Taiwan's Glory

Shi Wen-long

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觀念－許文龍和他的奇美王國 by 黃越宏

 

Chi Mei Corporation

 

Chi Mei Medical Center

 

Chi Mei Museum

 

奇美愛樂管絃樂團

Chimei Philharmonic Orchestra

 

成功的企業家：許文龍 by 石方元

 

Excerpts from Wikipedia.org

許文龍（1928年2月25日－），台灣奇美集團創辦人，原本是從事化工塑膠業，1998年成立奇美電子，轉投資液晶螢幕。

喜好思考，樂趣是拉小提琴、曼陀鈴、釣魚，被稱為「老頑童」。提倡企業乃「追求幸福的手段」的宗旨，1988年率先實行周休二日制，並鼓勵員工準時上下班。創辦奇美醫院與奇美博物館，他曾發表：「五百年後，這世界上或許已不見奇美企業；然而，奇美醫院和奇美博物館卻可能永續存在。」

奇美電子是目前全世界第四大液晶面板廠，於南科積極營造光電聚落，2007年計劃將完成九座廠房。2008年6月，富比士公佈奇美集團創辦人許文龍身價淨值十七億美元，居是年台灣第十五。

 

Wen-long Shi (許文龍) is a Taiwanese businessman and the founder of Chi Mei Corporation, the largest maker of ABS resin in the world. Shi has been ranked among Forbes' World's Richest People. He was a chairman of Chi Mei until 2004, when he resigned as chairman, though he still holds significant stakes in the company and sits on its board.

Shi was a senior advisor to Chen Shui-bian during his presidency and is known to support pro-Taiwan independence causes, a stance which has made him unpopular with Mainland China.

Shi is an amateur performing concert violinist. He founded the Chi Mei Museum, in which he collects several valuable string instruments made by Antonio Stradivari or Guarneri del Gesù.

 

 

Chi Mei Corporation

 

Chi Mei Corporation (奇美實業) is a plastics producer in Taiwan. It is the largest maker of ABS resin in the world, producing about 1 million tons of ABS annually as of 1999. It has factories in Tainan and Zhenjiang. It also produces acrylic glass, polystyrene, thermoplastic elastomer and synthetic rubber. The company was founded by Wen-long Shi in 1960 as Chi Mei Industrial Company Ltd., the first acrylic sheet manufacturer in Taiwan; it was renamed Chi Mei Corporation in 1992. Chi Mei has a partnership with Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation of Japan (Mitsubishi holds 27.08% of shares).

In 2009 the company pleaded guilty to a price fixing conspiracy in respect of sales of TFT-LCDs between 2001 and 2006.

Chi Mei Corporation is part of a privately-held holding company called the Chi Mei Group, which has numerous subsidiaries. One of them is Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO), which was founded in 1997 as a subsidiary of Chi Mei Corporation. Chi Mei Group is the largest shareholder in publicly listed CMO. CMO is the world’s No. 4 and Taiwan’s No. 2 largest maker of TFT-LCD panels and the likely owner of Westinghouse Digital Electronics.Though CEO Douglas Woo has maintained the confidentiality of the ownership of the private Westinghouse licensee, they admit a significant vertically-integrated relationship exists between the two.

In 2001, the Chi Mei Group along with IBM Japan set up International Display Technology, which it subsequently sold to Sony in 2005.

 

* 台獨”商人許文龍黯然隱退 by 林 海

* 許文龍的故事

* 奇美藝術典藏西洋名畫展

* Curious Curatorship at Chi Mei by Max Woodworth

 

 

Chi Mei Museum

The Chi Mei Museum (奇美博物館) in Tainan, Taiwan, is the private museum of the Chi Mei Corporation. The collection is divided into five categories: Western Art (including painting, sculpture, decorative arts and period furniture); Musical instruments; Natural history; Arms and armor; Antiquities and artifacts. (Another collection to demonstrate the progress of technology is being formed and designed by experts, with assistance from many famous science museums.)

Founder: Hsu Wen-Lung (許文龍) set up the Chi Mei Museum, because he wanted to complete his childhood dream. He is know for his collection of antique violins — Stradivarius, Guarneri, Gesu and Nicolo Amati. He is not only good at managing the company but also at playing the violin. He had performed publicly many times. Because he loves music so much and wants to improve the level of classical music in Taiwan, he founded the Chi Mei Cultural Foundation and provides a scholarship for developing artists.

About the Chi Mei Museum: Established in 1997, the museum is open to the public and has several exhibition areas, including art, natural history, historic weapons, musical instruments, ancient objects, sculptures and industrial techniques. The museum has a collection of European paintings in the 18th and 19th century, presenting the development of western art. The historic weapon exhibition presents weapons from prehistoric time, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age to modern times. The two canons in front of the museum were designed and built in 1689. They were taken away by foreigners in the 19th century until Chi Mei Culture Foundation purchased them in 1994. The museum also collects valuable violins, including 5 Antonio Stradivaris, 2 Guarneri del Gesu, Nicolo Amati, Jacob Stainer, Amati, Rogeri, Joseph Guarneri Filius Andrea, Seraphin, Gagliano and Guadagnini. Besides these, the Chi Mei Museum also owns a private symphony orchestra named the Chimei Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 2003. The Chi Mei Museum loans the antiques instruments to distinguished musicians, such as Yo-yo Ma, free of charge. It is a strong commitment of this Foundation that good instruments be played by good players and the good music thus produced be shared by all mankind "-Mr. Wen-long Shi, President, Chi Mei Culture Foundation.

The Chi Mei Culture Foundation was established over 20 years ago, and the wealth of the collection encompasses different eras and geographical areas. At present, experts recognize the Chi Mei Museum as one of the most prestigious private collections in the world. Forbes magazine, in its February 1996 article on private collectors in Asia, called Chi-Mei Museum "one of the world's most surprising art collections." The museum is open to the public, free of charge.

 

Artworks

The Madonna of Humility by Paolo di Giovanni Fei
Chatiry by Jacques Blanchard
The Last Tears by Narciss-Virgile Diaz de Pena
La bénédiction des blés by Jules Breton
Faties Venire a moi les enfants by Lucas Cranach the Younger
Saint Martin et le Mendicant by El Greco

 

Videos:

Chi-Mei Museum

榮耀之門─十九世紀法國巴黎官方沙龍展

奇美曼陀林樂團 ChiMei Mandolin Orchestra

 

 

* Chi Mei Museum: A realization of industrialist Hsu Wen-lung’s childhood dreams by Fiona Lu

Excerpts: What Hsu has put together is not only a museum that reflects his lifelong passion for arts and personal wealth---wealth which enables Hsu to collect the great amount of art pieces. The entrepreneur’s generous investment has also earned the museum praise from certain distinguished visitors as “one of the best private museums in Asia regarding the size of its collection.” ...

Chi Mei Museum is located on the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth floors of the Chi Mei Group’s headquarters in Jen Te, Tainan County. It brings together more than 10,000 pieces representing major art styles of the West, from the period of the ancient Roman Empire, the Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo, to neoclassicism, romanticism and post-Impressionism....

 

 

La Sainte Famille by Joos Van Cleve

 

Joos ( also Joost ) van Cleve ( van Beke ) (ca. 1480/90, Cleves - 1540/41, Antwerp), was a Netherlandish painter who was active in Antwerp from 1511 to 1540. He died between November 1540 and April 1541.

He was one of twenty van Cleefs who painted in Antwerp, but whether the well-known Henry, Martin, and William (the younger) were kin of his cannot be determined. Of his father, William (the elder), we know only that he was a member of the Antwerp Academy, which body Joos joined.

He is the father of the painter Cornelis (Sotte Cleef) van Cleve (1520-c.1569).

He is known primarily for his religious and portrait painting. Among his best known works are portraits of Francis I and Eleonora of Austria, King and Queen of France. He collaborated with Joachim Patinir on some works.

He is also known for integrating Northern and Southern modes of painting, as wells as using certain aspects of his compositions repeatedly, to please the growing art market.

 

* The Virgin’s Peculiar Breast: Negotiating Nudity in Devotional Paintings by Nancy Yakimoski

Abstract: According to hermeneutics scholar Margaret Miles, during Tuscany’s early Renaissance nudity in devotional art produced a tension between sexual (erotic) attraction and religious meaning. Specifically, glimpses of the Holy Mother’s exposed breast as she nursed the Christ child could encourage the ‘wrong’ kind of looking; this disrupted the sacred status of her image and destabilized religious meaning. To manage potential erotic readings while attempting to foster ‘proper’ (devotional) gazes, painters made specific artistic choices when representing the Virgin’s bare breast. Obliging artists turned to the art of an earlier era – art that emphasized the symbolic rather than the naturalistic. This paper argues that employing a pictorial program and style that consciously represented the breast as denaturalized and disembodied transformed it to a symbol which relieved the tension between religious meaning and voyeuristic looking while still communicating religious message(s).

 

Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting

Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting represents the sixteenth-century response to Italian Renaissance art in the Low Countries. These artists, who span from the Antwerp Mannerists and Hieronymus Bosch at the start of the century to the late Northern Mannerists such as Hendrik Goltzius and Joachim Wtewael at the end, drew on both the recent innovations of Italian painting and the local traditions of the Early Netherlandish artists. Antwerp was the most important artistic centre in the region. Many artists worked for European courts, including Bosch, whose fantastic painted images left a long legacy. Jan Mabuse, Maarten van Heemskerck and Frans Floris were all instrumental in adopting Italian models and incorporating them into their own artistic language. Dutch and Flemish painters were also instrumental in establishing new subjects such as landscape painting and genre painting. Joachim Patinir, for example, played an important role in developing landscape, while Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Pieter Aertsen helped popularise genre painting.

 

 

Saint Martin et le Mendicant by El Greco

 

El Greco (1541 – April 7, 1614) was a painter, sculptor, and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" (The Greek) was a nickname, a reference to his Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος (Doménikos Theotokópoulos).

El Greco was born in Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the centre of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before travelling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance. In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best known paintings.

El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school. He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting.

 

Mannerism

Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe. Stylistically, Mannerism encompasses a variety of approaches influenced by, and reacting to, the harmonious ideals and restrained naturalism associated with artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and early Michelangelo. Mannerism is notable for its intellectual sophistication as well as its artificial (as opposed to naturalistic) qualities.

The definition of Mannerism, and the phases within it, continue to be the subject of debate among art historians. For example, some scholars have applied the label to certain early modern forms of literature (especially poetry) and music of the 16th and 17th centuries. The term is also used to refer to some Late Gothic painters working in northern Europe from about 1500 to 1530, especially the Antwerp Mannerists—a group unrelated to the Italian movement. Mannerism also has been applied by analogy to the Silver Age of Latin.

 

 

Portrait of an Artist by Michel Martin Drolling

 

Michel Martin Drolling (March 7, 1789 – January 9, 1851) was a neoclassic French painter , painter of history and portraitist.

He was born in Paris. There he begun painting under the supervision of his father, the painter Martin Drolling, then after 1806 he studied with Jacques Louis David . For his Colère of Achilles he won the Prix de Rome in 1810. After having remained with French Academy in Rome, it is made known for its Mort of Abel exposed to Salon of 1817. He received many orders consequently and produces in particular The Lord descends on earth where he establishes his empire and spreads his good deeds for the ceiling of the room of the famous Men in the Louvre, the State-Generals of Turns in 1836 and the Convention of Alexandria in 1837 for the museum of history in the Palace of Versailles, Jesus in the middle of the doctors for church Our-Lady-of-Lorette of Paris in 1840. He was elected member of Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1837 and it is named professor with École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. Its paintings of history follow the spirit of the time: theatrical installations combined with bright colors, the contrast of the lights and the precision of the detail. He died in Paris. His most important pupils were: Paul Baudry, Jean-Jacques Henner, Victor Biennnourry, Jules Breton, Theodor Aman, Roger Fenton, Paul-Alfred de Curzon, Charles Joshua Chaplin, Pierre-Victor Galland, Jean-Jacques Henner, Cornelius Krieghoff, Charles Nègre, John Charles Robinson, William Strutt.

 

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism (sometimes rendered as Neo-Classicism or Neo-classicism) is the name given to quite distinct movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw upon Western classical art and culture (usually that of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome). These movements were dominant during the mid 18th to the end of the 19th century.

What any "neo"-classicism depends on most fundamentally is a consensus about a body of work that has achieved canonic status (illustration, below). These are the "classics." Ideally—and neoclassicism is essentially an art of an ideal—an artist, well schooled and comfortably familiar with the canon, does not repeat it in lifeless reproductions, but synthesizes the tradition anew in each work. This sets a high standard, clearly; but though a neoclassical artist who fails to achieve it may create works that are inane, vacuous or even mediocre, gaffes of taste and failures of craftsmanship are not commonly neoclassical failings. Novelty, improvisation, self-expression, and blinding inspiration are not neoclassical virtues.

 

 

Portrait of Madame de Blanzay by Alexis Joseph Perignon

 

* Alexis Joseph Perignon (Paris 1806 - Paris 1882)

Excerpt: Alexis-Joseph Pérignon was trained first by his father, Alexis Nicolas Pérignon, before entering in the studio of the well-known French neo-classical Romantic painter, Antoine-Jean Gros. Leaving the studio of his master, Pérignon spent several years working as a restorer of Old Master paintings. From 1834 until 1881, he exhibited regularly at the Salon, where he won a gold medal in 1844 and received high praise for his portraiture. He was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1856. A celebrated portrait painter, Pérignon achieved success through his ability to capture with sensitivity and accuracy not only the character of the sitter, but also the styles and fashions of his time, very much working in the tradition of Ingres. As a result he received numerous commissions from the fashionable circles of Europe, notable examples being the Portrait of Princess Bariatinskaïa and the Portrait of Marquise de Feydeau de Brou (both in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris).

 

 

Four Allegories of Music by Hans Makart

 

Hans Makart (May 28, 1840 - October 3, 1884) was a 19th century Austrian academic history painter, designer, and decorator; most well known for his influence on Gustav Klimt and other Austrian artists, but in his own era considered an important artist himself and was a celebrity figure in the high culture of Vienna, attended with almost cult-liked adulation.

The "Makartstil", which determined the culture of an entire era in Vienna, was an aestheticism the likes of which hadn't been seen before him and has not been replicated to this day. Called the "magician of colors", he painted in brilliant colors and fluid forms, which placed the design and the aesthetic of the work before all else. Often to heighten the strength of his colors he introduced asphalt into his paint, which has led to some deterioration in his paintings over the years. The paintings were usually large-scale and theatrical productions of historical motifs. Works such as The Papal Election reveal Makart's skill in the bold use of color to convey drama as well as his later developed virtuoso draughtsmanship.

Makart was deeply interested in the interaction of all the visual arts and thus in the implementation of the idea of the "total work of art" which dominated discussions on the arts in the 19th century. This was the ideal which he realised in magnificent festivities which he organised and centred around himself. The 1879 Makart-parade was the culmination of these endeavors. Makart was also a friend of the composer Richard Wagner, and it can be argued that the two developed the same concepts and stylistic tendencies in their differing art forms: a concern for embedding motifs of history and mythology in a framework of aestheticism, making their respective works historical pageants.

Makart's work, like those of other academic artist's of the time, consisted of allegorical painting and history painting as seen in Catherina Carnaro, Dianas Hunt, The Entry of Charles V into Antwerp, Abundantia, Spring, Summer, The Death of Cleopatra, The Five Senses, and Bacchus and Ariadne. He was considered the Austrian rival to the French William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Within Austria, his nearest competitor was considered to be Hans Canon, and he was associated with the sculptor Viktor Tilgner, who travelled with him to Italy.

 

Academic Art

Academic art is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies or universities.

Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des beaux-arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, and the art that followed these two movements in the attempt to synthesize both of their styles, and which is best reflected by the paintings of William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Suzor-Coté, Thomas Couture, and Hans Makart. In this context it is often called "academism", "academicism", "L'art pompier", and "eclecticism", and sometimes linked with "historicism" and "syncretism".

The art influenced by academies and universities in general is also called "academic art". In this context as new styles are embraced by academics, the new styles come to be considered academic, thus what was at one time a rebellion against academic art becomes academic art.

 

 

The Storm by Pierre-Auguste Cot

 

Pierre Auguste Cot (February 17, 1837 – July 1883) was a French painter of the Academic Classicism school.

He was born in Bédarieux, and initially studied at l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse before going to Paris. He studied under Leon Cogniet, Alexandre Cabanel and William-Adolphe Bouguereau. From the 1870s, his popularity grew quickly. In 1874 he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He created several works of lasting popularity, including Le Printemps, featuring two young lovers sitting upon a swing, and The Storm. Both these paintings are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; The Storm belongs to the museum while Le Printemps is owned privately.

Cot also was renowned for his portraits, which made up the majority of his work. The more enduring figurative work, such as The Storm, is comparatively rare.

