Paintings in TV Shows

[cornershop15]

A companion thread for http://www.britmovie.co.uk/forums/ge...ngs-films.html. Simple as that.

In The Sentimental Agent episode The Beneficiary (1963), Carlos Thompson notices the Mona Lisa, arguably the most famous painting in the world, when talking to one of his employees in the Mercury International warehouse:

I doubt the original would have been loaned to a 'mere' ITC show. From its Wikipedia page:


Again from Wikipedia:

Mona Lisa (also known as La Gioconda or La Joconde) is a 16th-century portrait painted in oil on a poplar panel by Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci during the Renaissance in Florence, Italy. The work is currently owned by the Government of France and is on display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris under the title Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo.

The painting is a half-length portrait and depicts a seated woman (it is almost unanimous that she is Lisa del Giocondo) whose facial expression is frequently described as enigmatic.[2] The ambiguity of the subject's expression, the monumentality of the composition, and the subtle modeling of forms and atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the continuing fascination and study of the work. The image is so widely recognized, caricatured, and sought out by visitors to the Louvre that it is considered the most famous painting in the world [That's what I said!].

As with 'Paintings in Films', only occasional contributions from yours truly, so I look forward to seeing other examples. I particularly liked Roger Thornhill's Vertigo posts and Barbara's inclusion of The Horse's Mouth at the other thread.

The captures that introduced both are just routine ATWs as I am far more committed to the actors I'm looking for and researching their careers. The next two threads I hope to create today, 'Joint Ventures' and 'Getting to Know You', probably won't generate half as much interest but I will still give it a go, and hope for the best.

[Gerald Lovell]

The Mona Lisa is always popular. In fact . . .



. . . so popular Julian Glover has Leonardo whip up another six (albeit with "this is a fake" written on the back of them in felt tip) much to the consternation of Tom Chadbon, Lalla Ward and Tom Baker as Doctor Who in the story "City of Death" (1979).

[GRAEME]

I don't suppose anybody knows the painting of the young woman with the very elongated face on the wall of the Stevens' house in Bewitched (TV series)?

It might be a Modigliani...

[Mr Sloane]

This one ?

Portrait of a Young Girl Painting by Amedeo Modigliani - Portrait of a Young Girl Fine Art Prints and Posters for Sale

[jimw1]

I found it listed as a portrait of jeanne hebuterne....

Art Reproduction of Modigliani- Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne

[Mr Sloane]

This is also on the wall of the Stephen's home.

It is a copy of Rembrandt's Girl With Broom.

[GRAEME]

That's great, Huge, cheers.

Anyone know it exactly?

[GRAEME]

Oh well, it looks like it is that one. Thanks everybody.

This is an interesting site about the paintings seen on the show!

[cornershop15]

Belated Thanks, Gerald. The Mona Lisa can also be seen in the Harrisons' living room in And Mother Makes Three.

Can someone tell me what has happened to yesterday's posts showing a painting in Bewitched? I asked for them to be moved here, where they are better suited, but haven't seen them at either thread. Very much hoping nothing's been lost and that we will see their return.

Cornershop

[GRAEME]

Can someone tell me what has happened to yesterday's posts showing a painting in Bewitched? I asked for them to be moved here, where they are better suited, but haven't seen them at either thread. Very much hoping nothing's been lost and that we will see their return.

Cornershop

They're behind you!

[cornershop15]

A great relief to see the return of those posts. Thanks to whoever moved them from 'Paintings in Films'. Pleased for you, Graeme

Is this painting, seen in Man in a Suitcase: Property of a Gentleman (1967), a real Cezanne, or a fake?:

[GRAEME]

It's called Still Life with Peppermint Bottle

[cornershop15]

Re: Cezanne painting in 'Man in a Suitcase: Property of a Gentleman'

It's called Still Life with Peppermint Bottle

Thanks very much, Graeme From the National Gallery of Art website:


It was painted somewhere between 1893 and 1895. The National Gallery of Art,
in Washington, has 22 of Cezanne's oil paintings and 88 of his "works on paper".

Description at WebMuseum (ibiblio.org):

One of the most original of Cézanne's still lifes--although every one is singular in conception. He has repressed the depth of the table--we see nothing of its top--and the objects seem to be suspended in vertical planes, like the wall itself, a wall that has been brought into closest connection with the objects through its colors and severe lines. But in this contracted space, Cézanne has ventured to paint, with exquisite skill, transparent glass through which we see several layers of objects; he has also kneaded the drapes into complicated folds in which the objects are set like trees and buildings in hidden depressions of the ground. In suppressing the horizontal plane, he has given a more evident cohesion to the forms and colors on the surface of the canvas; but he has also played more fondly with the material properties of things, their solidity, weight, opacity, and transparency.

