Curio Cabinet

Wouldn't you love to impress this year’s holiday guests with a spectacular piece of serveware? Tureens are vessels for serving soup at the table, but this piece is a particularly elaborate example made for the English Duke of Kingston. The tureen is made entirely from silver and features a langoustine, also called a Norway lobster, lying on a pigeon as its lid. On the bottom and leaves of various vegetables that serve as the base of the stand. The rococo style, developed in the 1700s, is known for being ornate, and this tureen is no exception. Both the material and complex design by Pierre-François Bonnestrenne (King Louis XV’s official architect) were meant for the unremarkable purpose of serving soup…but their real purpose was to be an ostentatious display of wealth. The realistic details on the langoustine, pigeon, and vegetables were cast from actual specimens, and the asymmetrical, dynamic shape of the tureen is characteristic of the rococo movement, which valued naturalistic designs. Now if we only knew what the ladle looked like.

 
Covered Tureen on Stand (Pot-à-oille), Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier (1695–1750), Henry Adnet, Pierre-François Bonnestrenne, 1735–38, Silver, 14.5 x 15.125 x 12.5 in. (36.9 x 38.4 x 31.8 cm.), The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

 
[Image credit & copyright: Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier, Pierre-François Bonnestrenne, Henry Adnet, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund 1977.182, Public Domain, Creative Commons Zero (CC0) designation.

There are movements that shape artists, and there are artists that shape movements. Henri Matisse was decidedly the latter of the two. The multidisciplinary French artist passed away on this day in 1954, and during his illustrious career, he became one of the most prolific and influential artists of all time, engaging in friendships and rivalries with other masters of modern art, most notably Pablo Picasso.
 
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse was born on December 31, 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambresis, Nord, France. Unlike many of his artistic contemporaries, Matisse wasn’t trained in the discipline nor did he show any significant interest in it until he was already a young man. Before picking up his first paintbrush, Matisse moved to Paris in 1887 to study law and went on to find work as a court administrator in northern France. It wasn’t until 1889, when he became ill with appendicitis, that he began painting after his mother gifted him some art supplies to stave off boredom during his recovery. The young Matisse quickly became completely enamored with painting, later describing it as "a kind of paradise.” Much to the chagrin of his father, Matisse abandoned his legal ambitions and moved back to Paris to learn art, studying under the likes of William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Gustave Moreau. However, the work produced in his early years, mostly consisting of still lifes in earth toned palettes, was quite unlike the work that would eventually make him famous. His true artistic awakening didn’t occur until 1896, when he met Australian painter John Russell. A friend of Vincent van Gogh, Russell showed the struggling artist a collection of Van Gogh’s paintings, introducing Matisse to Impressionism.
 
In the following years, Matisse began collecting and studying the work of his contemporaries, particularly the Neo-Impressionists. Inspired by their bright colors and bold brushstrokes, his own vision of the world began coalescing along with that of other, like-minded artists into a relatively short-lived but influential movement called Fauvism. The works of the “Fauves” (“wild beasts” in French) like Matisse were defined by unconventional and intense color palettes laid down with striking brushstrokes. Despite being a founding member of a movement, Matisse was never one to settle for just one style or medium. Throughout his life, he dabbled in pointillism, printmaking, sculpting, and paper cutting. At times, he even returned to and was praised for his more traditional works, which he pursued in the post-WWI period. Among his contemporaries, there was only one who seemed to match him: Pablo Picasso. Matisse’s rivalry with this fellow master of modern art is well documented, and the two seemed to study each other’s works carefully. Matisse and Picasso often painted the same scenes and subjects, including the same models. At times, they even titled their pieces the same, not for lack of creativity, but to serve as a riposte on canvas. Matisse once likened their rivalry to a boxing match, and though the two didn’t initially care for each other’s work, they eventually developed a mutual admiration.
 
Today, the name Matisse is practically synonymous with modern art, and his influence goes beyond the canvas. In his later years, Matisse’s failing health forced him to rely on assistants for much of his work. During the 1940s, Matisse worked with paper, creating colorful collages called gouaches découpés that he described as “painting with scissors.” His final masterpiece, however, was his design for a stained-glass window for the Union Church of Pocantico Hills in New York City. No matter what medium he touched, Matisse always left an impression, leaving behind a body of work that is wildly eclectic yet always recognizably his. Surely his father had to admit that Matisse did the right thing by leaving law school.

 
[Image description: A fanned-out group of paint brushes smattered with paint.] Credit & copyright: Steve Johnson, Pexels