In darkened passage - selected work of Xavier Mellery

 

L'Escalier.

Après les prières du soir.

Couloir du Cloître.

Effet de lumière, 1890.

Intérieur de l'église.

Deux femmes dans un intérieur.

Au béguinage.

Soirée à la table de la cuisine.

Squelette entourée d’un voile, 1899.

Vieille béguine montant l’escalier, circa 1890.

Les Portes.

Mon vestibule, circa 1899.

Chambre à coucher, circa 1888.

Le But des choses.

L'Escalier.

*

Xavier Mellery (9 August 1845, Laeken - 4 February 1921, Brussels), Belgian Symbolist painter. The son of a gardener at the Royal Palace of Laeken, he initially worked with the painter-decorator Charles Albert. He attended the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels from 1860 to 1867. Having won the Belgian Prix de Rome in 1870, he travelled to Italy, where he was inspired by paintings from the Renaissance. His early work treated the working lives of the Belgian poor in a social realist manner. He was made a knight of the Order of Leopold in 1885.

Filial inspiration - nine paintings of the artist's daughters by Thomas Gainsborough

 

Circa 1760.

Circa 1758.

Circa 1756.

Circa 1763-64. (The odd highlight in the corner of Margaret's eye appears in every reproduction, so I have to assume this is also true of the actual painting.)

As can still be seen, Gainsborough first posed Margaret on the left side of the composition, facing her sister. 

Circa 1774.

Margaret, circa 1772.

Mary, 1777.

Margaret, circa 1777.

Mary, 1777.

*

Gainsborough was devoted to his two daughters - Mary "Molly" Gainsborough Fischer (circa 31 January 1750 - 2 July 1826), and Margaret “Peggy” Gainsborough (circa 19 August 1751 - 18 December 1820) - and painted them frequently from childhood into their late twenties. He took care to ensure that they were well educated, sending them to the exclusive Blacklands School, Chelsea, and tutoring them in drawing and landscape painting; the younger sister, Margaret, also became an accomplished amateur musician. The elder sister, Mary, first showed signs of mental illness at an early age, and in 1780, against her father's wishes, she married Johann Christian Fischer, a well-known oboist and composer. Fischer, a friend of the artist, had apparently courted both sisters for some years. The marriage lasted only six months. The sisters continued to live with their parents, and when the latter died - Gainsborough in 1788, his wife a decade later - the now middle-aged women, left with an inheritance, remained together. Margaret, the younger sister, who had been affectionately nicknamed "the captain" by their father, and was the executor of both parent's wills, managed their household and finances and looked after her sister, who suffered with increasingly severe mental illness. Margaret passed away at the age of sixty-nine. Mary, without her sister to care for her, and suffering from delusions, spent the remaining six years of her life in an asylum - possibly Blacklands House, Chelsea - where she died at the age of seventy-six.

Army drag - Greek soldiers of the Evzone Units, by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1935

 

*

The Evzones or Evzonoi (Greek: Εύζωνες, Εύζωνοι) were several historical elite light infantry and mountain units of the Greek Army. Today, they are the members of the Presidential Guard, a ceremonial unit that guards the Greek Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Presidential Mansion in Athens. Also known, colloquially, as Tsoliádes (Greek plural: Τσολιάδες), Evzones are known for their distinctive uniform, which evolved from the dress worn by the klephts, bandits and insurgents who for several centuries fought the Ottoman occupation of Greece. Created in 1837, but at first in limited use, its popularity led to its adoption as the official uniform of the Evzones in 1868. The most particular, iconic item of this uniform is the knee-length fustanella, a white, many-layered kilt-like garment. The number of gathered pleats of the fustanella is romantically said to be equal to the duration of the Ottoman occupation - i.e., 400.