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Inspiration from Artists Week 81 : Bonus Artist HIERONYMUS BOSCH
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Message
Posted
Hieronymus Bosch was a Dutch artist born (between 1450 and 1456). He came from a family of painters but very little is known about him. His life and career had to be pieced together from a collection of historical documents, some written by Bosch himself, but most were simple bills and tax receipts. It is assumed that his father or one of his uncles taught him to paint, but none of their work survived.
He married into a wealthy family around 1480 and benefitted from the status this gave him, enabling him to establish his own workshop soon after the marriage. At this point he became an artist in his own right and gained influential royal patrons. He revolutionised art during the Northern Renaissance. Most of his work was painted in oils on oak panels, and his paintings with their rough impasto surface differed from the tradition of the great Dutch painters at the time. He was considered by some to be the very first surrealist artist and later artists such as Salvador Dalí were heavily influenced by him.
His most famous painting was ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ (1490-1500) - this was thought to have been painted to commemorate a count’s marriage and it is believed this triptych was intended to illustrate ‘the benefits and hazards’ of marriage, at the same time highlighting Bosch’s fondness for humour and absurdity. More than 500 years later it remains a source of intense fascination for art historians and art lovers alike, unable to decide whether it was a ‘condemnation of sin’ or a ‘celebration of hedonism’.
Bosch never dated his work and may have only signed some of them. Fewer than 25 paintings remain today that can be attributed to him.
The Garden of Earthly Delights
Details
The Haywain - another triptych
Tondal’s Vision
The Concert in the Egg
The House of Ill Fame
Details
The Haywain - another triptych
Tondal’s Vision
The Concert in the Egg
The House of Ill Fame
Edited
by Jenny Harris
Posted
The word 'unique' gets bandied around about many artists, but here's one who was truly unique. The church at the time was keen on showing its largely illiterate flock the perils of sin, and many frescoes and paintings did just that. Even so, Bosch stands out from the crowd. His work has influenced many artists. It's the kind of work where you find new things the more you study it...maybe some things you don't want to find. Most definitely a 'one off' artist. Incredibly fanciful constructions. Paintings over 500 years old, and still disturbing.
Posted
I’m not sure what to make of them , do I need to make anything of them other than admire the skill .I would bet if they were painted in the last hundred years art analyst or analysts In general would made a great deal out of them . A few artists paint similar today and we label it modern art ,nothing is new in art it’s nearly always been done before in some shape or form .
Posted
I have oft thought that considering people were being burned at the stake , he was lucky to escape death - the one including a pig dressed as a Nun is a bit naughty , and he seemed to be sending up the church , definitely an influence on Dali unless they were using the same drugs . Wonderful stuff though .
Stephen Weight
Posted
I can never see a Bosch without wishing there were some sort of explanation printed handily alongside it: experts don't really agree - even on why he used the name Bosch - which means wood or forest; he was born in 's-Hertogenbosch (duke's wood/forest), but his real name was van Aken: was there a deep meaning to that, or did he just prefer the name Bosch? Don't know! Were his paintings deeply religiously allegorical? Well, that could be yes and no: they were certainly allegorical, but was that a consequence of doctrinally conservative Flemish Protestantism or - was he just having fun? Don't know that, either!
Someone - well, Tanja, and a couple of others - were making the point that there's nothing (or not much) new in painting: except that I think, in his time, Bosch probably WAS new; entirely original. Did he incorporate a self-portrait into one of his paintings - and is he having a a quiet chuckle at us: it looks as though he is! Something else I notice about him - most paintings of that period, other than individual portraits, tend to feature figures with not especially characterful faces; Bosch's faces are different - there are definite, distinctive expressions: you tend not to get that in Breughel paintings, for instance (though Breughel's drawings are quite different from his paintings). You also tend to get expressive faces, usually grim ones, in cathedral gargoyles ...
Anyway, you can speculate till the cows come home about what it all might mean, but whatever they mean, his paintings are fabulous. I wouldn't entirely dismiss the thesis, sketched in by Professors Evans and Smith up above, that he was consuming some kind of hallucinogenic - except, these are carefully planned and composed paintings; I await their more detailed findings!
Edited
by Robert Jones, NAPA
Posted
I think the protestant reformation was more in the 16th century in the Netherlands. These are very interesting paintings and to me, a mind in conflict. Or maybe nightmarish dreams with swirls of fantasies edging in and out from the corner of an eye. Religion, the inspiration. This is the first time I have looked at these paintings and I can definitely see that a few artists have been influenced by his work.
Posted
Denise, looked it up - you're right.
Flanders/the Netherlands was Catholic at the time, and his death was commemorated in a Mass. Which does make that painting of a pig in a nun's wimple as potentially risky as Russell Edwards suggested - and yet, Bosch seems to have been widely celebrated in his own lifetime (we should all be so lucky...), by his patrons and the church. This makes him even more interesting than I thought he was. Maybe it also tells us more about the Catholic church than I imagined it did - eg, a realization that sin was not confined to the laity but afflicts all..... and maybe this is simplistic twaddle on my part, which is entirely possible! And even quite likely.....
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