Waldemar Unlocks The Secrets In 4 Iconic Paintings | Every Picture Tells A Story (S2) | Perspective

hello this is Val de Mayo nostrack art critic producer and presenter of documentaries thanks for watching perspective YouTube's home for classical art [Music] when you think of a great French post-impressionist Gogan you usually think of these kinds of pictures don't you beautiful views of Tahiti with beautiful girls having beautiful dreams in his Tahiti pictures Gogan takes us to Paradise he's running away from the real world looking for something more alluring more exotic and colorful [Music] [Music] but it's easy to forget that when he set off for Tahiti in 1891 Gogan was already 42. so a big chunk of his career had already happened and during this big chunk of his career he'd done marvelous things painted some haunting pictures of a Kind no one had seen before [Music] the vision after the sermon good isn't it [Music] painted in 1888. and now hanging in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh where its color and its mystery seemed to belong to another world [Music] long before he got to Tahiti Gogan was already dreaming a far away realities this was painted in pontaven in Brittany northern France and it shows a group of women in traditional Breton costumes praying outside a church they just heard a sermon from the priest about Jacob wrestling with the angel when they come out of the church that's what they're thinking about they're not actually watching the wrestling match they're imagining it and see this brown bit here which looks like a path up the middle of the picture that's actually the trunk of an apple tree that's grown up and which symbolically separates the real world over here from the imaginary one up here [Music] but that's not all that's going on in this haunting and revolutionary picture there's a lot more to it and to understand it properly we need to know who she is who he is and what it all has to do with this [Applause] [Music] as you can see in Punta then where the vision was painted strange folk in strange costumes do strange things in a strange part of France [Music] why did Gogan fetch up here [Music] pontaven was what they call an artist's colony honest from all over the world came here to paint rents were cheap food was cheap and everywhere you looked there were these picturesque Breton subjects [Music] in pontaven artists didn't have to look far for something to paint subjects were everywhere the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel is actually told in the Bible on his way home from Exile Jacob the founder of Israel meets a Stranger by a river and starts wrestling with him The Stranger is an angel but Jacob doesn't know that all night long they wrestle Man vs angel human weakness versus Divine strength so it's a battle between human desires and Angelic ones between the low and the lofty and it was very popular in sermons I went to a Catholic boarding school so I heard a lot of sermons it was generally the most boring bit of the mass the bit where you started to doze occasionally something profound or said something that rang a bell that is what Gogan has painted people [Music] he wasn't the first to tackle the great wrestling match Del Aqua had already shown him how to do it foreign Man vs angel The Savage versus the divine it's a struggle with which Gogan was already familiar because Gogan went to Tahiti and led a Bohemian life we tend to think of him as being anti-traditional anti-religious but he wasn't [Music] he grew up not in France but in Peru of all places where his grandfather was nothing less than the last Spanish Viceroy of the country Don Pio de Tristan in Moscoso till the age of seven Gogan actually lived in the presidential Palace in Lima where he was exposed night and day to the especially Fierce religious moods of Latin America [Music] and later when he became a painter it always showed [Music] he had a taste for powerful and primitive beliefs it's one of the reasons he came to Brittany to be connected with something deeper something more profound and the bretons weren't French they were Celts they had their own costumes their own language and their own mysterious past [Music] and loved all that there's a line in one of his letters to his pal shuffenecker where he writes that the sound he wanted from his pontaven art was the sound of clogg's resounding on granite soil he was after something primitive resonant and real something that spoke to the past as well as the future [Music] now the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel was probably the subject of a sermon here at the church in pontaven in the summer of 1888. now we're not sure that Gogan heard it but it's likely that he did because at this point in his life he was going to church a lot [Music] not because he was a good Catholic but because there were other things in the church that attracted him Jacob wrestling with the angel is a handy symbol for all sorts of struggles but it's especially handy as the symbolic encapsulation of a man wrestling with his conscience [Music] by the time he got to pontaven in 1888 Gogan had endured many such struggles it'd been a later rival at Art working first as a successful stock broker who painted in his spare time he'd married the sparkling and international meta from Denmark [Music] and they'd had five beautiful children whom he obviously doted over but when Gogan decided to give up stockbroken and become an artist mitta's family branded him a failure and kicked him out when he got to pontaven in 1888 his life was at a Crossroads and so was his art [Music] this is the pension glower neck where Gogan stayed it was run where a woman called Mari Jean Glover neck and on her birthday in 1888 Gogan gave her a beautiful still life some flowers some fruit and two lovey-dovey pears weirdly he signed the picture Madeline not Gogan but Madeline because he was already in his 40s when he came to pontaven Gogan was older than the other artists and they looked up to him as a father figure a teacher one of those young artists was an 18 year old boy wonder called Emile Bernard oh Bernard had studied in Paris the tusla track and Van Gogh he was young Progressive but also very religious and he wanted to make a modern art that was deep with religious meaning for Gogan all that was very interesting but the most