Masterworks from the Grohmann Museum

Misfortune at the Mine is among the most unique works in the Grohmann Museum collection, unlike any other in both style and approach. The majority of paintings in the collection are literal interpretations of the industry of focus, painted in a straightforward manner and primarily representational. This painting represents a departure from this norm in that Getty Bisagni evokes biblical imagery in his depiction of the fallen miner.

The painting adopts the formal quality of cathedral glass in a type of cubist treatment of the subject. And the positions of the five figures are reminiscent of Old Master paintings of Jesus Christ’s descent from the cross. Fields of color formed in stripes run through the composition and lend to the scene the look of light streaming through a stained-glass window. The miner’s positioning is also reminiscent of the positioning of Christ in Michelangelo’s Pietá.

Central to the mythological views of metalworking is the visit of Venus to Vulcan’s forge. Vulcan was the mythological God of Fire and the original blacksmith; manufacturer of arms, iron, jewelry, and armor for various gods and heroes. Here, Venus visits to persuade Vulcan to produce weapons for her lover, Mars. In these scenes, we often find Cupid accompanying Venus. Venus was Vulcan’s wife but by Cupid’s arrow succumbed to infidelity with Mars. This was later discovered by Vulcan, who caught them in the act by means of a magical snare that he forged.

This myth - popular with Flemish painters of the 16th and 17h century - was often featured in the work of Jan Breughel the Elder. Here it is explored by Brueghel the Younger, accompanied by Hendrick van Balen; two master painters of their era. Here we see a picture within a picture, with the stylistic touches of each artist apparent to the viewer. The Italianate ruins in the distance and the assorted armor on display is distinctly Brueghel, whereas the figures are more aligned with Balen’s style. The armor and associated metalwork are painted in fine detail, and were repeated time and again in both artist’s treatment of this Allegory of Fire.

Eyre Crowe illustrates a forge shop featuring a drop forge hammer driven by a water wheel. A pair of workers position a hot work piece under the forge hammer; their faces shielded from sparks and heat. They are wearing aprons and shin guards that also cover their feet. The work piece lies on an iron base serving as an anvil. A cam wheel to the right lifts the hammer. As the cam turns farther the hammer will fall onto the glowing hot work piece. On the right a boy is holding a cart, ready to move the work piece. On the left a young woman delivers food and something to drink.

Eyre Crowe spent his childhood in Paris, where his father, the historian Eyre Evans Crowe, was foreign correspondent for the Morning Chronicle. In 1839, he began his study of painting with Paul Delaroche, with whom he visited Rome in 1843. A fellow pupil on this trip was Jean-Léon Gérôme, with whom Crowe remained a lifelong friend. On his return to London in 1845 Crowe entered the Royal Academy Schools, exhibiting his first picture at the Royal Academy the following year. In visits to the United States, Crowe had looked sympathetically at the plight of black slaves and in 1861 exhibited The Sale of Slaves at the Royal Academy. This picture was based on sketches he had made in 1853 when visiting Virginia. He pursued this social commentary with such works as the Dinner Hour, Wigan which presents another view of factory workers. Later in life Crowe worked as an inspector and examiner at the South Kensington schools and was elected Artist of the Royal Academy in 1876.

The Forge was previously in the Forbes Collection, purchased by the Forbes family as Christopher “Kip” Forbes pursued his degree in Art History from Princeton University in the early 1970s. Then labelled The Foundry—a tag that remains on the frame—it serves as a reminder that we must look at the art of industry through a variety of lenses. Not only do we examine them art historically, we must also understand the processes captured in the compositions.

Previously attributed to Rembrandt himself, this painting carries a “Rembrandt van Rijn“ signature (at left center, above the globe), which could have been done by star pupil Willem Drost (to whom the painting is currently attributed). The contemporaneous nature of the signature has been confirmed by the conservator of the painting. Drost is known to have inscribed the Rembrandt signature on other paintings; for example, Portrait of a Young Man in the Wallace Collection, London. In painting The Geographer, he has employed chiaroscuro: the typical light-dark painting techniques of his master. Students in the Rembrandt workshop also used the same paint mixes and other supplies (brushes, panels, etc.) as the master.

Alternately, legend has it that Rembrandt often put final touches on works by his students and occasionally signed some paintings to inflate the prices his assistants could command for their works. Regardless if signed by master or pupil, the contemplative geographer is portrayed with the tools of his profession: globe, divider and triangle. During the 17th century, geography was among the most well-regarded applied sciences; with the age of discovery came a need to chart new lands. Thus, geographers enjoyed elite status, as evidenced in this painting.

