Quixotic

A Swedish winter

A summer pastime left us with a Swedish winter. Johns, Jon and I, painted the front facade with Viking linseed oil paint. Our work with Swedish natural pigments will be completed in the spring. "In Sweden we paint our house once." The Swedes add that it's good for fifty years. Good for the wrist and arm, and better still for the planet. 

1950s Pantheon, Roma

—1950s ecktachrome faded slide of the Pantheon, Rome, Italy

In 2000, I took a solo seven month sabattical with my three young children to Rome.  The train left Marino, our home in the Castelli Romani, seven times a day: 7:21 Roma, 8:37 Roma, 11:25 Roma, 1:48 Roma, 7:10 Roma and the 9:13 Roma. We hopped one of the two earliest trains every Saturday morning. They saw it all with enthusiastic eyes and protested the foced march with tired feet. If anything, they were troopers and true sports. At the Pantheon there was no place for the kids to sit, but bless the Romans, what could be better at our next destination then a toppled Roman Forum for the tired pilgrim, pellegrino...

Roman traffic whirled and honked and churned out diesel exhaust with vengence into the mouths of my children but oh, how the Italians love their bambini. Anything, absoultely anythung, for the children. And this is true today and always. 

The Pantheon is a memory maker. Pantheon = Greek, "honor all Gods." It is the best preserved of all Roman monuments, built legend says , on the very spot where Romulus, the mythological founder of Rome, ascended to heaven. 

Emperor Augustus built the first Pantheon in 27 BC which burned in 80 AD, struck by lightning, only to be burned again in 110 AD. Rebuilt by Hadrian around 120 AD, he hired a Greek architect. Apollodorous of Damascus was fabulously famous and though Hadrian professed a love of architecture, he had him executed over an argument about the temple design—the first terribly bad client. Painters Raphael and Annibale Carracci are buried here alongside the composer Arcangelo Corelli and the architect Baldassare Peruzzi. It is an object of beauty that has infleunced Western architecture for 2000 years. When I stood beneath the dome, gazed skyward through the oculus, heaven and earth met the hand of man.  

—waiting on the 8:37 Roma

Voltaire Almighty, a life in pursuit of freedom, by Roger Pearson, 2005

 

"Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats."—Voltaire

Voltaire the greatest French dramatist, and the epic poet of his century wrote in the neighborhood of fifteen million words, which he acted upon and exemplified. Born François Arouet, 1694, he adopted the name "Voltaire" in 1718, living to the 18th century ripe old age of eighty-four. He was called by his family 'Le Volontaire' meaning that he was 'a determined little thing.' 

One million people followed the funeral procession of the man who would later be regarded as the first human-rights campaigner of the modern era. 

"A teaching so irrelevant shall not by my doubts destroy; with empty sophism, thou shalt not my reason fool nor try. The human mind wants proof more clear than any priestly platitude."—Voltaire

In 2019, or in 1983, Bob Dylan echoes Voltaire's sentiments. "The times they are a changin," ever so slowly.

"You can turn anything into a religious context. Religion is a dirty word. It doesn't mean anything. Coco-Cola is a religion. Oil and steel are a religion. In the name of religion, people have been raped, killed and defiled. Today's religion is tomorrow's bondage."

—Bob Dylan, 1983

In 1759, embarking on his sixtieth year, he set to work on a new garden and a new home in the country, purchasing an estate in Ferney, France. Life has different stories. One decade after losing the love of his life in childbirth, scientist, Emilie du Chatelet, he had eighty peach trees planted, both early and late fruiting. Four gardeners were hired, twelve servants and twenty artisans to work on the project. And he published in unison, his most famous philosophical tale, Candide. He and Emilie had dedicated sixteen years together in study and daily debate—the great love affair of the Enlightenment— with great love and great pain.  Voltaire's natural leaning as a philosophe was heightened. She died in childbirth with the child of a young lover, a military officer who had replaced the elder Voltaire. How he wandered the halls at night weeping. Though she was married, Èmile was Voltaire's 'wife.' "They felt the earth move, and then debated how best to measure its meridians." Her learning companion. The priests conveniently turned an eye to the affairs of the wealthy who gave heavily to the church.