interesting thing about Bernard was that he had a sister who was very beautiful and whose name was Madeline [Music] Madeleine was just 17. vivacious cute and even more religious than her brother as soon as she got to Brittany she bought herself a traditional Breton costume and that's how she'd go to mass dressed as a local woman [Music] Gogan inevitably fell in love with her he developed an enormous crush on Madeleine Bernard but he didn't do anything about it not in real life anyway most of what we know about the vision after the sermon is what Emil Bernard tells us in a letter he wrote from Egypt many years later [Music] Bernard tells us that Gogan was heavily influenced by Japanese Prince The Apple Tree in the middle was borrowed from hiroshige and Jacob and the angel were originally a pair of sumo wrestlers he also tells us that Gogan wanted to give the picture to a church and that he Gogan and another painter called Charles Laval carried it up here and tried to donate it but the priest turned it down his congregation he said wouldn't understand it [Music] but which church was it Gogan tells us in a letter to Van Gogh that it was the church at pontaven but in Bernard's version it was this one here in Nissan it's certain that Gogan knew this church at Nissan because one of his most religious ponteven pictures that strange image known as the green Christ was inspired by this statue in the cemetery Jesus on the cross with the three Mary's [Music] according to Bernard the three of them carried gogan's picture into the church and found a place for it above the door Laval who was very tall lifted it up says Bernard and it fitted perfectly with the Primitive wooden Saints who were already in here and the grotesque carvings on the beans the trouble is none of that actually fits the door was too high to put anything above it primitive wooden Saints aren't very primitive and there are no grotesque carvings on the beams now since gogan's time the church has been extensively remodeled and that's usually given as the explanation for all the differences but I think this is the wrong Church [Music] in between ponteven and Nissan there's a beautiful Woodland called the buadamor The Forest of Love [Music] Bernard actually painted Madeline here lying on the ground like a medieval Effigy Madeleine in the buada more [Music] now this name Madeleine is the French version of Magdalene after Mary Magdalene the reformed prostitute in the Bible who became one of Christ's most loyal followers so it's a name loaded with big implications Madeleine is the archetypal sinner who changed her ways that's why in Victor Hugo's great novel Les Miserables the hero Jean Valjean or Hugh Jackman if you've seen the movie uses the pseudonym Monsieur Madeline like Mary Magdalene Monsieur Madeline is a sinner who's chosen the good path so what's this got to do with Gogan well something very specific actually because at exactly this time Gogan painted herself portrait which actually called Les Miserables and in which he assumes the identity of Jean Valjean bless your Madeline [Music] the struggle between good and bad the two sides of Madeline was on his mind up here at the end of the blood amore about a mile out of Punta ven there's this Moody Church the chapel of trebalo there's something primitive about it isn't there something powerful and unusual and if you think the outside is atmospheric wait till you see the inside you come in through this little wooden door and see how low the walls are with all these perfect places to hang the picture look up here the beams carved with medieval grotesques monsters and then see all these primitive wooden Saints in here just as Bernard describes [Music] The Chapel At tremolo is actually in the Parish of Nissan that's what it says on this old postcard of it and we know Gogan came here because one of his most marvelous pontaven paintings is the yellow Christ based on that sculpture up there [Music] so Bernard's memory was wrong and gogan's memory was right this and not the Church of nizon was where he wanted to leave a vision after the sermon and how perfectly it would have fitted in here [Music] thank you [Music] when you donate something to a church there's often a plaque or an inscription saying where it came from that's why on the frame of the vision after the sermon Gogan wrote The Gift of Tristan e Moscoso the little boy who grew up in the president's Palace in Peru was showerly donating a gift to the church [Music] look what else they've got here at the top of the aisle on the right that's Mary Magdalene or as they call her here madelaine and on the left that's Saint Ledger the Christian martyr who suffered and died for his beliefs again's time the statues of Madeleine and Saint Ledger flanked this sculpture here in which the Holy Mary is being educated by her mother the education of the virgin when Gogan came here to mass with Madeline and listened to the sermon his eyes would have wandered round the church the yellow Christ the symbolic beams and he would have seen Saint Madeleine and Saint Ledger flanking the education of the virgin one on the right one on the left just like the two figures flanking the wrestlers in the vision after the sermon [Music] that's definitely Gogan the hook nose the Deep set eyes it's what you see in all his self-portraits and he's given himself a Monkish hairstyle a ton sir just like Saint Ledger in The Chapel At tremolo and that's Madeline in her Breton costume with her beautiful lips deep in prayer and Imagining the struggle between good and bad to sin or not to sin that is the question just as Les Miserables is about taking the right path or the wrong one so too is gogan's ponteven Masterpiece and this isn't his only portrayal of Madeline he also painted her in a picture which now hangs in Grenoble in which he emphasizes her naughty eyes and her luscious lips and makes her out to be something of a temptress just like Mary Magdalene so the vision after the sermon is a painting about Temptation and desire she's 17 he's 40. what's the right thing to do even the apple tree isn't a coincidence what did Eve tempt Adam with in the Garden of Eden an apple from the Tree of knowledge in the Bible Eve did the wrong thing but further along in the great teaching text Mary Magdalene did the right thing [Music] and so too did Jean Valjean in Les Miserables