The Philosophy House

Sharing the messiest room in the house as Dorian color corrects his prints for processing. We will be at the PA Renn Faire in Manheim again for Vikings Sep 7-8. Dorian is pencil sketching portraits there at a steal!!! (The things we do for love!)

Hello Everyone who follows The Philosophy House and any new followers! It's been awhile since we have shared any updates (or updated the FB PAGE!: still no get-together drawing sessions since the Howell School in P'Burg: We have been too busy with work (a good thing!) Dorian and Kelly have been doing live portrait events, so we will share past photos and revive the page: Hope all artists are doing well and staying fit with pencils in hand!

Anna Ancher (Danish artist) 1859 - 1935
Høstarbejdere (Harvesters), 1905
oil on canvas
56.2 x 43.4 cm. (22.13 x 17.09 in.)
signed and dated low right
Skagens Museum, Denmark

When we see Anna Ancher’s luxuriant cornfields, our first reaction is to doubt whether the pictures were painted in Skagen, for this is not the desolate, harsh, sandy landscape we are accustomed to seeing in the other Skagen painters.
Anna Ancher is one of the few artists from Skagen who in fact painted the cultivated landscape in and around the town, though Michael Ancher followed her example in one of his best known portraits of his wife, Anna Ancher returning from the field from 1902 , where she herself is shown walking in a luxuriant cornfield close to the sand-covered church. At the end of the 1890s and the beginning of the 20th century, there were several cornfields close to Michael and Anna Ancher’s House. There were several farms with adjoining fields close to their home in Markvej, so Anna Ancher had the harvest motif right on the doorstep. The choice of just this motif can also be due to her being inspired by other artists.

The actual harvest motif is an old one, which artists as far back as the 15th century depicted in various works, and the motif was given a boost around 1900, perhaps inspired by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, who in the 1880s painted a whole series of pictures with the cornfield as their principle motif. There was a major exhibition of French art in 1893 in the Free Exhibition in Copenhagen, in which one of Vincent van Gogh’s pictures was exhibited. It is not known whether Anna Ancher saw the exhibition, but in a letter to Martha Johansen she refers to an article in the newspaper Politiken written by the author Johannes Jørgensen, in which he writes on Symbolism on the occasion of the exhibition in the Free Exhibition, where works by Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh were shown. Several Danish artists painted cornfields, often as allegories for fertility, but there is also a duality about several of the paintings, as the man with the scythe, as a symbol of death, is indirectly also present even if he is not actually portrayed.

In Anna Ancher’s harvest pictures, the harvesters are present in a very concrete sense, and it is always the man who carries the scythe, which is not only to be seen as symbolising the Grim Reaper, but also as a quite traditional division of the harvest work. The women’s work was usually linked to specific tools, and thus also distributed in the same way. In several of her oil sketches and finished paintings, Anna Ancher has worked with the composition, which is stringently built up around a perspective following the surface of the painting. The paintings are divided into two almost equal halves, which are only interrupted by the movement of the harvesters either in or counter to the reading direction from left to right. The composition in the harvest pictures acquires an almost frieze-like quality, and the division into two almost equally large areas of corn and sky respectively is a special quality in Anna Ancher’s harvest pictures, while she has also worked intensely with the light and shade effects and the blue and yellow complementary contrasts.

In one harvest painting she has portrayed harvesters seen with the light behind them, while the sun in the other falls in from the left foreground and thus strikes the cornfield and the figures.
This division of the picture surface into two halves is very reminiscent of the work of other artists of the time, including the painter Ejnar Nielsen (1872-1956), who lived in the small Jutland town of Gjern from 1894 to 1900. There he painted some very striking landscapes, among which particularly the composition in the picture Landscape with field of rye from Gjern from 1894 is reminiscent of the composition in Anna Ancher’s harvest pictures. Anna Ancher also painted a field of rye, and although there are no harvesters in Ejnar Nielsens painting, his simplification of lines and colours and his focus on surface show great similarities with Anna Ancher’s harvest paintings. The duality in the harvest pictures (the fertile versus the death symbolism) is particularly expressed in Ejnar Nielsen’s field of rye and his fascination with the landscape in Gjern, which he described as mighty, eerie and threatening all at once. In Ejnar Nielsen’s painting the cycle of the seasons, and thus in a figurative sense of life, is embedded in the very composition, as the luxuriant cornfield in the foreground is succeeded by a less fertile green field and in the background of the painting by a brown and thus barren field. Far away on the horizon, however, there is a glimpse of a golden cornfield, which concludes the cycle of life.