Potato Harvest joins Ludwig Knaus’ Behind the Scenes and Magician in the Barn in this feature of Masterworks from the Grohmann Museum. Not only is this an outstanding painting by one of the most beloved artists of the German Romantic period, it is also an examination of farm work as a family operation. Here, Knaus depicts a family harvesting potatoes, with no fewer than three generations represented.

Father and grandmother till the soil, unearthing potatoes for harvest. They are joined by a younger woman and two small children, who scan the fresh tilling for tubers. In the foreground, another youngster tends to potatoes in a fire, baking them to provide food and energy for the weary workers. Beside her, mother holds an infant, offering a bit of potato as a snack or to sooth its teething. A log cart—tended by neighbors or possibly extended family—passes in the distance, leading the viewer’s eye to the village off in the distance.

Though born in Norway, Peder Severin Krøyer spent his adult and professional life in Denmark following tutelage at Copenhagen’s Technical Institute and later the Royal Danish Academy of Art. He was quite active in a group of Danish and Nordic artists known as the Skagen Painters, becoming one of the most renowned and respected members. The group would gather in the summer to paint the local surroundings.

Best known for his peaceful landscapes and recreational scenes, Krøyer was also captivated by scenes of labor and industry. Three Smiths at Hornbæk, Denmark records the master blacksmith in the Danish town of Hornbæk. The master is working with a journeyman and an apprentice. The master holds a horseshoe bar in his tongs. The impact of the sledge on the hammer creates sparks as it punches nail holes in the bar. The apprentice operates the bellows observing the forging process performed by the two skilled men.

In 1875 Krøyer produced another version of this forging scene. It is part of the Hirschsprung Collection in Copenhagen. The Hirschsprung contacted the Grohmann Museum in 2012 regarding this “lost twin” and confirmed that they have the companion piece. While they would like to reunite these works by one of Copenhagen’s favorite sons, the painting will remain a centerpiece of our blacksmith gallery.

In his work Flax Barn in Laren Max Liebermann depicts a pre-industrial mode of spinning even though this production process was, at the time, already adapted to industrial manufacturing. Here, women and children spin prepared flax into raw yarn. This is accomplished by a process that combines methods from the classical cottage industry and a true factory. Twelve women twist the flax into thread and onto spools, employing spinning wheels powered by a row of children seated along the window wall. Two spinners work with each spinning wheel. Although spinning machines had been invented, old technologies were applied if cheap labor was available, as was the case with women and children in Holland.

Max Liebermann was a renowned German painter and an early adherent to Impressionism in Germany. He was trained at, named to, and later became the president of the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. The painting displayed here is a study for the final painting, which now hangs in the Berlin National gallery. When it was first unveiled to the public, Flax Barn in Laren was roundly criticized for its faithful depiction of child labor. Although a widespread phenomenon, this was a subject largely ignored; omitted from the genre painting of the day. While Liebermann often offered social commentary in his work, he later argued against the blending of art and politics.

In Harvest Time, Richard Lorenz shows the gathering of grain in the open landscape of Western Wisconsin. Consistent with the division of labor common since the Middle Ages, the man cuts the culms with a scythe while the woman gathers the stalks and rakes bundles. The complementary colors of the golden-yellow grain and the blue sky have been arranged to create a peaceful, harmonious composition.

Richard Lorenz was born in Voigtstedt near Weimar in Germany and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Weimar. In 1886 he travelled to Milwaukee to take a job with William Wehner’s American Panorama Company. Panorama paintings came to the United States in 1883 when Wehner founded his company on Wells Street in Milwaukee. He chose Milwaukee because of its German population, as he brought some 20 academy-trained artists to work on the panoramas in what was then known as “Little Munich,” and wanted to make them feel at home. Lorenz was among them

Following his work as a panorama painter, Lorenz became one of the most important genre painters of the American West, but his local connections are many. In 1901 he was one of the founding members of the Society of Milwaukee Artists, later known as Wisconsin Painters & Sculptors. He was also a lecturer at the Wisconsin School of Design (aka, Wisconsin Art Institute), founded Lorenz School of Art, and taught at Milwaukee Art Students League’s Wisconsin School of Art.

Constantin-Emile Meunier is unquestionably the most important 19th century Belgian artist dealing with the subject of work. Both a painter and sculptor, he depicted the work and living conditions of Belgian miners and metalworkers as no one else had. It was in the late 1880s, while travelling in the Belgian industrial district of the Borinage, that his attention was drawn to these themes. From that point on, he devoted his energy and creativity to portraying his industrial impressions in paintings and sculptures.

Meunier wasn’t terribly interested in the technical documentation of industrial work. Instead, he was much more concerned with honoring the worker. In this painting, a young couple is taking a rest from their toil. The young man stands with a clay pipe in his left hand, while the young lady sits on a stool with legs crossed. An industrial landscape with smoking chimneys provides the backdrop for this work. Rather than appearing withered and worn, this couple exudes a strength and a dignity not altogether common in depictions of hard work. Through his treatment, a regal portrait of prideful workers is produced.