so as well did Gogan in pontaven in 1888 with the vision after the sermon still wet on his easel he left Brittany to join his painter Buddy Van Gogh in the south of France Gogan never saw Madeleine again and neither of them ever had cause to regret what they did or didn't do [Music] there are a million stories in the world of Art this has been just one of them this is Van Gogh's famous self-portrait the self-portrait with bandaged ear in the court old Gallery in London and it's famous because Van Gogh's ear is so famous everyone knows the story of him cutting it off with a razor and this picture painted soon after in 1889 commemorates that tragedy how very grizzly to hack off your ear with a razor what a strange piece of self-harming a picture full of mysteries why does this easel look like a cross why is the bandage so prominent and what's this Japanese print doing here at the back it's this one here geishas in a landscape published in 1880 by Sato torakio with Mount Fuji in the distance and these beautiful geishas at the front Van Gogh collected Japanese Prince and this was in his collection but why include it in his self-portrait and of course the biggest mystery of all why did he cut off his ear in the first place [Music] Van Gogh's self-portrait with bandaged ear asks a lot of questions [Music] so it's time I think to start answering them thank you welcome to all in the south of France where Van Gogh arrived by train on February the 20th 1888. full of hopes and dreams [Music] fortunately those dreams were destined to turn into nightmares [Music] days all is a glamorous holiday destination somewhere Chic to visit in Provence but back in 1888 it was a bit of a dump small cramped backward the dirtiest town in the south is how Van Gogh's painter buddy Gogan described all Van Gogh arrived in February and there was still snow on the ground but it soon got warmer spring arrived and he began painting those beautiful views of orchards full of happiness and Hope [Music] foreign this bridge as well the bridge at Langlois because he said it reminded him of the bridges back home [Music] why did he come here well one of the reasons was the weather in Holland where he came from the Sun never glowed like it glows in all oh Van Gogh's old pictures are ecstatically sunny [Music] and how different they are from the first art he made so glum and dark [Music] you've grown up in a world starved of colors and it had left him hungry for the for them another reason he came was those Japanese Prince he liked so much he wanted to find somewhere as bright luminous as the world depicted by the artists of Japan those beautiful views of his of fruit trees in Blossom painted in all when the spring came were inspired directly by the prince of hiroshige Van Gogh's favorite Japanese master [Music] there's a portrait of hiroshige by his follower kunisada and it shows him as a Japanese Monk because later in his life hiroshige retired from the world and became a Zen Buddhist [Music] so Van Gogh got it into his mind that all Japanese artists were monks but they lived and worked together in artistic communes and that's what he wanted to do in all to start a community of artists living and working together like Japanese Buddhists [Music] he asked tulu's latrek to come Emil Bernard but in the end only one other painter joined him here in all Gogan and that was a big mistake thank you so some of the reasons for coming to all were Noble and artistic he wanted to start what he called his studio in the South the school of progressive painters but there were other reasons as well less noble ones when you've got the whole of the south of France to come to why choose all the short answer is because of the women Van Gogh could have gone anywhere in the south of France but he came to all because he was looking for love [Music] Al was famous for one thing it's women the women of all the all as he ends as they were called were supposed to be the most beautiful women in France [Music] the great composer of Carmen even wrote the musical tribute to the legendary beauty of the ales yens it's the sweets of gorgeous Melodies you're listening to now [Music] unfortunately the legendary beauty of the alesiens was exactly that legendary in real life they were tough grumpy and profoundly uninterested in Vincent van Gogh they didn't want to talk to him they didn't want to pose for him and they certainly didn't want to fall in love with him so instead he began for acquainting the local brothel in this street paying for the love he so chronically craved foreign [Music] had a history with prostitutes he'd always been unlucky with women the only one he ever lived with was this sad and worn out brunette clasina Maria Hornick or seen as he called her scene was a prostitute in The Hague where Van Gogh had briefly studied when he met her she was pregnant with her fourth child but he let her move in with him and looked after her his family was appalled especially his father who was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church how could his son be living with a prostitute but it was precisely because Van Gogh had this Keen religious upbringing that he could see prostitution in a Biblical light [Music] for him prostitutes were saintly figures he called them his little good women and the reason he did that was because of her ah yes Mary Magdalene the Bible's most alluring feminine presence and the most famous prostitute in all of Christianity [Music] the Bible doesn't actually say that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute an immoral sinner who mended her ways but that's the myth about her that grew up and it appealed mightily to so many artists Through the Ages we read The Da Vinci Code you'll know that the Magdalene fantasy grew and grew she was Christ's lover they said she bore him a child and their descendants are still Among Us now foreign [Music] paintings of the crucifixion Mary Magdalene is also the woman you see at the foot of the cross holding up the dead Christ because she was there at the end to witness his suffering along with Mary cleophas and Mary the mother of Jesus and you can always spot the Magdalene because she's the most beautiful of the three Mary's at the foot of the cross so what's all this got to do with Van Gogh well everything actually because just a few miles from r on the Mediterranean