Sunday, February 19, 2017

Watercolors and Gouaches - 1606-1909

Roelant Savery
Mountainous Landscape
1606-1607
watercolor
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Pierre Patel
Landscape with Bridge
ca. 1650
watercolor
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

"Pointing to the broad river sparkling in the morning sun, he spoke of a picture painted by Lucas van Valckenborch towards the end of the sixteenth century during what is now called the Little Ice Age, showing the frozen Schelde from the opposite bank, with the city of Antwerp very dark beyond it and a strip of flat countryside stretching towards the sea.  A shower of snow is falling from the lowering sky above the tower of the cathedral of Our Lady, and out on the river now before us some four hundred years later, said Austerlitz, the people of Antwerp are amusing themselves on the ice, the common folk in coats of earthy brown colors, persons of greater distinction in black cloaks with white lace ruffs round their necks.  In the foreground, close to the right-hand edge of the picture, a lady has just fallen.  She wears a canary-yellow dress, and the cavalier bending over her in concern is clad in red breeches, very conspicuous in the pallid light.  Looking at the river now, thinking of that painting and its tiny figures, said Austerlitz, I feel as if the moment depicted by Lucas van Valckenborch had never come to an end, as if the canary-yellow lady had only just fallen over or swooned, as if the black velvet hood had only this moment dropped away from her head, as if the little accident, which no doubt goes unnoticed by most viewers, were always happening over and over again, and nothing and no one could ever remedy it."

 from Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell (Random House, 2001)

Jean-François Thomas de Thomon
The Pantheon, Rome
1790
watercolor
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Jean-François Thomas de Thomon
Architectural Composition, Egyptian Temple
1803
watercolor, gouache
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Jean-François Thomas de Thomon
Architectural Fantasy
1801
watercolor, pastel
Hermitage, Saint Petrsburg

Louis-Jean Desprez
Design for a Monument for the Temple of Immortality
ca. 1790
watercolor
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Louis-Jean Desprez
Scenery for the opera Frigga
1787
watercolor
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Adam Menelaws
Landscape in the Alexander Park at Tsarskoye Selo
after 1828
watercolor
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Ferdinand-Jean Monchablon
Allegory in honor of the Franco-Russian Alliance
ca. 1893
watercolor
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret
Watercolorist in the Louvre
ca. 1889
oil on panel
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

James McNeil Whistler
Silver and Blue, Southampton
1887
watercolor
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Georges Rouault
Spring
1911
watercolor
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Pablo Picasso
Boy with dog
1905
gouache on cardboard
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Édouard Vuillard
Children in a room
ca. 1909
gouache
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

"In the warm season of the year in particular, said Vera, she had always had to move the geraniums on the sill aside as soon as we came back from our daily walk, so that I could take my favorite place on the window seat and look down on the garden with its lilac trees and the low building opposite where the hunchbacked tailor Moravec had his workshop, and while she, so Vera said, cut bread and boiled the kettle, I used to give her a running commentary on whatever Moravec happened to be doing: mending the worn hem of a jacket, rummaging in his button box, or sewing a quilted lining into an overcoat. But I was particularly anxious, Vera told me, said Austerlitz, not to miss the moment when Moravec put down his needle and thread, his big scissors, and the other tools of his trade, cleared the baize-covered table, spread a double sheet of newspaper on it, and laid out on this sheet blackened with print the supper he must have been looking forward to for some time, a supper which varied according to the season and might be curd cheese with chives, a long radish, a few tomatoes with onions, a smoked herring, or boiled potatoes. He's putting the sleeve dummy in the wardrobe, he's going out into the kitchen, now he's bringing in his beer, now he's sharpening his knife, he's cutting a slice of sausage, taking a long drink from his glass, wiping the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand  it was in this or some similar fashion, always the same yet always slightly different, that I used to describe the tailor's supper to her almost every evening, said Vera, and I often had to be reminded not to forget my own bread-and-butter soldiers."  

 from Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell (Random House, 2001)