soon as she heard. I told her she had had the first opportunity of buying it, but that now I had bought it. I don't know why the family should be so upset about this because I know Mrs. Rawlings extremely well and she is not very concerned about it.'

At her home Mrs. Rawlings told me: 'We all feel very sore about this. We realise that it was Mr. Annigoni's property to do what he liked with, but we understood that we might have had an opportunity of acquiring it. Neither my daughter nor myself has ever heard of Mr. Jacobs. We just don't know him.'

Complicated. But there were more complications to follow. The sale at the Academy fell through when the money was not forthcoming, and the picture came back to me. Then I agreed to sell it to Patricia's parents for three thousand five hundred pounds, but once again it was returned to m when they decided they would prefer a smaller painting. When I made it clear that I was not going to paint a smaller picture, the Rawlings wanted the big picture again but quibbled about the price. Exasperated, I sold it to a doctor in Vicenza for two thousand pounds...and the picture remains in his beautiful, early Palladian Villa Godi-Malinverni near Vicenza where it is on show to the public with the rest of the doctor's art collection and where Patricia usually goes to see it when she is in Italy."

To be continued 

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.) 

 

Pietro Annigoni: Julie Andrews

"Portrait of Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle"
by Pietro Annigoni

"Not long after the musical 'My Fair Lady' opened at Drury Lane in May 1958, an American visiting Florence told me that the actress' manager wanted me to paint her for him. Although I hardly knew who Julie Andrews was then, I agreed, but nearly a year went by before I was able to start the portrait. On the day I arrived in London, the manager, Charles Tucker, took me to see the show and to meet the young actress. I was pleasurably surprised by both and decided there and then to paint her in the costume and character of Eliza Doolittle, the show's Cockney flowergirl.

When she sat for me I found her to be a very sweet girl. But, oh, she was so unpunctual! She came to me every weekday afternoon, except on matinée days, for about six weeks. There were more than twenty sittings altogether and for the first half-dozen of them she came more than twenty minutes late. It made me so angry that when she came - late again - for the seventh sitting, I did not open the door to her. She knocked and knocked and then went away. Half an hour passed; then she telephoned full of apologies and promised to keep better time in future. At her next sitting she explained that she was soon to be married and was very busy with wedding preparations. That news was ultimately of advantage to me because her husband-to-be, stage designer Tony Walton, was the son of a doctor, and Dr. Walton discovered that a pain in the upper part of my right arm, which had long been troubling me, was due to a cracked humerus. And he treated it successfully.

I worked a great deal on the portrait between sittings, often late at night, and finished it in two months. Julie liked it and, I believe, would have liked to buy it from her manager, but he would not sell Instead, I was told, he promised to leave it to her in his will. But he must have been joking, for on 5th November 1975, it was put up for auction at Sotheby's by his widow and was sold for seven thousand pounds. My fee for it was two thousand, of which the astute Mr. Tucker quickly recouped a large part by selling exclusive newspaper reproduction rights." 

To be continued 

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.) 

 

Pietro Annigoni: Pope John XXIII

Pietro Annigoni's drawing of Pope John XXIII
for Time magazine 

"The Pope seemed even more weary than usual the morning of his third - and last - sitting and spoke again of his terrible insomnia. He was clearly in no mood for conversation and I expected him to keep dozing off. I had begun to despair of getting anything done, when Monsignor Capovilla adroitly rescued me. During his sleepless night the Holy Father had written a speech which he was to deliver shortly after the sitting ended. Monsignor now offered to read the speech aloud so that he and the Pope could check it together. The offer was welcomed and had the effect of reviving the Pope, who settled down, chin in hands, to listen intently. It was my salvation for, apart from occasional interruptions when he suggested a correction, he kept the pose so well that, at last, I had a passably complete drawing. 

During a brief break, when Monsignor had left us alone, the Holy Father looked at me thoughtfully and said: 'I wrote all that last night and now, re-reading it, I realize that when we ponder over what we are writing we often have the illusion that we are saying a great deal, that we are saying important things. Instead, we miss the essential point. The people who are out there waiting for my speech would be happier if I improvised instead of reading it. Human beings prefer to be looked in the eye when they are spoken to, and I would like to look them in the eye and tell them what comes from the heart. Yes, with simplicity, what really comes from the heart and only from the heart. In their eyes I would see their hearts, and that would help me to discover more profoundly what is in my own. But it is not always possible. Speeches must be written, printed, and preserved.' It seemed to me that as he said this he was suddenly isolated in a remote solitude, utterly alone.

Before leaving he came to look at the drawing and said to Monsignor Capovilla, 'This is someone who knows his business.' Then he pointed to the voluminous ear and commented, 'Even that is really lifelike. When I was in the seminary and was rather thin, my ears seemed even bigger than usual. So much so that my classmates, who saw in them a certain resemblance to the ears of pachyderms, used to call me 'The Elephant.'

As he left, I genuflected properly - no mean feat for a man of my size - and even succeeded in snatching his hand on the wing, that hand which he afterwards laid on my shoulder, saying for his only farewell: 'Courage!' A bad model, but a truly holy man. A sweet serenity emanated from him in spite of his evident suffering. With a few words he could bring a man back to the Eternal and remind him, like no one else I have ever known, of the 'vanitas vanitatum [vanity of vanities].'"

To be continued 

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.) 

 

Pietro Annigoni: Pope John XXIII and the Pietà

Michelangelo's "Pieta"

"'Time' magazine came to me with a request for a portrait of Pope John, upon which I started work in the Vatican on 5th June. A man from 'Time' took me there and presented me to Monsignor Cardinale, who in turn passed me on to the Pope's secretary, who in his turn, led me into the study of John XXIII. There, bending on one knee as I had been instructed, I kissed, and did not kiss, the hand that was extended to me and withdrawn from me at the same time. The Monsignor introduced me: 'Maestro Annigoni, who is here for the portrait.' 'Young for a maestro,' remarked the Pope with a little smile. 

During one of our conversations as I worked, our principle subject was the proposed shipment of Michelangelo's 'Pietà' to the New York World's Fair in 1964. I had been told that the Pope had promised Cardinal Spellman that the sublime sculpture would go and that there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. All the same, I felt very strongly that it should not and I said so.

He could scarcely wait for me to finish speaking and answered impatiently: 'I don't understand why this project should be so discussed and opposed in so many quarters. If it is sent to the New York World's Fair, this 'Pietà' will give satisfaction and joy to millions of people who would never have a chance to admire it, won't it? So why shouldn't it be sent? Even works of art - even the greatest of them - are things of this world, and we should not become fanatically attached to them.'

Although disheartened, I insisted on telling him that we had the duty of protecting works of art, of not exposing them voluntarily to the risk of being damaged or absolutely destroyed, if we wished to hand them down unharmed to those who come after us, whose number will be vastly greater than that of the beneficiaries of the Fair.

'That's true,' he replied. 'Even so, I was in Paris when Leonardo's 'La Gioconda [Mona Lisa]' was stolen from the Louvre, and what a rumpus there was about it. What a rumpus - for such a little thing.' With his fingers he indicated just how 'little', and continued: 'Of course the thief deserved to be punished, - he mimed the spanking of a child - but, all in all, what exaggeration!'

At that moment I remembered involuntarily how, a few days before I met him, he had been described to me as 'a good parish priest.' It was so true that I had to be careful not to address him by name or give him a comradely slap on the back."

To be continued 

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)