Coast lies that little town over there Le San Marie De La Mer the Saint Mary's of the sea according to Legend it was here that Mary Magdalene and her companions arrived by sea in France it happened on this very Beach as a follower of Jesus Mary Magdalene was persecuted by the Jews and they put her and her friends on three boats with no sails no oars and set them adrift on the Mediterranean and they drifted across the sea till they washed up here at La San Marie De La Mer [Music] and also just about here Van Gogh painted one of his most Charming provincial views with some boats on the beach here at the San marive De La Mer it's usually seen as just an innocent boat picture but in the San Marie De La Mer there's no such thing as an innocent boat picture [Music] those sails washed up on the beach and look where Vincent has signed his name on this battered box this ended up on the beach just like Mary Magdalene back in all this is where he lived in the famous yellow house the actual building isn't there anymore but at least we have his gorgeous painting of it this is where he wanted to start his studio in the south the idea came to nothing the only other artist to join him here briefly was Gogan and it was Gogan who triggered the events that ended with Vincent cutting off his ear Gogan arrived in all in October 1888. to prepare for the visit Vincent had gone into the fields around all and picked some sunflowers which he painted in an Exquisite series for gogan's room look how they drenched it with sunshine that was the good news the bad news was that Gogan was everything that Vincent wasn't experienced smooth talking and above all very good with women two of them used to come here to the brothel just around the corner from the yellow house on what they called their hygiene visits and even here in the brothel Van Gogh complained to his brother in a letter Gogan always got more for his Frank than he did and it wasn't just the prostitutes he was more successful with Gogan also had more luck with the arlesiens notably with a woman who ran the late night bar that van Gogh frequented The Cafe De lagar yet another of the Mary's who stood this story [Music] Vincent had been trying to get her to pose for months she always said no but to Gogan she said yes so Vincent too finally got to paint his alesienne just a few days before his world was turned upside down and tragedy struck happened on the night of December the 23rd 1888. Van Gogh and Gogan have been getting on each other's nerves for weeks in just a few days before Christmas it all blew up [Music] according to Gogan as he walked home that night Vincent threatened him with a razor Gogan stared him down and Vincent ran back to the yellow house where he cut off his ear with the blade [Music] wrapping the severed body part in a newspaper he took it to the brothel where he gave it to a prostitute called Rachel who fainted when she saw it why did he cut off his ear why did he give it to a prostitute it's one of the biggest mysteries in art [Music] to solve the mystery there's one more piece of the jigsaw we need to fill in we need to understand what goes on up here in the arena in all when the bull fights happen [Music] Vincent couldn't miss the bull fighting it happened just a hundred yards from his front door in this great Arena at all and we know he came to the bull fights because he painted them the busy crowd of the carida and look there's Marie again we are lesbian foreign [Music] [Applause] fight is that a matador who's been particularly successful has given the ear of the defeated bull that he's just killed it's just cut off and given to him and then he walks around the ring with it holding it up proud pramble of his victory [Applause] [Music] thank you and because matadors matadors show offs in tight trousers they inevitably throw the air that they've won up into the crowd to the most beautiful girl that they can see Macho end to a macho moment [Applause] so when Vincent cut off his ear on that terrible night in oh and gave it to Rachel The Prostitute that the brothel just up the road he was casting himself as the defeated bull the sacrificial victim in the Battle of love he'd come here to all to find his alesien but all he had found was suffering and defeat [Music] and that's why he painted this self-portrait with bandaged ear a painting about suffering pain and rejection remember Van Gogh had been brought up in an intensely religious atmosphere his father was a minister in the Dutch church so he knew all about Mary Magdalene about suffering penitence and pain but it's all gone into this picture [Music] to the easel at the back the way it forms a cross that's no accident Van Gogh is identifying himself with Jesus [Music] it's something in which he had form a few months later he painted a copy of a pieta by Del Aqua and explicitly gave the dead Christ his own face [Music] in all after the air cutting the kids would throw stones at him in a street they'd mock him and abuse him and the people of all who love him so much these days actually organized a petition to have him thrown out of the town and it was signed by all the citizens he thought were his friends [Applause] [Music] like Christ he was mocked rejected despised and that's why he painted his great self-portrait with bandaged ear [Music] it's a hidden crucifixion the easel at the back is his cross and where Christ had his loin cloth Van Gogh has this grubby bandage that covers his wounds all that's missing is the three Mary's at the foot of the cross and that's where the Japanese print comes in this is the sketch for Reuben's descent from the cross it's also here at the courthold gallery and look at the bottom of the picture there's the three Mary's at the foot of the cross with the alluring Mary Magdalene at the center [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign Van Gogh's hidden crucifixion the part of Mary Magdalene the former prostitute at the foot of the cross is being played by a geisha a beautiful Japanese courtesan gathered here with her fellow Mary's and Mount Fuji is their Calvary a genius with a Christ complex is comparing his suffering to the suffering of Christ wounded and alone Van Gogh is saying thank you to the good people of all for all that they've done for him there are a million stories in the world of Art this has been just one of them [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] thank you this is the court old Gallery in London one of the world's best collections of paintings by Suzanne look what they've got here they've got this and this and they've got this especially this [Music] oh yes Suzanne's card players painted in around 1895. two Chaps at a table playing cards that's all so why does it feel so profound [Music] and it's tiny just the size of a couple of corn flakes packets but it's got so much gravitas to it so much weight playing cards is supposed to be fun so you'd think these two would be a bit cheery about it but no how solemn they are thoughtful this is actually part of a series there's five paintings in all and they all show card players this one here from the Metropolitan Museum in New York has three chaps playing and another looking arm [Music] and this big one at The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia has a crowd of people joining in [Music] but the court hold picture has paired it all down to just two figures two old boys deep in thought playing their endless game of cards [Music] why paint a card game what's the point what does it mean the answers aren't easy in fact they're rather tricky but that shouldn't stop us looking for them [Music] welcome to the provincial hot spot of aches on Provence it's a hot spot because this was Suzanne's town and everywhere you go you'll find signs of him celebrate Suzanne here they've designed a walking trail through the city and if you follow it you follow in Suzanne's footstepsi guy [Music] yellow house up there that's where he was born in 1839 his parents weren't married yet so he was illegitimate and he was born in a house run by a charitable institution so these were religious folk who forgave that kind of thing [Music] over there on the corner that used to be the Hat Shop owned by Suzanne's father he was a Hatter now to make hats you need rabbits and that's what he moved into next the very lucrative rabbit trade having made his money in rabbits and hats the dad bought a bank in this building here and became a banker a very successful Banker classes [Music] with the money he made he bought this place the Jazz de bufang a posh house on the edge of aches with lots of land and if it looks familiar that's because Suzanne painted it so often [Music] he painted the grounds he painted the house and he painted the people who worked here the laborers the gardeners [Music] especially the old boys who played cards in their break time he particularly liked painting them oh [Music] foreign [Music] wanted to be an artist but his dad disagreed so he sent him here to the law school in aches where he studied for a couple of years the law studies came to nothing he wasn't cut out to be a lawyer but it wasn't a complete waste of time because whenever he came out of the school he'd be confronted by this the cathedral that aches looming above him he couldn't miss it [Music] this porch here with its Gothic shape got into his head later when he became a painter it began to haunt his art [Music] as if he was trying to find a way to revive the ancient moods and to make them modern these statues the Stony medieval figures so solid and calm they influenced him as well and he began looking for the modern equivalence of these ancient Saints up there that's Saint miter a local Saint who was beheaded here in aches so now he's the patron saint of headaches [Music] and that one there with the urn she's local too because that's our old friend Mary Magdalene you can't go far in Provence without encountering Mary Magdalene the redeemed prostitute who became a loyal follower of Christ she's actually the patron saint of Provence and she's going to this story so remember her [Music] and look at the biblical prophets around the door the ancient seers seated in Gothic silence [Music] there's something familiar about their mood isn't there Suzanne too had a Biblical intensity to him something Stony and cussed in Paris where he briefly became a wonky impressionist they didn't know what to make of him but in Provence he was at home and he did things his way [Music] up here is Suzanne's Studio apparently he got up at three every morning and then he'd get to his Studio at around four [Music] inside he'd like the stove make the coffee and then read a newspaper and at about six he began painting marvelous things were painted in here some of his most celebrated Interiors and of course his apples I will astonish Paris with an apple he boasted and that's what he did while humming tunes by his favorite composer Weber [Music] after a few hours painting the weather was right he'd leave the studio come up here to paint that the monster which was always on his Horizon it's the most Painted Mountain in art over and over again but there's something else over there that's significant something you can't actually see from here because it's on the other side of the mountain it's a mysterious cave that we're going to find and explore because it's relevant to this story The Cave of Mary Magdalene the legend of Mary Magdalene is that she was a prostitute who mended her ways and became a loyal follower of Christ According to some she was so loyal that she became his lover and even the mother of his child it's fruity stuff none of it based on the scriptures or the Bible it's pure fantasy but it's rung many a creative Bell Through the Ages and it's had a particular significance here in Provence [Music] the legend is that the Jews put Mary Magdalene on a boat [Music] and cast her adrift in the Mediterranean with no oars no sales so she floated across the sea till she reached Provence where she washed up on the beach in a village that still called Saint Marie De La Mer Saint Mary of the sea [Applause] so it was Mary Magdalene who brought Christianity to Provence and having done that say the legends she retired to a cave up here in the mountains at Saint bone can she spend 30 years in there repented for her sins [Music] it's a big hike to get here but it's worth it Mary magdalene's final resting place also they say [Music] you can always recognize Mary Magdalene in art because she's always carrying a vars or an urn the urn is full of sweet smelling oils [Music] as a prostitute she'd used it to make herself smell good and to intoxicate men later as a sign of her Holiness she washed Christ's