Theodor Seuss Geisel

Dr. Seuss and his created critters

He was not the greatest artist in the world, nor the greatest writer, but in mixing, mashing, mauling, manipulating, masticating, mutilating, and mystificating a moderate mastery of both, he was able to charm the socks off children, parents, and teachers alike for the better part of two generations. His name was Theodor Seuss Geisel. And since his father always wanted him to become a doctor, he wrote under the name, Dr. Seuss, preferring to save his "real" name for more serious literary efforts. He needn't have bothered. There never was a more serious literary goal than teaching young people to love to read. And even today, some 21 years after his death, he's still the best-selling author of children's books in the world.

The first Dr. Seuss, 1936, now available on iPad

The good doctor of juvenile letters was born in 1904 in Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of the curator of the Forest Park Zoo. There's no record that the zoo ever housed Grinches, Yertles, or cats wearing hats, but there's little doubt young Theodor was intimately familiar with their zoological inspirations. Giesel graduated from Dartmouth in 1925 and immediately set sail for Oxford hoping to satisfy the dreams of his father in acquiring a doctorate in literature. Instead he met and married a Miss Helen Palmer before returning to the U.S. to work as a cartoonist and writer for Judge magazine (kind of a 1930s version of Mad). His work also found it's way into more upscale versions of Life, Vanity Fair, and Liberty.

The first Seuss bestseller, 1954

In 1936, while on the boat to Europe for a vacation, Geisel became fascinated by the rhythm of the ship's engines.  He wrote his first book, And to Think That I saw It on Mulberry Street (above). The book was published in 1937, having gone through rejection by no less than 43 publishers (other sources set the count at 29) before a friend put up the money to see it printed. It didn't make any bestseller lists but enjoyed moderate success. The war years saw Geisel working in Hollywood for Frank Capra's Signal Corps Unit where he won a Legion of Merit and two Oscars for such blockbusters as Hitler Lives and Design for Death, both documentaries for the military. His cartoon, Gerald McBoing-Boing also won him an Oscar.

Fifty words for breakfast

Dr. Seuss' first big success in publishing came in 1954 when he became aware of just how boring most children's books of the day really were. Using a list of 223 Dolch Reading List words, he penned the words and illustrations for his immortal Cat in the Hat. It was an instant success. In 1960, in response to a bet from humorist, Bennett Cerf, that he couldn't write a book using only fifty words, Seuss cooked up a batch of Green Eggs and Ham. Cerf welshed on the bet. No matter, Dr. Seuss didn't need the money. A Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and a total of forty-four children's books to his credit pretty well cemented him a place in the literary hall of fame. Fortunately for all the parents and others who have had to read them aloud, the books of Theodor Seuss Geisel are loaded with grown-up wit and satire set to a catchy, if somewhat quirky, rhythm that fascinates at least through the twentieth reading. I know.  I've used them dozens of times in the elementary classroom, reading aloud while my meditating munchkin moppets mull their own manifestations of Seuss' sagacious sonnets.

Domenico Veneziano



The St. Lucy Altarpiece, 1445, Domenico Veneziano

The Martyrdom of St. Lucy, 1445,

Domenico Veneziano

As an artist, do you ever pause to reflect as to how your work will be seen five hundred years from now? Moreover, maybe the real question is if it will be seen five hundred years from now. Things happen. Wars, floods, fires, theft, political insurrection--art, being the fragile luxury it is, often suffers. Given the history of human development, it's a miracle we even have any art more than a hundred or two hundred years old. But even during wars, famine, pestilence, and tribulations of other sorts, heroic men and women risk their lives to steal away man's greatest art treasures, hiding them until better times return. We saw this in our century during the Second World War in Europe; but it happened again and again before that. Unfortunately, sometimes it doesn't come out of hiding. Those responsible for "saving" it die, get killed, or perhaps just plain forget where they hid the stuff.