The painting is marvelous in the invention of lines. Few of Cézanne's works are so abundant in curves and continuities. The peppermint bottle with its elegant double curvature, the large flask--simpler and grander--are two melodies of great purity and strength. Their parts reappear in the simpler roundings of the fruit. Grandest of all are the curves of the cloth--perfectly fresh forms that remind us of no past conventions for drapery lines, but are freer than any we know, although in strict harmony with the neighboring shapes. On the heavy blue cloth is an engaging play of black ornamentation--secondary rhythms of curved and straight forms ingeniously adapted to the lines of the other objects and so deployed that we cannot make out the inherent pattern on the cloth--we know only the more interesting pattern that results from its interception by the accidental creases and folds. It is a free pattern of lines, now rigid like the lines of the wall and table, now curved like the bottles, here florescent, elsewhere branching, and in places with small notes of free floating form, which remind us of the first abstractions of Kandinsky. Characteristic continuities and crossings of line are the dark reddish band on the wall prolonged in the flask; the vertical line continued in the side of the bottle and re-emerging in the line of the cloth touching the lemon from which descend vertical stripes on the blue drape. The wall, the figured drape and the bottle and flask belong to the same austere range of green, grey, violet, and blue with many black accents; the spots of contrasting intensity and warmth--the red and yellow fruit, the table, the cork and label of the bottle--are grouped in vertical and horizontal sets, which maintain the severe architecture of the wall.

One must observe also the daring asymmetry in Cézanne's drawing of the flask--the swelling of the more luminous left side reduced and flattened, adjusted to the vertical forms of the adjoining objects, including the apple seen through the glass, and the edge of the white cloth below, which encloses an apple and pear. It is a vivid example of Cézanne's independence of nature in asserting his constructive will. Chardin would have harmonized all these neighboring object-forms without distortion; but his contours would look less tangibly designed, less overtly marked by the operations of adjustment and cohesion.

[GRAEME]

Beautiful! Where is it now?

[HUGHJAMPTON]

Beautiful! Where is it now?

No idea to be truthful, I think that's a question that Fell would be able to answer though

I didn't know that Peter Scott did the original illustrations for the for the first illustrated English editions of the book.

The Snow Goose - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Fellwanderer]

No idea to be truthful, I think that's a question that Fell would be able to answer though

I do know that it is in safekeeping - but I have never seen it apart from on-screen.

[HUGHJAMPTON]

I do know that it is in safekeeping - but I have never seen it apart from on-screen.

Say no more.

It must be something that every Jenny fan would covet.

[Fellwanderer]

Say no more.

It must be something that every Jenny fan would covet.

Indeed - it would be perfect hung next to my original David Bailey portrait of Jenny

Actually, it's got me wondering if there are any other examples of works of art specifically created for a programme by a known artist - even if Peter Scott was better known at a wildlife artist than portrait artist.

[HUGHJAMPTON]

Indeed - it would be perfect hung next to my original David Bailey portrait of Jenny

Actually, it's got me wondering if there are any other examples of works of art specifically created for a programme by a known artist - even if Peter Scott was better known at a wildlife artist than portrait artist.

I'm surprised some enterprising character has reproduced it in an affordable print, or poster format.

As to other famous artist, I'm sure there must be, but as to what,or who?

[cornershop15]

Please come back, Hugh.

Fake version of The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian in 'Love in a Cold Climate'

Judi Dench and Michael Aldridge have differing opinions of the painting in the episode Rings and Things (1980):

"Awful tripe. The fellow wouldn't be simpering like that. He'd be dead with all those arrows in him. I wouldn't give 7 & 6 for it."

Uncle Matt must have realised it's a fake. I am fairly confident
that it was based on The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. Yes?:

Completed by brothers Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo in 1475.

From the National Gallery website:

The picture is composed symmetrically to tell the story taken from the 'Golden Legend' of Saint Sebastian who was sentenced to death on being discovered a Christian. He was bound to a stake and shot with arrows. Here, the six archers have three basic poses, turned through space and seen from different angles. This helps produce the three-dimensional solidity of each figure and together they define the foreground space.

The Pollaiuolo brothers were sculptors, and may have made statuettes of the archers. The male nude is central to this picture and the figures - like the landscape - have been studied from life. A number of life drawings by the Pollaiuolo brothers have survived.

The landscape takes about a third of the background of 'The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian'. It is remarkable in its rendering of the glimmering river Arno and fading horizon. The tonal changes which occur over the receding landscape have been achieved by the use of oil paint.

The painting was placed in an oratory, built by the Pucci family in the 1450s, in the key Florentine church of the Servite order, SS. Annunziata. The Pucci family were Florentine bankers and were on close terms with the Medici family.