feet with it and marked him with her sensuality also they said prostitute saint possible mother of Christ's baby they loved her here in Provence and this cave in which she's supposed to have spent her final years and in which she died is now the most sacred Place associated with her to do with Cezanne why drag Mary Magdalene into his story because he painted her that's why in a very dark and very strange picture that's now in the musee D'Orsay Mary Magdalene at her doomiest and most brutish she's a woman but she looks like a man it's uncomfortable art art that's trying desperately to connect with feelings that were dark and clumsy Zan's neighbor from across the mountain brought out something Bleak in him that kept bubbling up Cezanne had two sides to him on one side he was a pioneer of modern art an artistic revolutionary but on the other side he was a grumpy traditionalist from Provence a fervent churchgoer with a taste for Saint Louis [Music] the older he got the more religious he became and he used to come here to the cathedral in aches for high mass and he'd sit just here under this marvelous Renaissance triptych by Nicholas from home showing Moses and the Miracle of the burning bush and a couple of visitors remarked Cezanne had even begun to look like Moses [Music] it was now in his final years the years of religion and tradition that he began painting his card players their mood is the mood of the ancient statuary in the cathedral that aches but their reality is the banal reality of the Jazz to perform after his father died in 1886 he moved in here this was where he lived and worked and this is where the card players was painted [Music] thank you in Suzanne's time the walls in here were all covered with his murals and in the big Alcove was a portrait of his father sitting on a stall reading the paper and this wall here the Garden Wall this was the religious wall with Christ in limbo striding out towards us next to him Mary Magdalene deep in prayer in her dark cave [Music] Legend was being imported into the house and what an intense and dark religion it was unlike most magdalins sazans is a creature of the night there's no glamor to her and the misshapen pearls above her head are according to the province our Legends the tears that dripped from the roof of her cave [Music] the mood he was searching for so rough and earthy was the real mood of Provence Mary Magdalene was painted early in his career in a style that was deliberately harsh and primitive as he got older his art grew more gentle but it never lost its secretive religious ambitions his beautiful portraits of his wife a secular Madonna's Holy Mary is in a modern guise his great bathers do their bathing under the gothic arch of a cathedral made of trees and as for his card players they gather round the table with a solemnity that feels ancient and biblical [Music] the models for the card players worked at the Jazz de Buffon gardeners laborers Hyatt helps there were locals weathered old boys who kept the whole thing going foreign [Music] there's actually a tradition in art of people playing cards because in art cards and life seem to stand for one another [Music] if you're lucky you win if you're unlucky you lose because life is like a game of cards foreign [Music] tables too have a big artistic history in aches in the cathedral there's a fine last supper by Jean Dary with Christ and the apostles gathered round the table at the moment of Destiny think of all the last suppers all the suppers at Emmaus in which big things have happened around a simple table and that medieval porch he kept seeing outside the law school that haunted him as well the way the card players lean in like a Gothic Arch the way the figures are stretched out that Stony atmosphere of theirs it's all there in the gothic simplicity of aches Cathedral [Music] the porch it was all up there in the porch the ancient saints were up there with their Stony cesanesque demeanor Mary Magdalene was up there ready to be transformed into a creature of the night [Music] so were the biblical prophets on their Divine Thrones sitting stoically in biblical silence waiting to be updated [Music] so there we have it Suzanne's card players is a religious picture without any religion in it it's a supper at Emmaus without Christ's or Apostles a pair of prophets with nothing meaningful to prophesize two old buffers playing cards have been transformed into a pair of hopeless Saints whose Stony gravitas has been borrowed from the past but whose modern fate is to while away their existence on a game of cards welcome to the modern world Suzanne is saying look what's happened to the old Provence [Music] there are a million stories in the world of art this has been just one of them foreign a 1642 I knew what I had to do leave my home and family too I'd fight for good old Charlie [Music] [Applause] King 1643 those round heads there you are after me but we were on a winning spree fighting foreign the Thames Britain's mightiest River so Walter Raleigh put it splendidly once there are two things unmatched in the universe he wrote the sun in heaven and the Thames on Earth many men die to uphold the Lord for old Charlie hey [Music] the Thames is 215 miles long it's the longest river in England and it's fascinating all the way along as it flows through Reading and Oxford and Windsor but the most momentous stretch of its journey is here of course in London where the Thames carves its way through the center of the city so much has happened on this momentous stretch of water if Rivers could talk the Thames would have so much to say artists too have long been fascinated by the river the great caneleto came here from Venice to paint the Thames and compare it with his hometown Turner looked down on the river at the start of the steam age and saw something hellish about it [Music] and Monet the voyaging impressionist parked himself in the Savoy Hotel and looked out across the waters glowing mysteriously in the fog Thames attracts artists it's an inspirational River and you would have thought that a Waterway as big as this would have been unmissable if it turned up in someone's art but that hasn't always been so sometimes the Thames manages to smuggle itself into a picture to lurk in the recesses and play a secret role that's the case with a masterpiece of British art that now hangs just up