St. John in the Desert, 1450, Domenico Veneziano

One of the greatest Florentine painters of the early Renaissance was Domenico Veneziano. Though he undoubtedly painted dozens, maybe hundreds of works during his lifetime from 1400 to 1461, only three major works survive and one of them has been split and split again into three or four separate units, spread between Washington, Berlin, Florence, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. That would be the Santa Lucia del Magnoli Altarpiece (top), the central panel of which is now in the Uffizi.  Besides the center panel, there originally were possibly as many as four predellas (side panels), one of which has been lost. The other three are The Martyrdom of St. Lucy (above, right), St. John in the Desert (above, left), and The Adoration of the Magi (below, right)." There is some question as to whether the latter of these, in the Staatlich Museen in Berlin, along with his The Martyrdom of St. Lucy is, in fact, a predella or a separate work. There are others, but they are of doubtful attribution.

Adoration of the Magi, 1440-43, Domenico Veneziano

Veneziano was originally named Domenico, de Bartolomeo di Venezia (no wonder he shortened it).  Born and raised in Florence, where he spent his entire life, indications are  he studied under the great Florentine painter, Masaccio. However there is not in any way the "heaviness" of Masaccio's style in Veneziano's work. In fact his painting is most noted for the lightness, its carefully organized, spacious perspective, and careful attention to the human figure. In a word, there is a "naturalness" about his painting in marked contrast to that which went before and as a strong influence upon that which came after. Leonardo's work bears traces of it. His perspective is letter perfect, though still on the one-point variety, typical of his day. And his backgrounds, carefully rendered landscapes, spawned later attention to this area of painting among Florentine artists.

Carnescchi Tabernaclel,
1435, Domenico Veneziano

Also surviving the ravages of time, is a fresco, The Carnesecchi Tabernacle (left), painted around 1435 (now in London's National Gallery) in which Masaccio's influence can be detected. And that's about it, folks. A lifetime of painting distilled into a few surviving, masterful works (one of which is in rather poor condition). And while you're pausing to reflect upon your work and the odds of it rendering you some semblance of immortality, keep in mind that Veneziano was one of the greatest painters of his time, yet, we barely know him.

Domenico Ghirlandaio

Said to be a self-portrait,
figure from Adoration of the Magi,
circa 1488, Domenico Ghirlandaio

To be successful as a professional, an artist must please those with the wealth to afford his services. This fact is as true today as it was five hundred years ago. The Renaissance painter, Raphaello Sanzio once likened this, quite favorably, to being a harlot. Today, as in Raphael's time, talent and hard work are important, but knowing the right people, and knowing how to curry their favor, is just as important if the artist likes to eat, even more so if he cares to live well. Though not from Florence, Raphael studied there for a time as a teenager and one of his best friends was another artist a little younger than he, named Ridolfo. Like Raphael, Ridolfo was quite good at painting portraits, which wasn't surprising considering who his father was. Ridolfo's father ran one of the most successful art workshops in all Florence. His name was Ghirlandaio (pronounced GER-land-EYE-o). Actually that wasn't his real name at all but something of a corporate identity his family and workshop had taken on to advertise the fact that, as goldsmiths, they'd invented and made popular gold garlands for women and girls of high fashion to wear in their hair. Ghirlande is Italian for garland, Ghirlandaio simply meant "maker of garlands." His real name was Domenico di Tommaso Bigordi. 

Though no gold hair garlands
survive from the period,
this book of hours has been
attributed to Ghirlandaio's
goldlsmithing workshop
dating from 1485

Domenico liked to design things made of gold, but even as an apprentice, cared little for making them.  He preferred to paint.  His early work bears the influence of the Italians, Masaccio and Fra Filippo Lippi, along with the Northern influence of Hugo van der Goes. It was a unique mixture. Along with his two younger brothers and later his son, the Ghirlandaio shop competed with that of the other major artist of the Florentine School at the time, Sandro Botticelli, for the important private and church commissions of the day--portraits, altarpieces, gold and silver chalices used to serve mass, and most importantly, the massive frescos needed to decorate all the new churches being built and remodeled under the economic prosperity of the ruling Medici and their wealthy banking partners.  Ghirlandaio knew how to please these wealthy families. He was a portrait painter, but more than that, he often used them and their offspring as models, painting their likenesses into important religious works. Add to this the use of their luxurious palazzos as settings and the modern dress of the day, one might think John the Baptist or the Virgin Mary were born and raised in Florence.

