HOPE Antique Color Print , Symbolist Painter George Frederic Watts , Oval Frame

Description: " HOPE " Antique color print after the painting by George Frederic Watts ( 1817 - 1904 ), British painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. ( see additional information below ) Antique oval picture frame, gold painted gesso ( composition ) over wood. This is an early 1900s picture frame. Frame size: 15 1/4" tall. 12 1/8" wide. 1" deep. Includes oval glass and wire hanger. Both the frame and the print are old; circa early 1900s ( probably 1910s - 1920s ). Around 100 years old. The paper backing and the wire hanger are more recent. The print has a couple of dings. The frame is in good condition, with a little wear. The glass is good. Carefully packed for shipment to the buyer. --------- Additional information : George Frederic Watts ( Order of Merit , Royal Academy of Art ), ( 1817 - 1904 ) was a British painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. Watts was a visionary Symbolist painter whose allegories highlighted universal themes of love, hope, and despair. He said "I paint ideas, not things." His paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language. " HOPE " Watts completed two versions of the Symbolist oil painting " Hope " in 1886. Radically different from former treatments of the subject, the painting shows a lone blindfolded female figure sitting on a globe, playing a lyre that has only a single string remaining. The background is almost blank. Watts intentionally used symbolism not traditionally associated with hope to make the painting's meaning ambiguous. The painting proved popular with the Aesthetic Movement, who considered beauty the primary purpose of art and were unconcerned by the ambiguity of its message. The painting soon became a widely popular image. President Theodore Roosevelt displayed a copy at his Sagamore Hill home in New York. Since antiquity artistic representations of the personification of Hope depict her as a young woman, typically holding a flower or an anchor. Hope is traditionally considered as a virtue, however during Watts's lifetime, European culture had begun to question the concept of hope. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche thought that hope encouraged humanity to expend their energies on futile efforts. The Long Depression of the 1870s wrecked both the economy and confidence of Britain, and Watts felt that the encroaching mechanization of daily life. A focus on material prosperity obsessed Britain's middle class, making modern life increasingly soulless. In late 1885 Watts lost his infant grand daughter, Isabel, to illness. At the time, Watts wrote to a friend : " I see nothing but uncertainty, contention, conflict, beliefs unsettled and nothing established in place of them." Watts set out to reimagine a depiction of Hope in a society in which economic decline and environmental deterioration were increasingly leading people to question the notion of progress ... and even the existence of God. In a December, 1885 letter to a friend, Watts wrote : " Hope sitting on a globe, with bandaged eyes, playing on a lyre which has all the strings broken but one, out of which, poor little tinkle, she is trying to get all the music possible, listening with all her might to the little sound ..." " Hope " shows its central character alone, with no other human figures visible and without her traditional fellow virtues, Love ( also known as Charity ) and Faith. She is dressed in classical Greek costume. Her pose is based on that of Michelangelo's " Night ", in an intentionally strained position. She sits on a small, imperfect globe with wisps of cloud around its circumference, against an almost blank mottled blue background. The figure is illuminated faintly from behind, as if by starlight, and also directly from the front as if the observer is the source of light. Watts's use of light and tone avoids the clear definition of shapes, creating a shimmering and dissolving effect more typically associated with pastel work than with oil painting. The style of the painting was rooted in the European Symbolist movement, but also drew heavily on the Venetian school of painting. It is believed to be the first time a European artist depicted Hope as blind. The figure of Hope holds a broken lyre, based on an ancient Athenian wood and tortoise-shell lyre then on display in the British Museum. Although broken musical instruments were a frequently occurring motif in European art, they had never previously been associated with Hope. Hope's lyre has only a single string remaining, on which she attempts to play. She strains to listen to the sound of the single unbroken string, symbolising both persistence and fragility, and the closeness of hope and despair. Although Victorian painting styles went out of fashion as the 19th century became the 20th, " Hope " has remained extremely influential. Mark Bills, curator of the Watts Gallery, described Hope as "the most famous and influential" of all Watts's paintings and "a jewel of the late nineteenth-century Symbolist movement".

Price: 62.05 USD

Location: Coventry, Rhode Island

End Time: 2024-07-30T15:52:56.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD