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Esther (Millais Painting)
''Esther'' (1865) is a painting by John Everett Millais depicting the central character from the Biblical Book of Esther. It is from Millais's Aesthetic phase, when he was influenced by the work of Frederic Leighton and James McNeill Whistler. The painting depicts Esther, the Jewish wife of the Persian king Ahasuerus, as she prepares to enter the presence of her husband. As she is uninvited, she risks death, but does so to inform him of a plot against the Jews. Millais borrowed the Yellow Jacket, a gown given to General Gordon by the Chinese emperor after his defeat of the Taiping rebellion. In order to create a culturally unspecific effect, he turned it inside out, producing the abstract patterns visible in the painting. Millais creates a dramatic visual effect by vivid contrasts of colours, setting the deep blue of the curtain against the yellow dress and the white columns. The minimising of the narrative aspect of the scene is also in line with the Aestheticist approach o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Everett Millais
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, ( , ; 8 June 1829 – 13 August 1896) was an English painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was a child prodigy who, aged eleven, became the youngest student to enter the Royal Academy Schools. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded at his family home in London, at 83 Gower Street (now number 7). Millais became the most famous exponent of the style, his painting ''Christ in the House of His Parents'' (1849–50) generating considerable controversy, and he produced a picture that could serve as the embodiment of the historical and naturalist focus of the group, ''Ophelia'', in 1851–52. By the mid-1850s, Millais was moving away from the Pre-Raphaelite style to develop a new form of realism in his art. His later works were enormously successful, making Millais one of the wealthiest artists of his day, but some former admirers including William Morris saw this as a sell-out (Millais ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oil Painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of the world. The advantages of oil for painting images include "greater flexibility, richer and denser colour, the use of layers, and a wider range from light to dark". But the process is slower, especially when one layer of paint needs to be allowed to dry before another is applied. The oldest known oil paintings were created by Buddhist artists in Afghanistan and date back to the 7th century AD. The technique of binding pigments in oil was later brought to Europe in the 15th century, about 900 years later. The adoption of oil paint by Europeans began with Early Netherlandish painting in Northern Europe, and by the height of the Renaissance, oil painting techniques had almost completely replaced the use of tempera paints in the majority ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Book Of Esther
The Book of Esther ( he, מְגִלַּת אֶסְתֵּר, Megillat Esther), also known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as "the Scroll" ("the wikt:מגילה, Megillah"), is a book in the third section (, "Writings") of the Judaism, Jewish ''Tanakh'' (the Hebrew Bible). It is one of the five Scrolls () in the Hebrew Bible and later became part of the Christian Old Testament. The book relates the story of a Israelites, Hebrew woman in Achaemenid Empire, Persia, born as Hadassah but known as Esther, who becomes queen of Persia and thwarts a genocide of her people. The story forms the core of the Jewish festival of Purim, during which it is read aloud twice: once in the evening and again the following morning. The books of Esther and Song of Songs are the only books in the Hebrew Bible that do not mention God in Judaism, God. Setting and structure Setting The biblical Book of Esther is set in the Persian Capital city, capital of Susa (''Shushan'') in the third year of the reign ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aesthetic Movement
Aestheticism (also the Aesthetic movement) was an art movement in the late 19th century which privileged the aesthetic value of literature, music and the arts over their socio-political functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be produced to be beautiful, rather than to serve a moral, allegorical, or other didactic purpose, a sentiment exemplified by the slogan "art for art's sake." Aestheticism originated in 1860s England with a radical group of artists and designers, including William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It flourished in the 1870s and 1880s, gaining prominence and the support of notable writers such as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde. Aestheticism challenged the values of mainstream Victorian culture, as many Victorians believed that literature and art fulfilled important ethical roles. Writing in ''The Guardian'', Fiona McCarthy states that "the aesthetic movement stood in stark and sometimes shocking contrast to the crass materialism of Britain in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederic Leighton
Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton, (3 December 1830 – 25 January 1896), known as Sir Frederic Leighton between 1878 and 1896, was a British painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. His works depicted historical, biblical, and classical subject matter in an academic style. His paintings were enormously popular, and expensive, during his lifetime, but fell out of critical favour for many decades in the early 20th century. Leighton was the bearer of the shortest-lived peerage in history; after only one day his hereditary peerage became extinct upon his death. Biography Leighton was born in Scarborough to Augusta Susan and Dr. Frederic Septimus Leighton (1799-1892), a medical doctor. Leighton's grandfather, Sir James Boniface Leighton (1769-1843), had been the primary physician to two Russian tsars - Alexander I and Nicholas I - and their families, and amassed a fortune while in their service. Leighton’s career was always cushioned by this family wealth, with his father pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His signature for his paintings took the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger for a tail. The symbol combined both aspects of his personality: his art is marked by a subtle delicacy, while his public persona was combative. He found a parallel between painting and music, and entitled many of his paintings "arrangements", "harmonies", and "nocturnes", emphasizing the primacy of tonal harmony. His most famous painting, ''Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1'' (1871), commonly known as ''Whistler's Mother'', is a revered and often parodied portrait of motherhood. Whistler influenced the art world and the broader culture of his time with his theories and his friendships with other lea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ahasuerus