Birth of St Mary, 1586-90. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Santa Maria Novello, Florence, Italy

That's exactly the impression one comes away with in viewing Ghirlandaio's Birth of the Virgin, a fresco for Santa Maria Novella in Florence. The fresco, painted around 1486, framed between two highly decorated, square pilasters (with a third, identical one painted in between; becoming part of the scene itself), depicts the interior of the Tornabuoni home (wealthy friends of the Medici). A staircase is displayed on the left, while St. Anne, the mother of Mary, reclines somewhat stiffly on an elevated bed.  Five female members of the Tornabuoni family stand by bearing congratulatory wishes, observing the newborn baby (Mary) about to receive a bath. Ghirlandaio was as much a master of the rather complex one-point perspective as he was the standing figures, their portrait faces, and their fashionable attire. A wide, tromp l'oeil, sculptured frieze of putti near the ceiling of the room is especially eye-catching. But perhaps the most beautiful and exciting rendering in the whole painting is that of a lowly maid on the far right, pouring water into a bath basin. Like the illusionary sculpture of the frieze it does not appear to have been painted by Ghirlandaio or any of his brothers. The flowing, dynamic movement of the young girl's dress and the fluid grace of her face and pose suggest it was done by a talented young apprentice studying fresco in the Ghirlandaio workshop at the time. His name was Michelangelo Buonarroti.

Birth of St. Mary (detail) said to be by
the hand of Michelangelo

Diagnosing Dead Artists

One of the things I find most interesting as I continually probe the lives of famous artists is the amazing range in ages when they died. Of course as little as a century ago the average life span even here in the U.S. was a mere 47 years. Today, we routinely expect people to live well into their 70's, so the numbers are naturally skewed lower in the distant centuries, all of which makes some of the very long life spans of certain artists hundred of years ago all the more remarkable. Raphael was a mere 38 years old when he died. His contemporary, Michelangelo, lived to be 89. Among the Mannerist painters from about the same period, Giorgione and Titian present a similar range. Giorgione died at the age of 33, while Titian, born in 1478, died in 1576 (his birth date is somewhat uncertain) making him around 98 years of age, probably a record for famous painters.

Rembrandt Self-portrait, 1859,
ten years before his death,
Washington National Gallery of Art

Detail of the artist's
left temporal artery

This Rembrandt self-portrait
 (detail) dating from 1669,
said to be his last before he
died, shows no indication
of an enlarged artery on
his right side.

Some time ago, a Dr. Carlos H. Espinel, a professor at Georgetown University, was wondering through Washington's National Gallery of Art when he came upon one of Rembrandt's many self portraits (above, left). His doctor's trained eye noticed something unusual. It would seem that Rembrandt's left temporal artery was enlarged. Through this and the study of several other late self-portraits by the seventeenth century master, he has diagnosed Rembrandt as having died from temporal arteritis. Later research from non-pictorial sources have tended to confirm this. A study of Leonardo's Mona Lisa has led Espinel to believe her mystical smile may have been the result of partial paralysis of a branch of a facial muscle.

A detail from Raphael's
School of Athens, 1509-10,
depicts Michelangelo at age 35,
apparently already suffering from gout.

From a portrait of Michelangelo by Raphael, painted as part of his School of Athens (detail at left), fresco in the Vatican, Espinel has zeroed in on some prominent bumps on the sculptor's exposed right knee. He categorizes them as "tophi"--deposits of uric acid salts. Letters and poems by Michelangelo indicate he suffered from kidney stones, all of which has led the doctor to postulate Michelangelo probably died of gout (not an uncommon ailment at the time). He pictures Michelangelo, a confirmed workaholic all his life, as living off a diet of bread and wine (processed by Italians at the time in lead containers) as well as the likelihood he was exposed to lead based paints; all confirmed causes of the typical hunchback indicating gout, precisely as depicted in Raphael's painting. As for Raphael's early death, Espinel speculates it may have resulted from the dashing young artist's penchant for sexual excess carried to unhealthy extremes. Contemporary writings and letters suggest various venereal diseases may have led to the weakening of his heart, which would account for the surprising suddenness of his death.