 

* 暴風雨 by 皮耶．奧古斯特．考特 - Chimei Museum

Excerpt: 暴風雨是法國學院派畫家皮耶．奧古斯特．考特(Pierre-Auguste Cot)重要代表作之一，曾完成大、中、小三種版本，大畫現典藏於紐約大都會美術館，完成於 1880 年，原為收藏家凱撒琳．渥爾夫（Catharine L. Wolfe）訂購而畫，曾參加當年的巴黎沙龍展；小畫完成時間稍晚，現為奇美所珍藏。考特師承學院派大師布葛赫（Bouguereau）及卡班內（Cabanel），以取材古典寓意作品著稱，他甜美的畫風及寫實的描繪，在當時大受歡迎。 此作品的構圖與主題明顯受到Prud’hon普律東的影響，畫中人物對角線的構圖加強畫面的動感，戲劇性的光源則細膩地勾勒出一對走避暴風雨，奔馳於山野的年輕男女。 關於主題人物達菲尼斯與柯蘿葉的故事，有多種版本與說法，在希臘神話中，達菲尼斯為信使之神麥丘里與女水神奈雅絲（Naiads）的兒子。森林之神潘恩（Pan）曾把蘆葦編製成葦笛，據說其悠揚的笛聲常在森林中迴盪著，深深地受到牧羊人、農夫與獵人們的喜愛，潘恩還曾經自傲地以葦笛來挑戰太陽神阿波羅（Apollo）的七弦琴。達菲尼斯亦相當喜愛葦笛那優美的笛聲，於是就向潘恩學習吹奏的方法，且經常跟在潘恩的身邊練習，而最後達菲尼斯不但學會了吹奏的方法，還發明了牧歌，成了牧歌的發明者。達菲尼斯後來與一位女神有了戀情，然而他最後卻背叛了這段愛情，在上天的責罰之下變成了瞎盲的人。 然而在另一個版本中，達菲尼斯與柯蘿葉的故事與前一個說法完全不同，故事是出自一位希臘文學家隆歌斯（Longus）約在三或四世紀時的創作，故事中描述著達菲尼斯與柯蘿葉這對情侶，在經歷了許多的冒險之後，又再度結合，共同過著幸福快樂的日子。在這個故事中，達菲尼斯與柯蘿葉展開了一段牧歌式的美麗戀情，過程相當浪漫有趣。

 

The Storm by Pierre-Auguste Cot (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

 

 

The Message by Thomas Cooper Gotch

 

Thomas Cooper Gotch (1854–1931) was an English Pre-Raphaelite painter and book illustrator, and brother of John Alfred Gotch the noted architect.

In Newlyn he worked first at painting local scenes in the then-fashionable realist manner. But even these often had a romantic edge, such as The Wizard or an obvious love of surface colour.

In 1891 a visit to Florence, Italy, opened his eyes to the work of the romantic European symbolists. He took the brave step of changing his style, to make romantic decorative paintings, when the prevailing fashion was against him. His first work in this new style was My Crown and Sceptre (1892), which was the progenitor to his most well-known work The Child Enthroned (1894). The latter, on original exhibition, was hailed by The Times newspaper as the star of that year's Royal Academy show. Until that time, his new style of work had drawn much critical scorn.

He painted religious Christian scenes, history painting, portraits, and a few landscapes. His best-known paintings, which form the bulk of his work, usually portray girl-children in ornate classical or medievalist dress. The appearance of the girls in his paintings is often noted as being very modern. Gotch was a close and lifelong friend of Henry Scott Tuke, whose work featured a parallel focus on the boy-child. Gotch's lifelong adoration of the beautiful girl-child was shared by other Victorian giants such as John Ruskin and Lewis Carroll.

His emotionally-charged work was immensely popular and critically acclaimed for most of his life, although interest in neo-romanticism waned after the First World War and he turned to watercolours of flowers. He also illustrated books, such as Round About Wiltshire, The Land of Pardons (an early study of Breton folklore & Celtic Christianity), and contributed illustrations to school readers such as Highroads of Literature.

 

* Chi Mei Museum: A realization of industrialist Hsu Wen-lung’s childhood dreams by Fiona Lu

Excerpt: The Message by British painter Thomas Cooper Gotch (1854-1931) is the story of the Annunciation retold in modern style. Gotch was a British painter well known during his lifetime for his distinct regional style. In his later years, the subject of many of his paintings depicted the transition of women from youth to maturity.

The museum’s purchase of the drawing once sparked controversy in England, Chin discloses, as the British regard the painter as a national treasure and argue over whether or not the government should sell any work by the great painter to a foreign connoisseur. The British government approved the deal after obtaining Chi Mei Museum’s promise that the masterpiece would receive intensive attention and the best maintenance.

