October 2007
Volume 1, Number 10

Inside this issue...

Artist Of The Month: El Greco
Art In The News 
Outside The Lines
Segmation News

Artist Of The Month: Francisco Goya 

Goya was born in a small village in northern Spain where his father worked as a gilder. Little is known about Goya’s early life, except that he was apprenticed to a church painter, José Luzan, when he was 14 and that he twice failed to win a scholarship to the Madrid Academy when he was 17. He later traveled to Rome and made his living there as a painter.

Returning to Spain after a year, Goya started painting decorative, rococo frescoes for local churches. He studied with Francisco Bayeu, a local artist, who helped him find work designing patterns in the Royal Tapestry Workshop where he stayed for 17 years, producing over 60 designs.

In 1773 Goya married Bayeu’s sister, Josefa, and his fortunes changed; the Spanish aristocracy started noticing his art and in 1780 he was nominated director of the Royal Academy of Art, a position that enabled him to become painter to King Charles III of Spain. Goya was at the peak of his popularity.

But this success was not to last. In 1792 Goya contracted an unknown illness that left him deaf and became alienated and withdrawn. He spent his convalescence reading about the philosophy behind the French Revolution, which had taken place a few years earlier, and produced a series of etchings with bitter, dark visions inspired by its events. The series, known as the Caprichos is captioned “The sleep of reason produces monsters.”

In 1808 Napoleon invaded Spain in a war that would last until 1814, and Goya became court painter to the French invaders. He produced a series of shocking prints called The Disasters of War.

The Spanish monarchy was restored in 1814, but the new King did not appreciate Goya’s work. He had shocked the establishment by painting The Naked Maja; nudes were not considered acceptable subject matter in Spain then. Today, this painting is considered to be one of Goya’s masterpieces. To make matters worse, following the death of his wife in 1812, Goya began living with his housekeeper and her illegitimate daughter.

Isolated and embittered, Goya went into seclusion, buying a house outside Madrid, which the locals dubbed the “House of the Deaf Man.” Here Goya was free to express his darkest visions. He worked on a series of nightmarish visions, known as the Black Paintings, which he painted on the walls of his house. After his death, the paintings were transferred to canvas and today are in the Prado museum in Madrid. These works are widely acknowledged to be the forerunners of the Expressionist movement.

Goya left Spain in 1824 and settled in Bordeaux, France. He went back and forth between Bordeaux and Spain until he died in Bordeaux in 1828 at the age of 82. He continued painting until the very end and his career had spanned over 60 years.

You can find a great collection of Goya patterns to use with SegPlayPC ™ here: http://www.segmation.com/SegPlayPCPatterns.html#GOY. 

Art In The News

Million Dollar Painting Found In Trash

A masterpiece stolen 20 years ago turned up in the trash lying on a New York sidewalk and has been valued at around $1 million.

Elizabeth Gibson was on her way to buy a cup of coffee when she saw the painting, Tres Personajes ("Three People") by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo lying among the garbage bags. At first, she walked by, but her sixth sense told her to go back and take it. She was lucky; a nearby doorman later told her that the garbage collectors came along just 20 minutes later.

Reuters reported Gibson as saying "It was a huge, powerful and beautiful painting and I said to myself, it is wrong to be in the garbage.”

Gibson knew nothing about modern art, or the painting’s value, but she did some research on the web site of "Antiques Roadshow FYI," a companion program to the PBS show "Antiques Roadshow."

The painting was returned to its original owners and Elizabeth Gibson will receive a $15,000 reward, plus an undisclosed percentage of the sale.

Source: Reuters

French Inventor Reveals Mona Lisa’s Secrets

Parisian engineer Pascal Cotte has made some ultra-detailed digital scans of the Mona Lisa. He claims to have uncovered the true face under the centuries of varnish and restoration efforts, as well as the fate of the famous lady’s missing eyebrows and lashes.

In fact, the Mona Lisa originally had both eyebrows and lashes but, according to Cotte, they were obliterated by ancient restoration efforts.

Cotte, who grew up in Paris, has been fascinated by the painting ever since he was a boy and used his scientific training to develop a camera that could examine the portrait in depth. He has spent an estimated 3,000 hours analyzing the scans he made in the Louvre’s laboratory and discovered that Leonardo da Vinci had originally painted the two fingers of the Mona Lisa’s left hand in a different position, and that she holds a blanket, which today has faded from view. Da Vinci also originally painted her with a more expressive smile.

Some art historians are skeptical about Cotte and his findings, but he hopes his research will serve as a guide for future restorations on all ageing masterpieces and not just the Mona Lisa.

Source: AP

Outside The Lines

Trivia: Spanish Artists

Salvador Dali loved his wife, Gala, so much that he once stated would eat her when she died. He didn’t, but he did go into a deep depression after her death and his health declined until he died seven years later.

Catalan artist Joan Miró painted his masterpiece Still Life with Old Shoe because he couldn’t return to his native Spain due to the Civil War that broke out in 1937.

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands is indirectly descended from Velazquez' daughter, who was an ancestress of many members of the German aristocracy.

Hello everyone... Our Windows Mobile version of SegPlay™, SegPlayMobile™ has been released and we're receiving some great comments about it!

Our SegPlayPC pattern collection is continues to expand (at last count over 700 patterns in more than 30 sets are available)!! We've added some wonderful new pattern sets in the last few weeks including "James McNeill Whistler - Art for Art's Sake", and "Christmas Time".

Be sure to stop and check out our new Segmation Video Gallery where we've compiled a bunch of nicely done YouTube movies relating to painting and fine art. You'll definitely get inspired when you watch the "Painting with Food" videos!!

We're always looking for more appealing art pieces for our SegPlay™ online paint by number collection. If you are an aspiring artist and am interested in setting up a free personal category on SegPlay to showcase some of your work in our fun paint by number world, drop us an email submit@segmation.com.

We hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter.  Please feel free to pass it on to a friend or colleague. If you have any comments or suggestions about this newsletter, please drop us an email to: comments@segmation.com.

-Mark & Beth

Segmation • 2822 Filbert Drive • Walnut Creek, CA 94598

  

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