May 21

Marchesa Luisa Casati with a Greyhound

  1908

  From March 8 to June 3, 2018, The Rijksmuseum presents a magnificent exhibition, High Society, covering four centuries of glamour in portrait art by the great masters of the history of art, including Cranach, Veronese, Velázquez, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Sargent, Munch, and Manet. 

  No other personality epitomizes the scandalous extravagances and eccentric high jinks of the Belle Epoque as well as the flamboyant Marchesa Luisa Casati. Six feet tall and thin as a rake, and with bleached skin, heavily made-up eyes and hair dyed either a fiery red or emerald green, her appearance was unforgettable. She patronized fashion designers such as Mariano Fortuny (1871–1949) and Paul Poiret (1879–1944), and wore the most outlandish concoctions – a dress made of light bulbs with a generator attached, or one made of white peacock feathers plucked from the birds in her private menagerie. She wore live snakes as jewellery and paraded around Venice, where she lived in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni (now home to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection), with a pair of leashed cheetahs. At the many legendary parties she threw in Venice and later on the island of Capri and at her Palais du R.ve just outside Paris (Robert de Montesquiou- Fezensac’s former residence), the champagne flowed freely and there was no shortage of cocaine and opium. The guests were a veritable who’s who of high society and the avant-garde, ranging from Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941) to the founder of the Ballets Russes, Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev (1872–1929), and from the Futurist painter Alberto Martini (1876–1954) to the novelist Michel Georges-Michel (1883–1985), who based some of his characters on her. Not surprisingly, considering her ambition in life to become ‘a living work of art’, she sat for around two hundred portraits, including a bronze bust by Jacob Epstein (1880–1959) and photographs by Man Ray (1890–1976). In 1932, Casati had exhausted her family’s fortune and accumulated a debt that ran into the tens of millions. Her possessions were auctioned off and she spent the rest of her life drinking gin and holding sances in a one-bedroomflat near Harrods in London.

She would rummage bins for scraps of fabric to use as fashion accessories and applied black shoe polish around her eyes instead of kohl. Her life was the subject of a 1965 play, La Contessa , starring Vivien Leigh and a 1976 film, A Matter of Time , starring Ingrid Bergman. In the past couple of decades, the fashion designers John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Karl Lagerfeld, among others, have based collections on her look.

  从2018年3月8日至6月3日，国立博物馆举办了一场宏伟的展览 - 高等社会，包括克拉纳赫，维罗纳斯，委拉斯开兹，雷诺兹，庚斯博罗，萨金特等艺术史大师在肖像艺术中的四个世纪魅力。蒙克和马奈。

  没有其他人格集中体现了美好时代以及华丽的Marchesa Luisa Casati的丑闻奢华和偏心高调。身高6英尺，身材瘦削，漂亮的皮肤，浓密的眼睛和头发染成火红色或翠绿色，她的外表令人难忘。她光顾时尚设计师，如马里亚诺福尔图（Mariana Fortuny，1871-1949）和保罗波烈（Paul Poiret，1879-1944），穿着最古老的混合物 - 一件带有发电机的灯泡制成的衣服，或者一件由白色孔雀羽毛制成的衣服鸟在她的私人动物园里。她将活蛇当作珠宝佩戴，并在威尼斯周围巡游，在那里她住在Veni dei Leoni宫（现在是佩吉古根海姆博物馆的所在地），还有一对带有猎豹的猎豹。在许多传奇派对中，她投掷威尼斯，后来在卡普里岛和她在巴黎郊外的罗马宫（罗伯特·德·孟德斯鸠 - 菲赞萨克的故居），香槟畅饮，不缺可卡因和鸦片。客人们是真正的上流社会和先锋派，从威廉二世（1859-1941）到Ballets Russes，Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev（1872-1929）的创始人，以及未来主义画家阿尔贝托马提尼（1876年至1954年）给小说家米歇尔乔治 - 米歇尔（1883-1985），他的一些角色在她身上。毫不奇怪，考虑到她的人生抱负是“艺术的活生生的艺术”，她坐着约二百张肖像，其中包括雅各布爱泼斯坦（Jacob Epstein，1880-1959）的铜像和曼雷（1890-1976）的照片。 1932年，卡萨蒂耗尽了她的家庭财产，积累了数千万美元的债务。她的财产被拍卖掉了，她一辈子都在喝牛奶，并在伦敦哈罗德百货公司附近的一间卧室的平台上举杯。