The British remained greatly concerned over the painting after it was sold, Chin says. “We were told that when former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher arrived in Taiwan during a trip after her retirement, the first question she asked of a representative from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs greeting her at the airport was whether the museum had taken good care of the painting,” he says.

 

The Pre-Raphaelites

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (also known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The three founders were soon joined by William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner to form a seven-member "brotherhood".

The group's intention was to reform art by rejecting what they considered to be the mechanistic approach first adopted by the Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo. They believed that the Classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on the academic teaching of art. Hence the name "Pre-Raphaelite". In particular, they objected to the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the founder of the English Royal Academy of Arts. They called him "Sir Sloshua", believing that his broad technique was a sloppy and formulaic form of academic Mannerism. In contrast, they wanted to return to the abundant detail, intense colours, and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian and Flemish art.

The Pre-Raphaelites have been considered the first avant-garde movement in art, though they have also been denied that status, because they continued to accept both the concepts of history painting and of mimesis, or imitation of nature, as central to the purpose of art. However, the Pre-Raphaelites undoubtedly defined themselves as a reform-movement, created a distinct name for their form of art, and published a periodical, The Germ, to promote their ideas. Their debates were recorded in the Pre-Raphaelite Journal.

 

 

La Récolte de Foins by Julien Dupré

 

Julien Dupré (1851 - 1910) was born in Paris on March 18, 1851 to Jean Dupré (a jeweler) and Pauline Bouillié and began his adult life working in a lace shop in anticipation of entering his family’s jewelry business. The war of 1870 and the siege of Paris forced the closure of the shop and Julien began taking evening courses at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs and it was through these classes that he gained admission to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

At l'Ecole he studied with Isidore Pils (1813 - 1875) and Henri Lehmann (1814 - 1882). In the mid 1870s he traveled to Picardy and became a student of the rural genre painter Désiré François Laugée (1823 - 1896), whose daughter Marie Eléonore Françoise he would marry in 1876; the year he exhibited his first painting at the Paris Salon.

Throughtout his career Dupré championed the life of the peasant and continued painting scenes in the areas of Normandy and Brittany until his death on April 16, 1910.

Paintings in Chimei Museum by Julien Dupré: La récolte des foins, Feeding Time, At Pasture, A Young Milkmaid with Cattle in a Landscape

The Barbizon school

The Barbizon school (circa 1830–1870) of painters is named after the village of Barbizon near Fontainebleau Forest, France, where the artists gathered.

The Barbizon painters were part of a movement towards realism in art which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time.

In 1824 the Salon de Paris exhibited works of John Constable. His rural scenes influenced some of the younger artists of the time, moving them to abandon formalism and to draw inspiration directly from nature. Natural scenes became the subjects of their paintings rather than mere backdrops to dramatic events.

During the Revolutions of 1848 artists gathered at Barbizon to follow Constable's ideas, making nature the subject of their paintings.

One of them, Jean-François Millet, extended the idea from landscape to figures — peasant figures, scenes of peasant life, and work in the fields. In The Gleaners (1857), Millet portrays three peasant women working at the harvest. There is no drama and no story told, merely three peasant women in a field. Gleaners are poor women gathering what's left after the rich owners of the field finished harvesting. The owners and their laborers are seen in the back of the painting. Millet here shifted the focus, the subject matter, from the rich and prominent to those at the bottom of the social ladders. Millet also didn't paint their faces to emphasize their anonymity and marginalized position. Their bowed bodies are representative of their every day hard work.

The leaders of the Barbizon school were Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau, Jean-François Millet and Charles-François Daubigny; other members included Jules Dupré, Constant Troyon, Charles Jacque, Narcisse Virgilio Diaz, Charles Olivier de Penne, Henri Harpignies, Gabriel Hippolyte LeBas (1812-1880), Albert Charpin, Félix Ziem, Anton Mauve, François-Louis Français and Alexandre DeFaux.

Both Rousseau (1867) and Millet (1875) died at Barbizon.

 

 

Baigneuse by Henri Lebasque

 

Henri Lebasque (1865-1937) was born in 1865 at Champigné (Maine-et-Loire). He started his education at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts d’Angers, and moved to Paris in 1886. Here, Lebasque started studying under Léon Bonnat, and assisted Humbert with the decorative murals at the Panthéon. Around this time, Lebasque met Camille Pissarro and Auguste Renoir, who later would have a large impact on his work.