"God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere."—Voltaire

Émilie, who could divide a nine-figure number by a nine-figure number inside her head, was one of the very first people to use the word "optimiste."  In the early eighteenth century, they began studying how trajectories can take the "optimum" path. They also celebrated with 'white nights' the French expression for an all-night party, or 'bianca notte' in Italian, both modeled after the all-night parties in St Petersburg where the summer sun never sets.

"For women are more courageous than people think."—Voltaire

"Here I am by reason drawn to this retreat, at peace, at liberty; freedom that wise divinity. Whom all mortals desire, whose loss we all regret, is here the source of felicity. Study sustains me, and reason guides me with its light; I speak what I think, and do as I will."—Voltaire

In his old age, he locked himself away for fifteen hours a day, studying and writing, while people traveled from far and wide to catch a sighting of the 'rare bird' with the beak-like nose and eccentric dress. Like Leonardo, he was fond of brightly colored breeches, and opulent robes, donning silk caps. He welcomed few, he had books to write and battles to win. "The rhyming couplet, like the encyclopedia article, still came as easily as a breath."—Roger Pearson. Voltaire had become a rock star of philosophy. At times, "the grump" who had earlier held an open house to the world, would evict important visitors for trespassing on his time. In compensation, he took his daily stroll through his gardens at Ferney, at a preannounced hour, and the carriages lined up to catch a glimpse of the reclusive poet. In his last year, on St Francis' Day, our February 14th, he returned to his former years of welcome, and greeted visitors at the entrance to the chateau, with a grand dinner styled 'harvest festival.' Dinner for two hundred, with fireworks, singing, and dancing. Voltaire became again, the soul of the party, the 'folk hero' filled with energetic joy, throwing his hat into the air, in "sheer delight." On this day, one Reine Philiberte Rough de Varicourt, born 1757, age twenty, handed him the gift of a pair of white doves. She belonged to an impoverished noble family, possessed no dowry and was headed to the convent. To his horror, the doves were cooked that night. As recompense, and because she was 'kind and good,' Voltaire, 'the grandfather,' welcomed her into his household, along with her future husband. They would play an important role in the close of his life. 

What does it mean to be Voltairean? To be a philosopher and lover of knowledge—a freethinker. To strive to understand the universe and the world we live in through philosophy and knowledge while admitting that all official religions are an imposture in the service of political oppression.

"There is a limit to our metaphysical knowledge of the universe, but we can make the best of what we've got." —Voltaire

"Common sense is not so common."—Voltaire

'The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing."—Voltaire

Interested readers might seek out Voltaire's 1764, Dictionaire philosphique, an encyclopedic dictionary that rejected the precepts of the Roman Catholic Church and embraced those of the Enlightenment.  The Oxford Complete Works of Voltaire, 2020, the first complete annotated collection of his plays, novels, poetry, and letters, will expand to 220 volumes by 2020.

"The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood."—Voltaire

Roger Pearson is a professor of French at the University of Oxford, and a fellow of the Queen's College, Oxford. In 2004 he was appointed Officer in the Order des Palmes Académiques by the French government. 

Lucan portrait of Leonardo da Vinci

The Lady in Gray, 2018, and the Lucan portrait, tempera grassa on panel, 60 x 40 cm. (24 x 16") 1459 - 1523

And how delightfully crazy life is—you become the one you love. Against all the odds, beyond reason—"the divine," has a playful side. The divine loves beauty, we live on Earth, but humor, apparently even more. I trespassed into the realm of "selfie," and this is what I brought back. At first, I knew the image brought a painting to mind, but I didn't have a name—google made easy work of retreival—the Lucan portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. Two Tuscans, we carry the unique Etruscan gene, not yet erased by the ravages of time. Blue-eyed, lovers of birds, both possessed by art. I snapped it like many of us are apt, excused, or so I thought, by my 60th winter, something along the lines of silver hair and silver linings. 

The Lucan portrait is late 15th, early 16th century. Discovered where it rested in the cupboard of a private aristocratic home in Acerenza, Italy, the owners believed it was Galileo. After reaching the media, in 2011, a self-portrait was ruled out. From 2011 - 2018 though it remains the focus of heated debate over attribution to Leonardo. There exists a citation from 1815, held in Parma, professing it is indeed, the work of Leonardo da Vinci, in possession of "the noble family" Russo, at the Palazzo Baranello nella strada Cedronia of the Duke of Baranello.  The white feather bears touches of titanium white, but otherwise, it dates true. 