  她会在衣柜里搜寻织物碎片作为时尚配饰，并在她眼睛周围涂抹黑色鞋油，而不是科尔。她的生活是1965年的剧本主题，La Contessa由Vivien Leigh主演，1976年由英格丽·褒曼主演的电影“时间问题”。在过去的几十年中，时装设计师John Galliano，Alexander McQueen和Karl Lagerfeld等都以她的外表为基础。

Biography

Giovanni Boldini 

December 31,1842-July 11,1931

  Giovanni Boldini was an Italian genre and portrait painter who lived and worked in Paris for most of his career. According to a 1933 article in "Time" magazine, he was known as the "Master of Swish" because of his flowing style of painting. Boldini was born in Ferrara, the son of a painter of religious subjects, and in 1862 went to Florence for six years to study and pursue painting. He only infrequently attended classes at the Academy of Fine Arts, but in Florence, met other realist painters known as the Macchiaioli, who were Italian precursors to Impressionism. Their influence is seen in Boldini's landscapes which show his spontaneous response to nature, although it is for his portraits that he became best known. Moving to London, Boldini attained success as a portraitist. He completed portraits of premier members of society including Lady Holland and the Duchess of Westminster. From 1872 he lived in Paris, where he became a friend of Edgar Degas. He became the most fashionable portrait painter in Paris in the late 19th century, with a dashing style of painting which shows some Macchiaioli influence and a brio reminiscent of the work of younger artists, such as John Singer Sargent and Paul Helleu. 

  Giovanni Boldini是意大利流派和肖像画家，他的大部分职业生涯都在巴黎生活和工作过。据“时代”杂志1933年的一篇文章称，他因流畅的绘画风格而被称为“嗖嗖大师”。 Boldini出生在费拉拉，一个宗教题材的画家的儿子，并于1862年前往佛罗伦萨六年学习和追求绘画。他只经常在美术学院上课，但在佛罗伦萨，遇见了其他现实主义画家，被称为意大利前印象派的Macchiaioli。他们的影响力见于Boldini的风景中，表现出他对自然的自发反应，尽管他的肖像是他最为人熟知的。搬到伦敦后，Boldini以肖像画家的身份获得了成功。他完成了包括荷兰夫人和威斯敏斯特公爵夫人在内的社会成员的肖像。从1872年他住在巴黎，在那里他成了埃德加德加的朋友。 19世纪后期，他成为巴黎最时尚的肖像画家，绘画风格潇洒，展现出一些马基奥里奥的影响力，以及让人想起年轻艺术家的作品，如约翰辛格萨金特和保罗海勒鲁。

Genre

Macchiaioli

2nd half of 19th century

  The Macchiaioli were a group of Italian painters active in Tuscany in the second half of the nineteenth century, who, breaking with the antiquated conventions taught by the Italian academies of art, did much of their painting outdoors in order to capture natural light, shade, and colour. This practice relates the Macchiaioli to the French Impressionists who came to prominence a few years later, although the Macchiaioli pursued somewhat different purposes. The most notable artists of this movement were Giuseppe Abbati, Cristiano Banti, Odoardo Borrani, Vincenzo Cabianca, Adriano Cecioni, Vito D'Ancona, Serafino De Tivoli, Giovanni Fattori, Raffaello Sernesi, Silvestro Lega and Telemaco Signorini.

  Macchiaioli是十九世纪下半叶在托斯卡纳活跃的一批意大利画家，他们违背了意大利艺术学院教授的陈旧惯例，为了捕捉自然光线，阴影， 和颜色。 这种做法将Macchiaioli与几年后突显出来的法国印象派艺术家联系起来，尽管Macchiaioli追求的目的有所不同。 这次运动最着名的艺术家是Giuseppe Abbati，Cristiano Banti，Odoardo Borrani，Vincenzo Cabianca，Adriano Cecioni，Vito D'Ancona，Serafino De Tivoli，Giovanni Fattori，Raffaello Sernesi，Silvestro Lega和Telemaco Signorini。