Lebasque's vision was coloured by his contact with younger painters, especially Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, founders of the The Nabis' Group and the Intimists who first favoured the calm and quietude of domestic subject matter. From his first acquaintance with Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, Lebasque learnt the significance of a colour theory which stressed the use of complementary colours in shading.

Lebasque was a founding member of the Salon d'Automne in 1903 with his friend Henri Matisse. Two years later a group of artists exhibited there including Georges Rouault, André Derain, Edouard Vuillard and Henri Matisse while keeping solid links with other artists such as Gustave Rouault, Raoul Dufy, Louis Valtat and especially Henri Manguin, who made him discover the south of France.

His time in South of France would lead to a radical transformation in Lebasque’s paintings, changing his colour palette forever. Other travels included the Vendée, Normandie and Brittany, although Lebasque would always prefer the small idyllic villages of the South of France.

Lebasque had some commercial success during his lifetime. He worked on the decorations at the theatre of the Champs-Elysées and of the Transatlantique sealiner.

Lebasque died at Cannet, Alpes Maritimes in 1937.

His work is represented in French museums, notably Angers, Geneva (Petit Palais), Lille (Musée des Beaux-Arts), Nantes and Paris (Musée d’Orsay) as well as many more around the world. Famed as a painter of 'joy and light', Lebasque is admired for the intimacy of his subject matter and his unique delight in colour and form.

 

 

Othello by Pietro Calvi

 

Bust of Ira Aldridge as Othello by Pietro Calvi, (1833-1888). Ira Frederick Aldridge (July 24, 1807 New York City – 7 August 1867 Łódź, Congress Poland) was an American stage actor who made his career largely on the London stage. He is the only actor of African American descent among the 33 actors of the English stage with bronze plaques at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Othello is a character in Shakespeare's Othello (c.1601-1604). The character's origin is traced to the tale, "Un Capitano Moro" in Gli Hecatommithi by Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio. There, he is simply referred to as the Moor.

Othello is a brave and competent soldier of advanced years and Moorish background in the service of the Venetian Republic. He elopes with Desdemona, the beautiful daughter of a respected Venetian senator. After being deployed to Cyprus, Othello is manipulated by his ensign, Iago, into believing Desdemona is an adultress. Othello murders her before killing himself.

There exists debate over whether Othello was a Barbary Moor or a Black Moor. Some consider him to be a Barbary Moor rather than a Black Moor, such as E.A.J. Honigmann, and cite various references such as contradictory evidence and an ambassador of the Moors from the Barbary Coast arriving in England some time before Othello was written. It should be noted that the exact date that Othello was written is unknown, though sources indicate that it was written between 1601 and 1610, sometime after the Moorish delegation.

In his Arden edition of the play, Honigmann summarises the contradictory evidence. He argues that the various uses of the word 'black' (for example, "Haply for I am black") do not help, since 'black' could simply mean 'swarthy' for Elizabethans. Iago twice uses the word 'Barbary' or 'Barbarian' to refer to Othello, apparently referring to the Barbary Coast inhabited by the Berbers and Arabs. Yet Roderigo also calls him 'the thicklips', which seems to refer to (perhaps) African physiognomy. Honigmann notes that since these comments are all insults, they need not be taken literally.

 

 

Joachim-Elman by Antonio Stradivari

 

Antonio Stradivari (1644 – December 18, 1737) was an Italian luthier, a crafter of stringed instruments such as violins, cellos, guitars and harps. Stradivari is generally considered the most significant artisan in this field. The Latinized form of his surname, Stradivarius, as well as the colloquial, "Strad", is often used to refer to his instruments.

Stradivari's instruments are regarded as amongst the finest bowed stringed instruments ever created, are highly prized, and still played by professionals today. Only one other maker, Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, commands a similar respect among violinists. Fashions in music, as in other things, have changed over the centuries, and the accepted supremacy of Stradivari's and Guarneri's instruments is only true today. In the past, instruments by Nicolò Amati and Jacob Stainer were preferred for their subtle sweetness of tone.