"PINXIT MEA" is painted on the backside in capitalized "mirror writing" running down the left side, not across the center. PINXIT MEA from Latin: "one painted," was added to the signature depiction of the artist's name, Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Raphael sometimes abbreviated it P, PIN, or PINX.

The portrait depicts Leonardo as a blue-eyed, middle-aged man. Testing supports the Renaissance date; carbon dating placed it  1459 - 1523, contemporary with Leonardo, who lived from 1452 - 1519. The script is in "iron gall" an ink of Leonardo's, matching that used in his Atlantic Codex. And gloriously, they found three fingerprints, and one left index fingerprint on the Lucan portrait is indubitably the same index fingerprint on the ebony beads of Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine.

As Obama said, after the election in 2016, "When the going gets weird, the weird go pro." Bring it on. 

Kieślowski on Kieślowski, edited by Danusia Stok, 1993

Regrettably, another great artistic life was cut short, Poland's best-known film director, Krzysztof Kieślowski was born, in June 1941, Warsaw, Poland, and died in 1996. Where to begin, I admire his work, his eye, his sensitivity — the films he so masterly crafted to evolve through ideas, not actions. He lived a nomadic childhood, traveling from one sanitorium to another, with his sister and mother, looking in vain to cure his father's tuberculosis. Reticent and wary by nature, the constant drifting made him more so. He told of how Poland is home to romantics, captured by the Odyssian theme of going back home, in history and culture, lured by the family home, where successive generations pass unbroken. (Italy in my world casts the spell.) He described his youth, spent climbing roofs with friends: "I'd climb with him, too, and we'd always drink the wine somewhere high above the town." The director, even as a child, searched for his bird's eye view.  

"You make a film to give people something, to transport them somewhere else and it doesn't matter if you transport them to a world of intuition or a world of the intellect."—Kieślowski

He repeatedly spoke of the realm of perception, intuition, superstition, dreams, constituting our inner sanctum of living, and how it is the hardest thing to craft in art. What we know and what we feel. 

He wrote of being convinced that when we give of ourselves, to others, we do so from our perspective, the only way we have of interpreting things. And then, he asks, are we not indeed expecting to garner a better opinion of ourselves. Our projections cast onto another, even in giving, says he, taint the act. And the question remains unanswered by philosophers 2,000 years later. 

He asks, are some people born at the wrong time? I don't agree with that but perceive what he alluded to. I see the world as far, far, too finely exquisite by design to have even a grain of sand misplaced, let alone a soul. Do we love the previous epoque more than the present, at times why not, and are we capable of manifesting memory from ages past, most certainly, it is one of life's finest guilty pleasures. I would debate with our featured director, the importance of recognizing the sublime alignments over the misfires, everything unto heaven.   In the Double Life of Veronique, 1991, Veronique recognizes a twin, sensing she is not alone in the world. She has the visceral feeling of losing someone who is very dear to her, but she has no idea who. It is a story about feelings, certain sensibilities, raw emotions and nothing else — no action. The haunting soundtrack to the film sold 50k copies in France. Composed by self-taught musician,  Zbigniew Preisner aka Van der Budenmajer, an invented 19th c. Dutch composer, (pure artistic play between director and musician) the score uses Dante's poetry as lyrics set to music, sung in Old Italian. Old Italian is so unearthly in its beauty that even the Italians often can't interpret it. There is no need to. 

"If you haven't got your own compass within yourself which clearly points you in a certain direction then you won't find it."—Kieślowski

In the famous trilogy, Blue, White, and Red, he deals with three distinct experiences.

Blue: speaks to LIBERTY, the prison of emotions and memory.

White: speaks to EQUALITY, through the lens of a compassionate man, addressed by the Polish saying—"There are those who are equal and then those who are more equal."

Red: speaks to FRATERNITY, and about whether by chance, people sometimes are born at the wrong time.  