the River from here in Somerset house that impressive Riverside slab of neoclassical architecture where today the courthold galleries are found I've been haunting the courthold's great collection since I was a student in particular I've been interested in this picture an old and a young man it's called which doesn't tell you much does it who are these two Anonymous ancestors and what does the Thames Got to Do with It [Music] an old and a young man was painted by a neglected hero of British art a powerful and Brilliant Portrait Painter called William Dobson Dobson was himself a Londoner born here in Saint Andrews Hoban in 1611. his family had artistic connections somehow or other in circumstances that have now been lost in history little William Dobson from London got himself an art training and ended up painting portraits good ones so good that even the king himself noticed them time Brit tle creature was chiefly in the hands of foreign painters artists from Flanders and Holland who came over to England to work for the art loving King and his spendthrift Court even the great Rubens was invited to London a tremendous expense to paint the ceiling of the banqueting house where he produced such a superb decoration so much finer and more ambitious than any scene before in England thank you it's not that English artists were intrinsically less talented than foreign painters it's just that the framework wasn't here the teaching the apprenticeship system compared with artists from Flanders or Holland Britain was backward in art and nobody made that more obvious than Reuben's greatest pupil the Magnificent Van Dyke Van Dyke was one of the finest portraitists that art has seen when Charles I invited him to Britain to become his official painter he made things so difficult for local artists the portraits Van Dyke painted in England were much finer much more elegant and ambitious than any seen here before van dijk was a genius he had such quick hands and so much pictorial certainty how Dobson came to his attention we just don't know possibly he was Van Dyke's pupil but whether he was or he wasn't what's certain is that the influence of Van Dyke fast forwarded the progress of William Dobson suddenly England had a painter to be proud of [Music] this is one of his early pictures It's A Portrait of Dobson's wife Judith he is the first real wench in British art when you look at her you hear Tavern noises and the tinkling of beer glasses from the start Dobson had something unmistakably English about him something direct and earthy look for instance that the old man in that mysterious painting at the courthold [Music] Hodgy face the Beary complexion he's such an unglamorous and tangible presence don't you think the gods of art admired Dobson too so much so that in 1641 they decided to do to do him a big favor by killing off Van Dyke at a stroke the stage was set for an English painter to emerge [Music] Van Dyke's sudden death in 1641 could not have been more momentously timed the English Civil War one of the most dramatic events in British history was about to erupt and the King found himself without a painter so there was no time to get in another talented Foreigner so William Dobson from Hoban in London was made Charles the First's official painter in history whisked him off into the smoke the English Civil War [Music] fear dying Charles fled from London and set up his new wartime Court in Oxford the city of spiers and William Dobson went with him [Music] this Exile in Oxford while the Civil War was raging lasted just four years 1642-1646 but in that brief historic moment Dobson managed to produce some of the most memorable and heroic portraits in British art it was William Dobson who put a face to the English Civil War [Music] he painted The Dashing and handsome Cavaliers who rode into Oxford to fight for the king the experienced soldiers and the wide-eyed young men this is John Byron the king's most trusted enforcer the Bulldog of the Cavaliers you wouldn't wish to meet him on the battlefield would you and here is the King's most trusted courtier the plump and red-faced Endymion Porter he likes a glass of Sherry doesn't he Dobson painted himself as well in a brilliant triple portrait that hangs now in anik Castle where he shows himself with two of his Oxford friends and the three of them act out a lively show of loyalty to The King The Three carousing Musketeers of British art [Applause] must not fear dying [Applause] it was about now that Dobson must have painted that mysterious picture of the courthold galleries the one showing an old man and a younger one there two of Dobson's most tangible sitters but who are they why did he paint them and what's the picture about it's a mystery we need to solve and just so often with a Dobson picture it isn't just the faces he painted that give you the clues it's also the background because a Dobson background is invariably packed with telling symbolism at the back of the courthouse picture you can just about make out the banks of a river it's Vaguely Familiar because these look like the banks of the Thames at Oxford the Thames flows through the middle of the city of course and water is the clue to the identity of the two sitters [Music] Riverbank in the background there's a fountain on the right as well with Cupid riding a dolphin another pointer to the significance of water [Music] so I began my investigation at the Waterman's Hall in London it's the home of the water boatman's Guild and you don't need to search very far in here to find dolphins or boats or a sense of water [Music] and look what I found hanging on the wall in the Waterman's meeting room haven't we seen this face before when I walked into the Waterman's Hall I recognized him it's the old man in Dobson's painting he turns out to have been one of the most entertaining and unlikely characters of his times trouble making sailor turned poet called John Taylor [Music] Taylor was one of the liveliest characters of the era a card a Nave a merry whistle who loved his ale and a good punch-up afterwards laughs [Music] although he managed somehow to become a poet Taylor was originally a water boatman one of those rough fellows who rode you across the Thames in London in those days there was only one Bridge across the river London Bridge so the water boatman had you at their Mercy they were notoriously