Raphael da Sanzio, sexual

excesses and venereal diseases?

Espinel writes regularly on the subject of "ArtMedicine" for the British medical journal The Lancet. His studies have also centered on artists of this century, particularly the Dutch-born abstractionist, Willem DeKooning, who suffered from Alzheimer's toward the end of his life, though Espinel has found evidence in his painting that he may have enjoyed a surprising remission, at least in the physical debilitation of the dread disease, for up to a year. DeKooning died in 1997. Espinel considers art to be a valid tool for studying dementia, a framework for studying the mind itself, as well as a means toward gaining a better understanding of the lives and deaths of the great artists of the past.

A Sketch by Daumier

Perhaps Michelangelo's The Drunkeness of Noah
reminded Picasso of this drawing by Daumier
titled  Rue Transnonain from 1834.

When Pablo Picasso obtained enough wealth from his work to allow him to travel widely, like any self-respecting artist, he found that all roads led to Rome. And though not in fact, in Rome, for the artist at least, all roads led to the Vatican. And once in the Vatican, in spite of the looming power of the magnificent cathedral, for the artist, all roads (corridors?) led to the Sistine Chapel next door.  Picasso, as artists and tourist alike have done for five centuries, strained his neck and gazed upward in awe at what Michelangelo and Pope Julius II hath wrought. "It's like a vast sketch by Daumier."  He said.  Not the reaction one might expect, even from Picasso. Who was this sketcher extraordinaire that Picasso should admire him so?

Gargantua, 1831, Honore Daumier

Honore Daumier (pronounced UN-or-AY DOME-yay) was born in 1808. He started drawing at age thirteen and his first job as an artist was in the role of what we would call today a political cartoonist, though at the time one couldn't much think of such a calling as an occupation.  But he was good at it.  In fact, too good for his own good.  His first drawing landed him in jail for six months. He had the audacity to portray the king, Louis-Phillipe, as Gargantua, the gluttonous ogre in a French storybook.  Daumier was in good company--his publisher was jailed too. And while the cartooning business didn't pay much (nothing, actually), he did earn his first fees as an artist about the same time--as a sign painter. The king eventually banned all political cartoons so Daumier took to drawing insightful, amusing pictures of the French bourgeoisie instead. One depicted a lady in a blizzard, her "bustle" (a cosmetic device made of springs hidden beneath a lady's skirts to accentuate her derrière) hosting quite an accumulation of snow. A shopkeeper asks, "Would you like a touch of the broom, madam?"  With these he was able to earn a modest living.

The Print Lover, 1857-60, Honore Daumier

Daumier painted too, though like his cartoons, his efforts with a brush were so highly individual as to constitute a style unto themselves. Technically, one would have to class him with the Realists though his style was in no way realistic. However his choice of subjects was very much in line with those of Realism's Corot and Courbet in depicting the humble, modest, lower classes as they struggled with the daily grind of 19th century existence. Politically, Daumier was a life-long republican, not to be confused with the American creatures by the same name. Quite the  opposite, Daumier was very much a liberal. Being a republican in France at that time meant he opposed autocratic rule, which made him a target for the ruling governments of all but eight years of his life. And it wasn't just autocrats he like to skewer with is steel pen--lawyers and judges took it on the chin too. Only in the last years of his life did his paintings and engravings begin to bring respectable prices; and even then his work appealed more to artists and collectors than to the middle-classes he delighted in lampooning. He died in 1879 and enjoyed a state funeral staged by a friendly republican government (costing all of twelve francs). And from that time on, his reputation began to rise. He was an artist's artist, and thus it should come as little surprise that Picasso, another artist's artist, should compare the great Michelangelo to him.