Please see all you can of Kieślowski's work, and carry it tenderly with you. To succeed in art is to manifest something the viewer interprets instantly as an intimate experience they've alone encountered, to which they've been gifted a new iteration, made even more beautiful than the first through the artist's skill. And that is why we love and gravitate toward art.

Swept From The Sea a film by Beeban Kidran, 1997

Swept From The Sea is based on Joseph Conrad's, 1901, short story Amy Foster. It tells the tale of Russian emigree and sole shipwreck survivor, Yanko Goorall, (Vincent Perez), who finds himself sick and hungry on the doorstep of a farm on the Cornish shore. All fear him, and his foreign tongue, except Amy (Rachel Weisz), a simple servant deemed a "queer sort" by her cruel family, who befriends him. Shot on location in Cornwall and West Yorkshire, Yanko performs breathtaking Russian dance steps on a landscape of cliffs by the sea.  Gravity runs away when Russian men start dancing; they defy physics. Amy has a love affair with the sea, where she collects things that wash ashore, and displays them in her sea cave.  Yanko becomes like a son to Dr. Kennedy, from whom he learns English, and in return, teaches chess.  It is an ethereal star-struck love story with hints at Homer, and destiny.  
"I would change nothing, my love, my gold, we are the lucky ones."—Yanko  
"I will love him until the end of the world."—Amy 

Phoenix Pictures, 1997, copyright

BALZAC—"Love needs tranquility."

Honoré de Balzac, (1799 —1850)

French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac is etched in my heart. Reading Balzac, I want to rescue him from a disenfranchised childhood and stroll arm in arm confessing my foibles and despair because he so readily has exposed his own. Balzac is a confidant I recognize at once. Praised for his orchestration of sequential short stories, La Comédie Humaine, set in the years following 1815 and the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, he remains one of France's great literary figures.

Balzac's father, Bernard Francois Balssa, was one of eleven children from a poor family. He left for Paris in 1776 with one Louis coin to change his fortune, becoming Secretary to King's Council, and a Freemason. Bernard then changed the family surname to Balzac, adding the nobiliary particle 'de' later.

Born the 20th May 1799, in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France, Balzac was shipped away to a wet nurse as a baby living apart from his family the first four years of his life. Arriving home, he was greeted by distanced and cold parents. In 1814, at the age of fifteen, he attempted suicide by jumping off a bridge on the Loire River. His life was brief, plagued by both emotional and by financial difficulty. Balzac liked to wander through Parisian streets incognito to people watch, gathering research for his manuscripts. He died in Paris on the 18th August 1850, at fifty-one years old, just five months shy of marrying the love of his life, Éwelina Hánska. She wrote to Balzac anonymously in 1832 under the pen name "L'Étrangèr," The Foreigner from Odessa, commenting on his use of sadness, cynicism, atheism, and in general a negative portrayal of women in La Peu de Chagrin. She had attached no return address. Balzac placed a classified add in the Gazette de France seeking the anonymous author of the critique. Thus began his fifteen-year correspondence with "the object of sweetest dreams." Éwelina had married a wealthy landowner twenty years her senior to save the family fortune. After his death, Balzac traveled in 1843 to St. Petersburg where they met for the first time, and with some difficulty, obtained permission from the Tsar to marry.

Balzac caricature by Nadar in 1850.

 
"a desk, a riding- school hack, eating and drinking and sleeping at fixed hours, I should be like everyone else. And that's what they call living, that life at the grindstone, doing the same thing over and over again... I am hungry and nothing is different to appease my appetite."

—Honoré de Balzac

 

Balzac drank 14 - 16 cups of strong black coffee a day, shunning the normalcy of regimented life leaving that for everybody else. He had to be unique and had to write. Balzac would fail at everything but his writing. His writing habits consisted of a small meal at 5 -6 followed by sleep until midnight, rising to write for a 15-hour stretch.

      Oscar Wilde and Proust revered Balzac. Zola, Dickens, Poe, Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Faulkner, Kerouac, and Italo Calvino were each influenced by his work. Victor Hugo was the last to visit with him at his bedside and delivered his eulogy.

      My favorite, so far: THE WILD ASS'S SKIN.   A young man finds a piece of shagreen which magically grants his wishes, but at a cost, with each wish granted, the skin shrinks diminishing his energy.  I had a mystical experience reminiscent of the plot touring Florence, Italy.