Ahasuerus ( ; , commonly ''Achashverosh'';; fa, اخشورش, Axšoreš; fa, label=New Persian, خشایار, Xašāyār; grc, Ξέρξης, Xérxēs. grc, label=Koine Greek, Ἀσουήρος, Asouḗros, in the Septuagint; la, Assuerus in the Vulgate) is a name applied in the Hebrew Bible to three rulers and to a Babylonian official (or Median king) in the '' Book of Tobit''. Etymology The Hebrew form is believed to have derived from the Old Persian name of Xerxes I, ''Xšayāršā'' ( 'king of all male; Hero among Kings'). That became Babylonian ''Aḥšiyaršu'' (, ''aḫ-ši-ia-ar-šu'') and then ''Akšiwaršu'' (, ''ak-ši-i-wa6-ar-šu'') and was borrowed into Hebrew as ''Ăḥašwêrôš'' and thence into Latin as ''Ahasuerus'', the form traditionally used in English Bibles. The Persian name was independently rendered in Ancient Greek as ''Xérxēs''. Many newer English translations and paraphrases of the Bible have used the name Xerxes. Biblical references ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles George Gordon
Major-general (United Kingdom), Major-General Charles George Gordon Companion of the Order of the Bath, CB (28 January 1833 – 26 January 1885), also known as Chinese Gordon, Gordon Pasha, and Gordon of Khartoum, was a British Army officer and administrator. He saw action in the Crimean War as an officer in the British Army. However, he made his military reputation in Qing Dynasty#Rebellion, unrest and external pressure, China, where he was placed in command of the "Ever Victorious Army", a force of Chinese soldiers led by European officers which was instrumental in putting down the Taiping Rebellion, regularly defeating much larger forces. For these accomplishments, he was given the nickname "Chinese Gordon" and honours from both the Emperor of China and the British. He entered the service of the Isma'il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt in 1873 (with British government approval) and later became the List of governors of pre-independence Sudan, Governor-General of the Sudan, where he di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taiping Rebellion
The Taiping Rebellion, also known as the Taiping Civil War or the Taiping Revolution, was a massive rebellion and civil war that was waged in China between the Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the Han, Hakka-led Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. It lasted from 1850 to 1864, although following the fall of Tianjing (now Nanjing) the last rebel army was not wiped out until August 1871. After fighting the bloodiest civil war in world history, with over 20 million dead, the established Qing government won decisively, although at a great price to its fiscal and political structure. The uprising was commanded by Hong Xiuquan, an ethnic Hakka (a Han subgroup) and the self-proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ. Its goals were religious, nationalist, and political in nature; Hong sought the conversion of the Han people to the Taiping's syncretic version of Christianity, to overthrow the Qing dynasty, and a state transformation. Rather than supplanting the ruling class, the Taipings sought to upend the m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italians, Italian (Republic of Venice, Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school (art), Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno. During his lifetime he was often called ''da Cadore'', 'from Cadore', taken from his native region. Recognized by his contemporaries as "The Sun Amidst Small Stars" (recalling the final line of Dante Alighieri, Dante's ''Paradiso (Dante), Paradiso''), Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of colour, exercised a profound influence not only on painters of the late Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Art of Europe, Western artists. His career was successful from the start, and he became sought ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882), generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (), was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Rossetti inspired the next generation of artists and writers, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones in particular. His work also influenced the European Symbolists and was a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement. Rossetti's art was characterised by its sensuality and its medieval revivalism. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats and William Blake. His later poetry was characterised by the complex interlinking of thought and feeling, especially in his sonnet sequence, ''The House of Life''. Poetry and image are closely entwined in Rossetti's work. He frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his pictures, spanning from '' The Girlhood of Mary Virgin'' (1849) and ''Astarte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marion Spielmann
Marion Harry Alexander Spielmann (London, 22 May 1858 – 1948) was a prolific Victorian art critic and scholar who was the editor of '' The Connoisseur'' and ''Magazine of Art''. Among his voluminous output, he wrote a history of ''Punch'', the first biography of John Everett Millais and a detailed investigation into the evidence for portraits of William Shakespeare. Early life Marion Spielmann (perhaps confusingly, several female relatives were similarly called Marian Spielmann) was born in London in 1858, the youngest son and eighth child of Adam Spielmann (1812–1869), one of three brothers who had emigrated from Schokken (now Skoki), near Posen (now Poznan). Of Marion's own brothers, two were also celebrated figures: Sir Isidore Spielmann (1854–1925) was the eldest and was a civil-engineer turned art-connoisseur, knighted in 1905; the middle brother, Sir Meyer Spielmann (1856–1936) was primarily concerned with education and youth-rehabilitation, knight ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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