rude and Lippy and John Taylor was perhaps the rudest and lippiest of them all [Music] this was his stretch souvik in the 17th century this was London's pleasure Zone it was where all the brothels and body houses were and the theaters too Marlo's Rose Theater Shakespeare's Globe so that you see was outside the city boundaries and you could do things there that you couldn't do here Taylor's job was to Ferry the actors musicians and dramatists across the Thames from the city to the theaters and while he was rowing these actors and dramatists back and forth across the river with Shakespeare certainly among them Taylor to the surprise of everyone but himself began to develop writing Ambitions of his own at the time this just wasn't done Waterman did not become poets poets were gentlemen with an education Scholars not Scholars but Taylor was determined to become one of them poems pamphlets essays poured out of him in remarkable quantities he had 150 Works published in his own lifetime Taylor styled himself the water poet and my words this famous palindrome lewd did I live an evil I did dwell which reads the same both ways was his invention [Music] at his best he was gloriously and brilliantly rude William prin the Puritan who hated art got into a feud with him said the water poet rushed into print calling him a running witted rolling-headed railing tongued rattle-brained round head Puritan poet George wither was dismissed as a folio fool a zany power taster and a squirt rhyme now I have no idea what a squirt rhyme is but I definitely wouldn't like to be called one Taylor was a fierce supporter of the king when the Civil War broke out he was already 62 a veteran Troublemaker who refused to pay Parliament levies forced to flee from London he made his way to Oxford which is where he entered Dobson's story the king welcomed Taylor to Oxford with open arms delighted to see his famous old water boatman again and immediately gave him an official position he made him the water bailiff whose job was to keep the river clean and navigable no easy task in the circumstances Taylor has left behind a vivid description of the things he found in the Thames at Oxford dead hogs dogs cats and well flayed carrion horses Beast guts and garbage Gardner's weeds and rotten herbage thank goodness they've cleaned it up a bit eh but it was this description of the filthy and diseased Thames at Oxford constantly causing plagues and infections among the Cavaliers that got me particularly interested in John Taylor that's why I tracked him down to the Waterman's Hall and why the moment I saw him I knew who he was [Music] if you put the two portraits of Taylor side by side Dobson's portrait and the Watermelons you see straight away it's the same man but how much older he looks in Dobson's picture how much sadder so the old man is John Taylor the water poet but what about the younger man my first thought is that he must be family it's the way he holds the old man's hand so tenderly and Taylor's brother actually ran this pub at the time the king's head in Abingdon but he would have been too old so it can't be him [Music] besides this chap here has a moneyed Look to Him doesn't he the fine clothes that lordly stare and if you look carefully into the picture's nether regions you'll see he's leaning on a bust of Apollo because this chapter is a man of the Arts in fact it's another poet this time of the gentlemanly sought his name was Sir John Denham and his most famous work it's called Cooper's Hill is a rousing celebration of the River Thames my eye descending from the hill surveys where Thames among the wanton valleys Strays Thames the most loved of all the ocean Suns Hasting to pay his tribute to the Sea like Mortal life to meet eternity first great topographic poem in English literature the first poem that's all about a river and it was published in Oxford in 1643 which is when Dobson must have painted his picture foreign the proof that the younger man is Sir John Denham is found once again in Dobson's symbolic background carefully and you'll see a little castle sticking up above the trees [Music] the post to be this Farnam Castle the outbreak of the Civil War Sir John Denham the gentleman poet was the sheriff of Surrey and Governor here at Farnham and although he wasn't a very good governor and succumbed far too easily to the attacks of the round heads denim was fiercely loyal to the king and in 1643 he joined him in Oxford where he must soon have encountered John Taylor Dobson has brought them together as well in his picture in this remarkable and unique poetic double act Britain's two most famous water poets one old one young one Posh one plebeian United by their watery Origins and their great love of the rightful King there's one more thing that's important in September 1643 tragedy struck the old man in the picture John Taylor the water poet when his wife to whom he'd been married for 40 years died he'd had to leave her behind in London when he fled she was too sick to travel tell me not sweet I am perhaps the court old picture commemorates her passing the younger man lays a protective hand on his fellow water poets and look what great seriousness Dobson discovers in the face of old John Taylor now I chase the first four in the field and with a stronger Faith embrace the sword or hosts the Sheep other painters are the writers saw Taylor as a figure of fun a clown a buffoon that's even how Taylor saw himself but it's not what Dobson sees he looks behind the jovial mask and discovers something Melancholy and poignant distant thoughts the beginnings of a tear nothing else in Dobson's work persuades you of his unappreciated greatness then surely the sadness he finds lurking in the eyes of this Splendid Old River dog who'd pulled himself up into the poet's ranks through sheer force of spirit must convince you one picture two great poets a hidden subject and a momentous moment in history there are a million stories in the world of art this has been just one of them [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Perspective

Views: 343,880

Keywords: history documentaries, art history documentaries, art and culture documentary, TV Shows - Topic, art history, Documentary movies - topic, tv shows - topic

Id: KvjP4_Kq_jM

Length: 98min 50sec (5930 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 18 2023