 

PÉRE GORIOT

"Eugéne had been entirely too quick to take this woman's word for her own kindness. Like all those who cannot help themselves, he had signed on the dotted line, accepting the delightful contract binding both benefactor and recipient, the very first clause of which makes clear that, as between noble souls, perfect equality must be forever maintained. Beneficence, which ties people together, is a heavenly passion, but a thoroughly misunderstood one, and quite as scarce as true love. Both stem from the lavish nature of great souls."

 

THE LILY OF THE VALLEY

The storied love affair between the elder married Henriette de Montsauf and young devoted Felix de Vandenesse, the 'triple seduction of pride, devotion, and beauty.'

 

—"Love needs tranquility."

 

—"Be not too confiding, too frivolous, nor over enthusiastic. Too confiding a nature loses respect, frivolity brings contempt, and others take advantage of excessive enthusiasm."

 

—"You will never have more than two or three friends in the course of your life."

 

—"If you want to gather respect and fondness and be spoken of as amiable and witty, and a true friend; then talk to others of themselves, find a way to bring them forward and brows will clear, lips will smile and after you leave the room all present will praise you." -—Henriette's letter to Felix

 

—"Silence within our souls allows us to hear the faintest sound; the habit of taking refuge within ourselves develops a perception which discerns every quality of the affection about us."

 

—"Let my woman's eye see for you sometimes." —Henriette

 

—"My affection is involuntary and yet deliberate."— Felix de Vandenesse

Graham Robb's biography BALZAC  writes of the love affair between Honoré and Éwelina Hanska, "it reads like an experimental novel in which the female protagonist is always trying to pull in extraneous realities but which the hero is always determined to keep on course, whatever tricks he has to use."

Black Bear

When all the wood is flaming color, the oaks are the last to go. I met a black bear for the first time, she foraged in the wood just steps from my jogging feet. We almost bumped into each other. Listening to Dylan—right about the time Bob sang, "Oh, oh are we going to fly down in the easy chair"—I dismissed the commotion in the bramble beside me. Probably rabbits. Then I heard a weighted scramble and stopped in my tracks, and so Hugo tethered on his leash. Turning I see her head peering at me from the backside of an oak, the one highlighted by sunlight in this photo. She's eight feet up the trunk and we're fifteen feet parted. I convince myself she is a cub, only to realize her mother must be near, and that could spell trouble. I step backward to size her up, still clinging to the trunk I find a silky jet black adult body. She is bigger than me by a good measure. I have nothing to fear, but bolt. She is as scared as me. Running as fast as my feet will carry me, Hugo never utters a sound. 

When next we meet, I will tell her I love her. And that I am here to protect her woods, not harm her. Black bears seldom bother anyone, they are highly intelligent, and peaceable creatures. In Native American lore, an encounter inspires strength and courage, taking action and leadership, and helping self or others. A symbol of the importance of solitude, and turning within, black bear speaks to spiritual hibernation. One must be quiet in the woods, talk out loud and black bear will remember what you said. She provided grounding forces, and at the same time told me to be playful, to bask in the sun, and let the juice of ripe autumn berries run down my chin. 

—Our neighbor, the blueberry farmer, said he saw her and two cubs earlier in the spring by our house. If you see a black bear, talk to her in a calm, reassuring manner, while backing away slowly, not taking your eyes off her. See: Bear With Us Sanctuary and Rehabilitation Center For Bears

Juliette de Baīracli Levy—first female wholistic veterinarian

Juliette de Baīracli Levy—"A woman of no pretensions."

Juliette de Baīracli Levy, born the eleventh hour of the eleventh day, in the eleventh month of 1912 was a world-renowned English herbalist and the first female wholistic veterinarian. She passed from this world in 2009. Born into a wealthy Jewish family in Manchester, England, her mother was Egyptian, and her father was a Turkish businessman who sold rugs and diamonds. Each year, her Turkish uncle visited, gifting her a puppy. Invariable, at two months old, the pup would die due to distemper, breaking her heart. She dedicated her life to studying animal husbandry, pursued a veterinarian degree in the U.K., only to leave off studies dissatisfied with the practices. And so she set off in her travels, living and working with the farm workers, the tribes, and the Gypsies, learning Gypsy Lore. Her wanderings led her gathering herbal remedies from the U.S.A., Spain, France, Tunisia, Greece, Mexico, and Turkey. her three favorite herbs were: ROSEMARY, GERANIUM LEAF, and SOUTHERNWOOD.