The Legislative Belly, 1834, Honore Daumier, a cartoon appropriate even today.

Currier and Ives

Ruins of the Merchants' Exchange, 1835,
Currier & Ives

Each of us have, in our mind's eye, a visual image of what it was like to live a hundred or hundred and fifty years ago. Perhaps the most vivid of these come from movies, westerns such as Stagecoach, small period pieces like Little Women, or great epics like Gone with the Wind. Some of our images come from the genre paintings of the era, such as the work of Eastman Johnson. In some cases, crude photos of great events come to mind, all of which have served to illustrate the ponderous old American history books we all used to lug back and forth to class every day in high school. And, if we still had those books, and peered into them once again, we might realize yet another type of imagery we've probably forgotten about, but which once made up a very great part of how American's saw themselves in the 19th century--the lithographic print. And at the top of that pictorial genre is the name, Currier and Ives.

Awful Conflagration of the Steamboat Lexington in Long Island Sound, 1840, Currier & Ives

In the 1800s, lithographic art was a relatively new thing. It was invented by the Bavarian artist, Alois Senefelder as late as 1798, employing smoothly ground, porous native limestone in a fairly complex printing process involving a grease pencil, water, and oil based inks. It was 1825 before the process found its way to the U.S. as William and John Pendleton began a printing business in Boston using Senefelder's methods. It was there, around 1830, they hired an eighteen-year-old apprentice named Nathaniel Currier to help in the business. Around 1833, Currier left the firm to work with Philadelphia lithographer M.E.D. Brown, who produced printed scientific illustrations. Two years later, Currier moved to New York intending to work once more for John Pendleton who had opened an office there.  Instead, he ended up buying the fledgling branch office and starting his own firm--N. Currier.

Not all Currier & Ives prints had to do

with firey disasters, some dealt with

much more "important" matters, as in

Kiss Me Quick, from the 1840s

In the beginning, Currier produced sheet music, letterheads, and other stock in trade printed items, but two early lithographic editions, Ruins of the Planters Hotel and Ruins of the Merchant's Exchange N.Y. (top, left) quickly underlined the marketing potential for pictures of current events, launching the new company in the direction it would take for the next seventy-five years. Currier capitalized on his ability to create depictions of newsworthy events (usually dramatic catastrophies such as the Lexington Steamboat fire, above) just days after their occurrence. In 1852, he hired James Merritt Ives as his head bookkeeper. Five years later, the books in order, and Ives' marketing savvy propelling the firm to new heights, he was made a full partner. Currier and Ives was born. Both men were competent, if not exceptional artists, outstanding lithographers, and shrewd businessmen. They also had a keen eye and gut feeling for that which the various levels of American society wanted hanging on their walls.

American Homestead Winter, Currier & Ives

Whether nostalgic urban dwellers longing for their frontier roots, or Midwestern farmers yearning for depictions of urban sophistication, Currier and Ives' vast selection filled the bill. Their portfolio eventually grew to some 7,500 different images. And whether marketed through big city print shops, Sears and Roebuck catalogs, or country peddlers, this inexpensive form of art reproduction became practically synonymous with middle-class Victorian decor. Currier and Ives brought to life the work of artists as diverse as Frances Palmer, Arthur F. Tait, Louis Maurer, John Schutler, James Butterworth, Thomas Worth, and perhaps most memorably, the snowy, country homestead scenes of George H. Durrie, which we've all seen on Christmas cards (above, left) invoking a simple, agrarian past steeped in sentimentality even when they were first printed in the 1860s. Currier died in 1888, Ives in 1895.  The firm passed to their sons who continued together until 1902 when the younger Currier sold out to the younger Ives who in turn liquidated much of the stock and sold the company to a Daniel W. Logan, in 1907. By that time, except in some areas of rural America, the Currier and Ives style and printing techniques had been supplanted by much more modern ones. Today, thanks to revivals of interest in the 1920s and 30s original Currier and Ives lithographs are much sought after by collectors and history buffs, kind of making them the "baseball cards" of the art world.