Belgian brothers Lucas and Marten van Valckenborch created numerous landscape paintings depicting industrial processes and building projects. They were part of arguably the most prominent family of Flemish painters of the 16th and 17th centuries, with no fewer that 14 artists in their lineage. In Fantastic River Landscape with Ironworks, brother Martin creates what appears to be a typical Dutch river landscape painting, but in the foreground a flurry of activity brings 17th century iron technology in full view.

At any time from the late Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century thousands of itinerant vendors offered their products and services for sale from village to town to city. It is estimated that in the mid-19th century there were 50,000 itinerant street hawkers working in London alone. These vendors included itinerant healers such as tooth extractors, cataract depressors, and quacks offering their powders, salves and elixirs, as seen in this painting by a follower of the famous Gerrit Dou.

The loud promotional call of the quack led to the name ‘charlatan,’ derived from the Italian word ciarlare, meaning to babble or prattle. Quacks often claimed to have developed a wonder cure, but based on the dubious reception by the assembled crowd, perhaps the only ‘wonder’ this quack created concerned his steep prices or the quality of the medicinal agent being offered. For example, Theriac was considered an exceptional miracle drug made in ancient Greece from aniseed, caraway and fennel. It was often used to treat snakebites. Over time, the drug was continually adulterated, so that by the Middle Ages such things as duck blood and viper meat had been added. Theriac was considered a wonder medicine that prolonged life and was distributed well into the 19th century by doctors.

Dou's follower ironically illustrates the way a quack entices people and possibly seduces them. The withered tree to the left forms a stag's head with antlers, sometimes symbolic of fertility or the hunt/chase. Perhaps it is the quack who is on the chase.

Harvesting scenes were popular themes in paintings of farm work in the 19th century. The portrayal of women and men working on fields in beautiful landscapes provided artists with a variety of motifs and interpretations: religious gratefulness, happiness due to good crops, hard work, muscular bodies, clothes and rituals in folkloric scenes, and finally the sharing of the harvest with the poor by allowing them to glean.

Together with Millet, Breton and Lhermitte, Julien Dupré was an adherent of this genre of painting. He was born in Paris in 1851 as the son of a jeweler. He received his most influential training as a painter from his fellow-countryman Désiré François Laugée (1823– 1896) and later married Laugée’s daughter. He created a considerable number of paintings with farming themes, many of them part of major museum collections the world over.

This painting is a companion to The Hay Harvest (also in the Grohmann Museum collection) and could be another version of the same scene. A woman wearing clothes with the national colors of France (red, white and blue) picks up a pile of hay with her pitchfork while two other workers to her left also pick up hay with fork and bare hands. The ox-drawn hay wagon stands to the rear with a worker stacking the wagon. Other harvesters work in the background.

A previously forested area has been clear cut. Logs are being pulled to a wagon by a horse. The wagon has a three-horse hitch. A tripod hoist operated by one logger lifts the logs up to the wagon bed where another positions the logs. The wagon is held from moving by a stout stick jamming the wheel. Branches are stacked in piles throughout the area. The majestic horses are English-bred coach horses—Clydesdales from southern Scotland.

Wright Barker became well-known through his livestock paintings. His use of the initials RBA after his name suggests that he studied at the Royal British Academy, where he also exhibited from 1891-1938. He lived and worked in Ollerton/Newark on Trent, north of Nottingham. His most beloved paintings depict dogs, hunting scenes, horses, cattle in the highlands, and occasionally simple landscapes. The Loggers were probably observed by Barker in neighboring Lincolnshire, a region less densely populated and east of his home in Ollerton.

A master American painter at the turn-of-the-century, Frederick Arthur Bridgman was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, and found most of his artistic inspiration during his stays in France, specifically in Brittany and Normandy. This is where the subject for his seaweed gatherers could originate. The incoming tide washes the weed on shore while men and women gather it with pitchforks specifically designed for the activity. In this scene, the artist demonstrates his skill in capturing water on canvas in all its facets. Bridgman is considered one of the most significant painters of his time, especially for his so-called Oriental paintings of scenes from Middle Eastern, South Asian, and East Asian cultures.

Seaweed has many important uses, including: commercial production of food in Asia, Polynesia and the British Islands: iodine: non-flammable, lightweight alginate textile fibers used in theater curtains; hosiery and medical dressings; and gum used in water-remoistened products. The seaweed harvested in this painting is sessile algae and can be green, brown, red or blue-green. It is being gathered on the coast of France at Pointe de la Torche/Penmarche, Finistere, Brittany. Bridgman painted this scene when he was living in Lyon-la-Forêt in Normandy.