FREDERICK CAYLEY ROBINSON

 

Post 225 -by Gautam Shah

SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture

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Frederic Cayley Robinson (1862-1927) was one of the most prolific and original British artists, remained an obscure figure. He was a painter, illustrator and decorator. He attended the Royal Academy of Arts in London and Académie Julian in Paris.

Cayley Robinson remained busy traveling abroad. He stayed in Florence and Paris. Here he took up the practice of painting in tempera, plaster, and with charcoal pencils. He experimented with egg tempera to achieve a degree of surface flatness. Robinson worked with oil, pastel and watercolours, which helped him to become, a luxury, stage and fashion designer. In 1915 he executed giant fresco paintings at the Middle-sex hospital.

Cayley Robinson scenes are full of girls and women, silently involved with their own concerns. They are all set against the architectural elements (windows), or surfaces. The people and scenic lines are curvaceously elongated. These combined with flat colours without the shades gradations or shadows, create a simple, yet allusive space. He uses subdued intonation, and the source of illumination remains indistinct. He exploits the form and colours to impress a holistic mood for the scene.

Cecil French recalls: 'The potency of spell, the visionary strangeness, the almost desperate sincerity, of the new, mysterious, isolated artist brought to mind the first strenuous beginnings of the English Pre-Raphaelite group'.

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PIERRE EUGÈNE MONTÉZIN

PIERRE EUGÈNE MONTÉZIN

Post 224 -by Gautam Shah 

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SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture -by Gautam Shah

Pierre Eugène Montézin (1874 - 1946) was a French Painter. He was a son of a Paris-based lace craft’s person. He was apprenticed as a decorator specializing in murals. He had a long and distinguished career as a post-impressionists landscape painter.

Montézin loved the plein-air painting in the country areas of the Ile-de-France. His arts show, the vibrant colours and clear light of the outdoors. These were reinforced with spontaneous brush strokes. He was influenced by Claude Monet. His loved for water of seas, rivers, puddles and streets full of slushy rains or melted snow is clearly visible. He exploits the waters through surface sheen and reflections of skies in ripples.

Montézin spent very little time in his studio. He once said ‘The subjects of the landscape painter are less in front of the artist’s eyes, than in his heart.’

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FYODOR ALEKSEYEV

 

Post 223

SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture -by Gautam Shah

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Fyodor Yakovlevich Alekseyev (1753-1824, Saint Petersburg) was a Russian painter. He received early training at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. He in 1773 went to Venice to study landscape style. Tsar Paul-I assigned him to create vedute of the streets and architecture in Moscow. To paint places visited by Catherine the Great he travelled to Kherson, Mykolaiv, Bakhchysarai, Oryol and other locations in the south.

Along with his pupils, 58 paintings of the architecture of Moscow were produced. The scenes of Moscow reflect a warm, sunny atmosphere full of people. His Landscape paintings mostly relate to architecture as seen from a distance. He once worked in stage craft and was a teacher of perspectives, both of which gets reflected in his in his art. His scapes devote more than 50% space for skies, which he used for experimenting colour effects.

Fyodor Alekseyev was an excellent Russian painter of landscapes. His contemporaries often called him the Russian Canaletto, in recognition of his masterful vedute. 

 

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