"Nature never goes wrong."—Juliette



Early on, Juliette began naturally rearing Turkuman Afghan Hounds, a practice which became legendary, and one she continued lifelong. Her Afghans were noted for their speed, health, vitality, and beauty. The only Turkuman Afghan Hound to win Westminster was descended from her line. After wholistically curing her dogs of distemper, she established a 1930's Distemper Clinic in London, garnering the world's attention. Sir Albert Howard, the founder of the Soil Association, and pioneer in 'organic farming' encouraged Juliette to travel the world learning all she could about herbs. The distemper clinic cured the dogs of both Douglas Fairbanks and Arthur Guinness. 

In Granada, Spain, she met her husband, a Spanish journalist, and together they had two children. As he was in the Foreign Legion, Juliette traveled raising her children alone in exotic and natural settings. Dedicated to the vegetarian diet, they were raised on goat's milk and soft cheeses. She framed her life around Socrates belief that the two essentials of man were: pure air and water. In her life, she wrote many herbal handbooks, along with fiction, and poetry. Juliette's children were raised alongside her dogs, goats, bees, and a donkey. One summer, she and the children raised hawks. Cows were her favorite animal, and it grieved her to see the injustice performed by humanity and the commercial food industry.  Forever an ardent animal rights advocate, Juliette was one of the first. 

"Where a bee can live—man can live. Where the bees no longer live—there is a warning."—Juliette de Baīracli Levy

(The documentary Juliette of the Herbs by director Trish Streeten is available on Amazon).

Her dog's saved her life many times. One day while seated beneath a tree with a female Afghan, the bitch began running away from the tree, as Juliette pursued her the branch broke overhead, landing square where she had been stationed. It was proof again of what she already knew; dogs, in particular, are attuned to earthquakes and movement. Juliette was a dog whisperer before the term was coined. She liked to sunbath, one day she was doing just that with her pet owl—who also enjoyed the practice—laying remarkably on his back beside her. Guests arrived and she rose to greet them, on returning to the blanket, the guests exclaimed, "Oh! Juliette your owl is dead!" "No, he's just sunbathing."

Her herbal formulations for supplementing dog's health (Natural Rearing Herbal Compound and Natural Rearing Daily Health) are imported from the U.K. and sold by Natural Rearing of Oregon, U.S.A., ask for Roger Schroeder. 

Juliette's favorite poem spoke of the sea. She lived seaside for her adult life, in many places, among them the Greek Island of Kythiranfor ten years, tending one of her eleven gardens across a lifetime. Her last home was the Azores, though she died in a Swiss nursing home, near her daughter. She had a special affinity with the olive tree; the tree of light. She often told the story of King Soloman when asked what one wish he would ask for, and his reply—to know and understand the animals...

I Will Make You Brooches

I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song in morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and me
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.

I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river, and bright blows the broom,
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body bright
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.

And this shall be for music when no else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.

—Robert Louis Stevenson

Johan Tobias Sergel; Swedish Neoclassical Sculptor

Sculptor and draftsman, Johan Tobias Sergel, was a significant Northern European artist of the late eighteenth century. I like his work very much, little information exists about his life. 



Self-portrait, with son Gustav and common-law wife, Anna-Rella Hellstrom, wash drawing, 1793.

Sergel was born on the 7th September 1740 and died in his native home of Stockholm, Sweden, in 1814. Johan was the court sculptor to King Gustaf III of Sweden and worked with the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen.  Sergel's work is regarded to have surpassed that of Thorvaldsen in the art of free-standing pieces.

Sergel was apprenticed in 1756 at age sixteen in Stockholm to court sculptor, Pierre Hubert L'Archeveque. Two years later, he traveled to Paris with Pierre where he studied at the French Academy of Art. Johan left for Rome on a state-sponsored scholarship at age 27, living and working there for eleven years, 1767- 1778. Upon arrival in Rome, he suffered from depression which lasted for four months. On entering the 'city of art, he was already an accomplished sculptor. 