Although Anna Ancher cannot be characterised as a Symbolist painter, she was nevertheless fascinated by Symbolist art. For instance, she wrote to Martha Johansen in 1893: “[…] I am nevertheless for nature, you know, Martha. It is so lovely. Then a little symbolism here and there does not harm.” The dialogue between Anna Ancher’s and Ejnar Nielsen’s harvest paintings is a dialogue between two artists, both of whom relate to Symbolism and have composed their paintings in almost the same way.

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Anna Kirstine Brøndum was born in Skagen, Denmark the daughter of Erik Andersen Brøndum (1820–1890) and Ane Hedvig Møller (1826-1916). She was the only one of the Skagen Painters who was actually born and grew up in Skagen where her father owned the Brøndums Hotel. The artistic talent of Anna Ancher became obvious at an early age and she grew acquainted with pictorial art via the many artists who settled to paint in Skagen, in north of Jutland.
While she studied drawing for three years at the Vilhelm Kyhn College of Painting in Copenhagen, she developed her own style and was a pioneer in observing the interplay of different colours in natural light. She also studied drawing in Paris at the atelier of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes along with Marie Triepcke, who would marry Peder Severin Krøyer, another Skagen painter. In 1880 she married fellow painter Michael Ancher, whom she met in Skagen. They had one daughter, Helga Ancher. Despite pressure from society that married women should devote themselves to household duties, she continued painting after marriage.

Anna Ancher is considered to be one of the great Danish pictorial artists by virtue of her abilities as a character painter and colourist.Her art found its expression in Nordic art's modern breakthrough towards a more truthful depiction of reality, e.g. in Blue Ane (1882) and The Girl in the Kitchen (1883–1886).
Ancher preferred to paint interiors and simple themes from the everyday lives of the Skagen people, especially fishermen, women and children. She was intensely preoccupied with exploring light and colour, as in Interior with Clematis (1913). She also created more complex compositions such as A Funeral (1891). Anna Ancher's works have often represented Danish art abroad. She was awarded the Ingenio et Arti medal in 1913 and the Tagea Brandt Rejselegat in 1924.

Impressionism Highlights from the Art Institute of Chicago.
Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848-1894): Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877.

Oil on canvas, 212.2 × 276.2 cm l 83 1/2 × 108 3/4 in. Art Institute of Chicago. IRequireArt.com

Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975): Texas Panhandle Route #66, 1953.

Oil on board, 7 x 10 in. l 17.8 x 25.4 cm. © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton. IRequireArt.com

Don’t want to spoil your new shoes? Well, how’s this for a historic life-hack… 👠

This ladies’ shoe is over 400 years old, and is an incredibly rare survival from Jacobean England.

Made around 1610, the square-toed high-heel shoe is crafted from kid leather. Entirely hand-sewn, the perforations on the top of the shoe suggest a large bow or rose was once attached. The shoe itself was likely white in colour originally – a fashionable choice for women in high society at the time.

To protect these expensive shoes from damage, a galosh or overshoe would be worn.

The toe of the shoe would slip into the galosh (made here of wood, leather and silk), and the extended sole would slap against the heel of the inserted shoe as the wearer walked. This stopped ladies’ heels sinking into the mud while out-and-about.

🔎 Leather shoe with clog-soled overshoe or galosh. England, about 1610. Read more: http://ow.ly/kgxx50LqLm5

Our last Sunday painting! Drawing Workshop next weekend! There's still room to sign up. We have a potluck and group photo from 6:30-8:00pm. The P'Burg venue will close after that, but we will re-incarnate eventually, as we always do! Perhaps summers on the front porch? Will keep you posted.