Cornelius Gijsbrechts



Self-portrait to Still-Life, 1663, Cornelius Gijsbrechts

During the latter part of the thirteenth century, the great Medieval painter, Cimabue, one Monday morning came to work in his studio and picked up his brushes to continue his work on a large altarpiece, his famed Madonna Enthroned. Climbing up the scaffolding to the top of the nearly thirteen-foot-tall painting, he found a fly on the nose of the Madonna which he'd painted just a few days before. Given the fact that the painting medium was made from egg yolks, flies and other insects were often a problem when the paint was fresh. He tried three time to frighten it off, only to realize finally, that one of his apprentices, the painter Giotto, had painted the fly on the Madonna's nose as a practical joke. That may or may not have been the beginning of what the French dubbed "tromp l'oeil" (fool the eye) painting, but there's no doubt such work has been a persistent presence in art going back nearly that far. Today we see it in what's variously known as "Super Realism" or "Photo Realism" and of course traditional and non-traditional still-life paintings. It's a type of painting that, while not spectacular, is something of a spectacle, beloved by realist artists as a means of showing off their technical virtuosity, and by viewers for its magic in fooling their eyes, if only for a moment, into confusing reality with illusion. It's an area of art I've recently played with though I'm no match for the likes of Cornelius Gijsbrechts (don't ask how to pronounce that).

Reverse Side of Painting, 1670, Cornelius Gijsbrechts

Magic is a good word for this type of art. Gijsbrechts, one might say, was almost as much magician as painter. Don't be surprised if you've never heard of him, he seems to have magically appeared in Copenhagen at the court of King Frederick III in 1668. He played the royal audience for four years then just as mysteriously as he'd appeared, he vanished in 1672, never to be seen again. But during those four years, he certainly wowed the crowd. And when the king died, his show was booked for a second run during the first two years of the reign of his successor, Christian V. This king even build a museum with an entire room, the perspectivekammer, devoted entirely to Gijsbrechts' astonishing images. So, what did Cornelius paint that so enamored the Danish royal court?  On a shelf in the National Gallery in London sits a framed painting, leaning against the wall, facing it. Oops, sorry, don't touch, it's not a framed painting at all, but an unframed canvas depicting the back of a framed painting.

Trompe l'oeil-staffeli med frugtstykke'
1768-72, Cornelius Gijsbrechts

Elsewhere in the exhibit stands an artists easel, on it, a still-life in progress, another painting leaning against the legs of the easel, again facing away from the viewer while on the base tray are the tools of the artist's trade. You guessed it, the whole thing, easel and all, is a ruse, painted in one piece on a single wooden panel, complete with rear leg and holes cut in the appropriate locations over and under the painting. Damn, wish I'd thought of that.

An Open Cupboard, 1665,
 Cornelius Gijsbrechts

The Dutch loved their vanitas still-life paintings, and judging by his style and name, Gijsbrechts may have been Dutch. Several of his more traditional (if you can call them that) fool-the-eye still-lifes have the typical vanitas elements (burning candles, flowers, bubbles, food, insects, etc.) of this type of painting, though often with a twist, such as an illusionary torn spot in the canvas, edges painted to look frayed, even some painted dirt and grime to make them look old.  In one case, a painted tack is posed opposite the real thing. One of Gijsbrechts more remarkable works features a small cupboard (right)with what appears to be glass in its doors. One door is a painted illusion, an identical one to its right is real. And when opened, it reveals the painted contents of the cupboard just as they appear through the illusionary glass. On the inside of the "door" several letters and momentos which appear from the front to be tucked inside between the glass and frame, are painted as seen from the back. Closer inspection reveals the hinged cupboard door is nothing more than a stretched canvas painted on both sides. I love Gijsbrechts work, but in discovering it, I've become somewhat disillusioned. Just when you think you're onto something new, you discover some Dutch genius was doing it over three hundred years ago!