The world's two largest publicly accessible collections of Stradivari instruments are those of the U.S. Library of Congress with three violins, a viola, and a cello, and the Agency of National Estates of Spain, with a quartet of two violins, the Spanish I and II, the Spanish Court cello, and the Spanish Court viola, exhibited in the Music Museum at the Palacio Real de Madrid (Royal Palace). The collection of the The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra had the largest number of Stradivari in its string section, purchased in 2003 from the collection of Herbert R. Axelrod, until it recently decided to sell them off. A collection assembled by Rodman Wanamaker in the 1920s contained as many as 65 stringed instruments by such masters as Stradivari, Gofriller, Baptiste and Giuseppe Guarneri. Included was "The Swan," the last violin made by Stradivari. The collection, known as The Cappella, was used in concerts with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski before being dispersed after Wanamaker's death. The Vienna Philharmonic uses four violins and one cello. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has three Stradivari violins dated 1693, 1694, and 1717. The University of South Dakota, in Vermillion, South Dakota, has in its collection one of two known Stradivari guitars, one of eleven known viola da gambas, later modified into a cello form, one of two known choral mandolins, and one of six Stradivari violins that still retain their original neck. In the interests of conservation, the Messiah Stradivarius violin—on display in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England—has not been played at all in recent years. The Royal Academy of Music's Collections include several instruments by Antonio Stradivari, including the 'Joachim (1698), Rutson (1694), the Crespi (1699), Viotti ex-Bruce (1709), Kustendyke (1699), Maurin (1718) and the Ex Back (1966) violins, Ex Kux (1714), and the Archinto (1696) violas, the Marquis de Corberon (1726) and the Markevitch (1709) celli.

 

* Violin by Antonio Stradivari, 1722 ex “Joachim-Elman” by Violin Archive Project of Chi Mei Museum

Excerpt: The violin Joachim-Elman was made in 1722. By this time, Stradivari had already attained a high level of maturity in his technique, but he was still continuously working to refine the details of the violin appearance and curvature, trying to achieve a more sturdy structure and a fuller sound. Despite the differences in the handling of the curvature and details that differentiated his style from earlier works, the overall form still retains the standard proportion that Stradivari had established in 1704.

The violin bears the label of the original maker, although the date has faded slightly. At 35.4 cm in length, the violin has a broad and shallow grain on the two-part back, with a slightly downward slope from the central seam. The central portion of the front has a medium grain, which grows coarser towards the edges. The medium-width grain spreads throughout both sides and the head of the instrument.

This instrument was once owned by the Romantic Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim (1831–1907). It was subsequently transferred to the Russian violinist Mischa Elman (1891–1967), who used it on tour for 41 years since 1907. The violin has thus been given the name “Joachim-Elman,” a name which gives anyone playing the instrument a great deal to live up to. In 1948, the “Joachim-Elman” Stradivari came into the possession of the collector and connoisseur Samuel Bloomfield, and then in 1981 it was acquired by the Czech violinist Josef Suk II (1929–present), who used it in recordings of Mozart’s violin concertos, which won him the France’s Grand Prix du Disque. With its unique style and rich history, this violin is one of the treasures of the Chi Mei Museum’s collection.

 

* Violin by Antonio Stradivari, 1709 ex “Viotti-Marie Hall” by Antonio Stradivari by Violin Archive Project of Chi Mei Museum

* Cello by Antonio Stradivari, c. 1730 ex “Pawle” by Violin Archive Project of Chi Mei Museum

* Dramatic Price Increase of Rare Violins Attracts More Investors by Stradivari Invest

* Chi Mei Museum World's Most Generous Violin Lender: Observers by Sofia Wu

 

The Legend of Italian Violins: Treasures of Chi Mei Museum

 

 

Cannon of Middelburg VOC 17th Century

The Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC in Dutch, literally "United East Indian Company") was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia.

Dutch Formosa refers to the period of colonial Dutch government on Formosa (now known as Taiwan), lasting from 1624 to 1662. In the context of the Age of Discovery the Dutch East India Company established its presence on Taiwan to trade with China and Japan, and also to interdict Portuguese and Spanish trade and colonial activities in East Asia.

The time of Dutch rule saw economic development in Taiwan, including both large-scale hunting of deer and the cultivation of rice and sugar by imported labour from Fujian in China. The government also attempted to convert the aboriginal inhabitants to Christianity and suppress some cultural activities they found disagreeable (such as forced abortion and habitual nakedness), in other words, to "civilise" the inhabitants of the island.

However, they were not universally welcomed and uprisings by both aborigines and recent Han Chinese arrivals were crushed brutally by the Dutch military on more than one occasion. The colonial period was brought to an end by the invasion of Koxinga's army after just 37 years.

 

 

 

 

Taiwan's Glory * 台灣之光 * Taiwan's Glory