Portraits of the Cardinal in London

The National Gallery, London

***

the 2016 Greetings Card

Following the huge success of last year's greetings card, which saw €2000 being donated to the restoration of Tour St Anne, Alan Halliday has very kindly donated another image for this year's card.

The cards will be available from the end of October, priced €30 for 20 cards. 

Please email alikimberbates@icloud.com to place an order.

the 2016 greeting card

***

Villa Medici - The French School in Rome in a fantasy by Claude Gellée called 'Lorrain'

Seventeenth century taste exemplified by Claude Lorrain's fantasy picture that sets the Villa Medici (the current location of the French School in Rome) on some distant classical shore.

At sunset.

JMW Turner - where are you?

 now in the Uffizi Gallery Florence

Painted by Claude in 1637 while the château and town of Richelieu were actually being constructed...

hommage à

Annick L

créature du cardinal duc!

villa medici today

One of JMW's many ripostes to Claud

***

Atelier Maison opens...

 Park Ki Ho

Ce qu’on laisse

après nous…

*

What we leave behind us...
(or 'That which one leaves after us')

 Vernissage - samedi 9 juillet 2016 de 18h à 20h
 Exposition overt du mardi au dimanche de14h-18h - 9 juillet au 23 juillet 2016

*

 Opening reception - Saturday 9th July 2016, from 6pm-8pm

 Open hours 2pm-6pm - Tuesday to Sunday - 9th July till 23rd July 2016

***

Atelier Maison

24 place Louis XIII   37120 Richelieu
02 47 97 33 63

***

Villandry and Alan Halliday -

A reception was held yesterday at the Château de Villandry where the paintings of Alan Halliday we exhibited. The subjects were mainly inspired by the people, gardens and architecture of Touraine. Villandry lies about 15 miles from the cité idéale of Richelieu. 

Asserted by some as 'the most beautiful garden in the world'!

CLICK HERE

for more on Alan Halliday and Camburn Fine Art

The Abbé Henri took a stroll afterwards in the famous garden and took these snaps from the gravel terrace walk.

He was struck by the distant garden pavilion

but in some ways his favourite part was the empty 'minerale' parterre below...

***

Alan Halliday's exhibition at Villandry

CLICK BELOW

http://www.camburnfineart.com/index.cfm?page=Collection&cat=7628

CLICK BELOW FOR INFORMATION ABOUT ALAN HALLIDAY

http://www.camburnfineart.com/index.cfm?page=Biography&cat=6197&artist=Alan%20Halliday

***

Henri P's new friend in Madrid - Chantal

http://cielbleudecastille.blogspot.co.uk

Inspired by this blog above, the old Abbé Henri Proust has made a short trip to the National Gallery in London to post about all those lovely canvases on subjects close to the passions of his new friend Chantal.

Chantal herself  is actually a daughter of the Cité Ideale and has taken her native affection for the seventeenth century to the city that was never far from the political concerns of Armand-Jean himself,
MADRID.

the Hapsburg coat-of-arms

Maybe she can find some imagery of cardinal duc's opposite number in Madrid
 in the court of Phillip IV, The Count of Olivares…..'el conde-duque'

Olivares by Velázquez

***

Meanwhile three royal courts; three court painters

• Philippe de Champaigne - for Louis XIII of France and Navarre

Triple portrait produced for the Roman sculptor Bernini to inform the making of his marble bust of Armand Jean

• Diego Velázquez - for Phillip IV of Spain

by son-in-law Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo

• Anthony Van Dyke - for Charles 1st of England

"…..his eyes follow you round the room."

(Both boys were later killed in the English civil war, on the Royalist side)

• And finally, the good Abbé's favourite son of France, Nicholas Poussin

An unusual un-faded canvas by Poussin showing his original coloration

Eden - just before that munch!

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden by Wenzel Peter - The Vatican Museum

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden

Wenzel Peter

(Karlsbad 1745 - Rome 1829)

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden

oil on canvas - cm. 336 x 247 - cat. 41266

The large canvas represents the climax of Wenzel Peter's career. He was an animalist painter, that is to say specialized in a very unique type of painting, and this led him to reproducing with extraordinary naturalism animals of the most varied species, as it were "photographed" in both standing and fighting positions. The Garden of Eden is the proof of the highest virtuosity, since the artist gathers around the figures of Adam and Eve those of over two hundred animals from all over the world, reproduced not only with pictorial ability, but also with a detailed knowledge and scientific precision. In 1831 Gregory XVI (pontiff from 1831 to 1846) purchased twenty works of the Austrian painter Wenzel Peter to furnish the Room of the Consistory in the Papal State Apartment.

***

Harold Jacobs

The painter, Harold Jacobs, who lives in Ligré, has a decennial reason to celebrate.  Below a link to a u-tube movie about him...

 

bonne anniversaire!

***

Saint Anne and re-named streets

!UNDER CONSTRUCTION!

The presentation of the Virgin at the Temple by Sainte Anne
- Philippe de Champaigne -

Sainte Anne

Some of the streets intermuros of the Cité Idéale of the cardinal duc have been re-named,

Jules Chevalier in 1857

• GRANDE RUE = GRANDE RUE
• place du Marché = Place du Cardinal The cardinal's square included a church and the halle.
• place des Religieuses = Place Royale. This square was the one that would be entered first by the King on his arrival from the town from Chinon, another royal town, that of the Platagenets.
• rue Henri Proust = rue Sainte Anne    Henri Proust was the parson of Richelieu at the end of the 19th Century.  Apparently, the youngest son of a wealthy family; buried in  the town's graveyard in an imposing vault (a poor priest!).  'St. Anne' (the mother of the virgin Mary) was no doubt selected originally as being the name of the Queen of Louis XIII, so featured in Les Trois Mousquetaires, and a name appropriate for a street to be filled with nuns and nunneries. Note that the King had financed for the construction of the street itself.
• rue Bourbon = 
• rue de la Galère = named after the tavern la Galère - the galley - The existing original building is the only 7-bay structure in Richelieu
• rue des Gaultiers = A gaultier is an old term for a mercenary soldier such as were common in the 17th century, in particular during the 30-years war; think of the film  Barry Lyndon, directed by Stanley Kubrick.
• Place Louis XIII = Marché aux Veaux = Veal Market
• rue Jarry named no doubt after Henri Jarry, Mayor of Richeleieu in 1885, probably at the period of the construction of the Avenue de la Gare.
• rue du Collège
• avenue de Québec = l'avenue du Colonel Goulier http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/59097024 http://www.larousse.fr/archives/grande-encyclopedie/page/13727
• rue de l'Académie  Location of the original Académie de Richelieu, a 'public school' for the sons of the local gentry; founded by the cardinal.
• rue Traversière  = Cross Street
• rue Paul Viau-Laurence = who HE? (Google does not know him!)
• rue de l'Hôtel de Ville = Town Hall Street
• rue de Loudun = Loudun Street
• rue des Écluses  = Street of the Sluices (of the town's moat)
• rue du Chantier  = Building site street, filled with houses of the itinerant builders of castle and town.
• rue Jules Chevalier  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Chevalier = formerly rue de Cygne - Swan Street
• rue des Halles  = Street of the market halls - there were several even until the 20th century.
• place Nicholas Lemercier = Site architect for the town and the construction of the church; brother of premier architecte du Roy, Jacques Lemercier.