"Rome made him deeply aware that there were two avenues for a sculptor to follow; Antiquity or Nature itself."—Research attributed to; Anne- Marie Leander Touati, The Rediscovery of Antiquity: The Role of the Artist.

  "A mon arrive a Rome, je vais qu'il n'y avait d'autre maître a suivre que l'Antique ou la Nature. J'etais assez avance pour voir que je me savais n'en. Et qu'il failloit recommencer a etudier comme on apront les premiers principa a un enfant."—from his diaries and letters

Johan spent his days studying at museums in Rome, as expected, and by night he studied models, drawing from life. After four years of intense academy study in Rome, Johan joined a group of international young artists who formed what they called a "special academy." The beginnings of Neoclassicism stirred within them.



Venus and Anchises, (Venus och Anchises), by Johan Tobias Sergel, n.d.

While in Rome he produced major groups of work in classical mythology and a hugely ambitious piece, History, which depicted the accomplishments of Gustavus Adolphus before the Chancellor Oxenstierna.



Woman Climbing out of Bath, by Johan Tobias Sergel, n.d.

Portrait of the songwriter and performer Carl Michael Bellman, by Johan Tobias Sergel, 1792.

Sergel left for Stockholm in 1779 when summoned by Gustaf III to return to court as court sculptor, replacing his master Pierre Hubert L'Archeveque who was fatally ill at the time. On his way home to Sweden, he spent almost a year in Paris. It was here that Sergel presented a plaster piece Othryades the Spartan for admission to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris, January 1779. No known marble version exists.

Othryades the Spartan, Dying, by Johan Tobias Sergel, c. 1740-1814.

Much of the work produced by Sergel in Rome preceded his arrival in Paris. Madame du Barry (mistress of Louis XV) and the Baron de Breteuil were among his Parisian collectors.

Diomedes with The Palladium, by Johan Tobias Sergel, 1770, Nationalmuseum Stockholm, terracotta. It is a  masterpiece of heroic classical style.

Mars and Venus, by Johan Tobias Sergel, 1775, plaster, Nationalmuseum Stockholm.

Venus swooning in the lap of her rescuer Mars—of course, she is! Art critics note the juxtaposition of a strong male body and the languid female, to be an obsession of Sergel's. Lots of his work possesses a serious degree of bawdy sexual humor. Johan was also adept and prolific at caricatures. His characters move with bold emotion and a jaunty stride.

 

Passionate Couple, by Johan Tobias Sergel, wash drawing, n.d.

Centaur Embracing a Bacchante, by Johan Tobias Sergel, terracotta, 1775-1778.

I don't know about you, my dear reader, but the pointer finger on the left hand, looks suspiciously too long, as though Sergel's afterthought. As though he first sculpted the hand entirely on the grip of her derriere then decorum crept, and he extended the last joint like the pinky finger rides the air holding a gold-rimmed cup of tea when all you want to do is devour the person opposite you, not Earl Gray. Then again, one might interpret the index finger as a reference for the arrow that will in a moments time find its way home.



Dancing Bacchante, by Johan Tobias Sergel, crayon on paper, n.d.

 

Caricature of Frantz Christopher Henrik Hohlenberg (1764-1804), Danish shipbuilder and naval officer, by Johan Tobias Sergel, 1797. 

 

A late 18th c. plaster sculpture candelabra after the model by Johan Tobias Sergel. (courtesy Bukowskis Auction House of Sweden)

Sergel experienced what critics call his "Hypochondriac Cycle" in 1795. In a short period, he lost both his dear friend and patron Gustaf III and his wife Anna- Rella Hellstrom in 1796. He produced copious amounts of work during his melancholy, dwelling on his fears, nightmares, and thoughts of suicide. It was a period of "reason versus madness" for Sergel. In our frailty, we are our most loveable, as in our strength we give inspiration.

Johan Tobias Sergel; Scene of Despair

"The similarity to Fuseli and Goya emerges all the more clearly in Sergel's urge to lay bare his private world through his art." — Maget Antoinette Trainee and Michel Regis, Musee Louvre.



Fauno, by Johan Tobias Sergel, 1774.