Reading about Chaim Soutine going to a slaughterhouse and dragging a side of beef back to his studio at La Ruche in Paris so he could spent several odorific days painting its pageant of festering colours made me hungry for more, so I called up Rembrandt to order a whole “Slaughtered Ox” and he recommended a few other butchers with brushes.
If you missed the reasoning behind Russian expressionist Soutine’s blood-soaked creativity, so did I. Pictured is the result, “Carcass of Beef”, which fetched a fatty £7.8 million at auction earlier this year.
Well, just have yourselves a good look at this very large original oil painting and a print of a Soutine I had found at an estate sale. It happened on the last day and only a couple of hours to go before the sale was to end. I could not believe my eyes when I seen these works of art still leaning up against the walls of the three car garage of the house where most the items were that were still for sale. Most all the house hold furniture and more expensive items had already sold of course, but a lot of items still remained for sale in the garage and back rooms off the garage.
If you look really close on the left about half way up you might picture in your mind the few trees that were around that French settlement, you might even see that pathway coming between them swinging to the right heading into the settlement. In looking up above the trees you can see how my camera in taking this picture somehow managed to get a little different color to the hills resembling his colors and background to his painting of Rembrandt's “Slaughtered Ox”.
Titled "The Big Tree" Soutine on a sticker on the back.
I read where Soutine would attempt to destroy and mutilate what ever he could find of the Ceret landscapes from the body of his work later in his life. He encouraged his friends and art collectors to help him locate these previous canvases so he could destroy them. Although he was always obsessive about editing and reworking canvases, he was particularly ruthless with works completed prior to 1923. Since he left no journals and wrote few letters, it is not clear why he wanted to expunge his remarkable landscapes but stories abound of Soutine attacking these paintings with scissors, knife or razor blade, ripping out sections, dissecting and transplanting, even shredding the canvas on the frame in a paroxysm of rage.
As one might be able to tell, these trees are the same trees as in this oil painting.
Shows you how the road and path for travelers enters this little French settlement
It doesn't take a magical eye to tell that these two works of art were done by the same hand and creating the same hidden images in these works of art by the means of the artist's own idiosyncrasies.
This estate sale on Highland View Dr. overlooking the greater Boise valley pretty close to the top of the drive had one marvelous view of the city. The estate sale of married couple who both were deceased. I also bought a van gogh print of his Irises. It was called "A Day in the Country" Impressionism and the French Landscape from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, dated June 28 - September 16, 1984. The house of the estate was on the market and they were asking 747,000 at a reduced price from the original asking price. I cannot believe I walked away with their best price item of their sale, half price of the twenty dollars price tags that were on all three of them.
These narcissists-at-arms wanted the paintings for the banquet hall of their new Musketeers’ clubhaus in Amsterdam, possibly because France’s Queen Marie de’Medici was due for a “visit” in 1638 (she was actually on the lam from her own son, Louis XIII).
This is Captain Frans Banning Cocq and his No 2, Willem “Spock” van Ruytenburch. Both are depicted very expressively, but if I were to speculate on what exactly was passing between them, I could think of nothing other than, “You see, Spock? How am I supposed to keep order in the city with this lot?”
This is the company’s ensign, Jan Visscher Cornelisen. You can tell because he’s carrying the company’s ensign. Hey wait a second! Isn’t that … ? Nah, couldn’t be.
And this is Captain Van Purmerland giving orders to Van Vlaerdingen to find them a more central location somewhere in the picture. The former is toting one of the long-barrelled rifles from which this militia derived its emergency backup name, the Arquebusiers. They were mainly known as Kloveniers, but only gun nuts care about this stuff.
You have to love the extras in the picture, like these two clowns ignoring the director’s command to never look at the camera.
The little girl hogging the spotlight (and lending ample testimony to charges that Rembrandt could not paint a good-looking female) is some sort of mascot. That chicken she’s got harnessed to her waist symbolises both the Arquebusiers, who sometimes also called themselves Clauweniers, and a defeated enemy, fittingly enough.
Then there’s the dog, either barking at or barking with the troops. He was almost lost in the smog until they cleaned the painting up, but it looks like Rembrandt pretty much painted him as a ghost dog anyway.
Fabulous description, as usual. I didn’t know that Marie de’Medici visited Amsterdam. I do think the story behind why she was not getting along well with her son is interesting though. Especially in context of the Rubens paintings of her (here’s a website that sums it up well: http://www.students.sbc.edu/
vandergriff04/mariedemedici.html)
This is a wonderful website and I can see from your map that you have visitors from all over the place. Why am I the only soul leaving comments? Would you prefer I lurk?
To be absolutely honest, Julie, I didn’t even know who Marie d’Medici was (I just figured, oh THOSE Medicis), but your great Rubens link looks like it can fuel another post at Dali House, thankyou very much! As to site visitors, I have no idea why there are so many silent ones, sometimes 150-200 a day. Perhaps they’re dumbfounded, as in aghast. I’m not perturbed by it, but I can tell you it’s always a delight to get a comment, even a negative one. Thank you for being an appreciative guest. If you ever feel like contributing a post, just let me know.
I want everyone of you to know right up front before any of you read my writings on this particular painting,… If these MFA experts succeed in getting everyone to believe them that this painting shown here above should be called the “Day Watch” instead of the “Night Watch”, they would know themselves that this feat of theirs would enable them to say about any o’l thing that they want or care to, and the masses would believe them.
Can we compromise on “Dusk Watch”?
Love your blog. About the “Night Watch”, though it may have been painted in the day, I don’t think the other photo is a good representation of the way it originally looked. Being a classical painter myself and having studied Rembrandt extensively, it appears to me that the day time image is the underpainting. It is very brown and not at all what his finished piece would have looked like. Conservationists are infamous for removing really important elements such as fragile glazes and velaturas which lie just underneath the varnish and make a great deal of difference. Just look at the Caravaggios in the Met in NY. They look like flat stickers pasted onto the painting, because they were over cleaned and lost their volume, color, and atmosphere. Just thought you might find it interesting.
Thank you for the compliment, Richard, and for the interesting insight. I truly appreciate hearing the background from the people who know best about these things.