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(b Amsterdam, Feb 21, 1856; d The Hague, Aug 12, 1934).

Dutch architect, urban planner, designer and writer. He abandoned early his intention to become a painter and instead trained in architecture at the Bauschule of the Eidgenössiche Polytechnikum (now Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule) in Zurich under Gottfried Semper’s followers. Semper was a major influence on Berlage, especially for Berlage’s emphatic use of a variety of materials and an acute attention to construction. The other major influence was the work of Viollet-le-Duc. After his training Berlage visited Germany and Italy from 1878 to 1881, returning to Amsterdam to become an associate of the classicist architect and businessman Theodorus Sanders, who very soon handed over to him the task of designing. The shop and office-block for Focke & Meltzer (1884–5), Kalverstraat, Amsterdam, was critically acclaimed for its correct application of the Venetian Renaissance style favoured by Semper and for the grandeur of its shopping area, with its unusually large windows. Berlage voiced doubts in ...

(b Hamburg, Feb 26, 1838; d Vaucresson, nr Paris, Sept 6, 1905).

French art dealer, critic and patron, of German birth. Often misnamed Samuel, he was a major promoter of Japanese art and Art Nouveau. From a wealthy, entrepreneurial Hamburg family, he trained as an industrial decorator for ceramics under the guidance of his father and independently in Paris during the Second Empire (1852–70). After the Franco-Prussian War (which he spent in Belgium) Bing established a thriving Oriental trading business, primarily of Japanese arts, the success of which permitted the opening of his Oriental crafts shop in Paris in the late 1870s. Following a trip to Japan, he expanded the business in the 1880s, selling both contemporary and ancient Japanese objects, to meet the demand for Oriental merchandise. At the end of the 1880s, as Japonisme developed, Bing founded a monthly periodical, Le Japon artistique (pubd simultaneously in Eng., Fr. and Ger., 1888–91), and organized a series of exhibitions of rare Japanese art, featuring ceramics and ...

(Yevgrafovich)

(b Ufa, 1870; d Moscow, Jan 29, 1946).

Russian architect, architectural historian, restorer and exhibition organizer. He studied (1887–91) at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, Moscow, and then at the Technische Hochschule, Zurich, where he completed his studies in 1894. He designed the Russian craft pavilion at the Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris with A. Ya Golovin and with the painter Konstantin Korovin. The work largely reflected the search for a distinct national style, particularly the revival of Russian timber architecture and tent-roofed churches (for illustration see Mir Iskusstva). His own churches, built for the Old Believers community, are in Bogorodsk (now Noginsk; 1900–02), Tokmakov Lane, Moscow, Gavrilov Lane, Moscow, and in Orekhovo-Zuyevo and Kuznetsy near Moscow, all built in 1906–9. Two later examples are at Kuznetsov (1911) near Kashin, near Moscow, and in Riga (1913–14). They are picturesque compositions, complex in form with expressive contrasts in texture and colour. Similar in approach are his country houses, including those for ...

At certain times in Western art movements, as, for instance, with Art Nouveau, line has been accorded particular importance. It is also a valued element in Islamic art. However, it is in East Asian art that brushline assumed its most distinctive and universally admired aspect, seen prominently in the brushwork of calligraphy and painting and imitated in woodblock-printing, but also evident in decorated ceramics, lacquerware, architectural tiles and reliefs, and sculpture. Particularly in China, but also in Korea and Japan, viewers of painting traditionally concentrated their appreciation on brushwork, seen in terms of execution or performance and regarded as the most fundamental expression of artistic personality and creative talent, while other elements such as colour and compositional invention were accorded considerably less attention.

From early times, East Asian writers on art have paid great critical and theoretical attention to brushline. The six criteria for the assessment of painting, proposed by the Chinese critic ...

(b Berlin, April 12, 1871; d Berlin, April 13, 1925).

German architect, designer, writer and teacher. After moving to Munich in 1892, he abandoned his plan to become a teacher, deciding on a career as a freelance scholar. He then studied aesthetics, psychology and philosophy, being particularly influenced by the lectures of the psychologist Theodor Lipps. He also studied German literature, art and music. In 1895 he intended to write a doctorate on the theme of ‘The Construction of Feeling’. In spring 1896 he met Hermann Obrist, who persuaded him to abandon his proposed academic career and become a self-taught artist. As well as book illustrations and decorative pieces for the art magazines Pan and Dekorative Kunst, he produced decorative designs for wall reliefs, carpets, textiles, coverings, window glass and lamps. In 1897 he designed his first furniture for his cousin, the historian Kurt Breysig. His first architectural work, the Elvira photographic studio in Munich (1896–7; destr. 1944), decorated on its street façade by a gigantic, writhing dragon, was a quintessential work of ...

(b Lausanne, May 25, 1841; d Paris, Oct 23, 1917).

French illustrator, decorative artist and printmaker of Swiss birth. Before arriving in Paris in the autumn of 1871, Grasset had been apprenticed to an architect, attended the Polytechnic in Zurich and travelled to Egypt. In Paris he found employment as a fabric designer and graphic ornamentalist, which culminated in his first important project, the illustrations for Histoire des quatre fils Aymon (1883). Grasset worked in collaboration with Charles Gillot, the inventor of photo-relief printing and an influential collector of Oriental and decorative arts, in the production of this major work of Art Nouveau book design and of colour photomechanical illustration. Grasset used a combination of medieval and Near Eastern decorative motifs to frame and embellish his illustrations, but most importantly he integrated text and imagery in an innovative manner which has had a lasting influence on book illustration.

In 1881 he was commissioned by Rodolphe Salis to design furnishing in a medieval style for the latter’s new Chat Noir cabaret in Montmartre. This project brought him in direct contact with Montmartre avant-garde artists such as Adolphe Willette, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, Henri Rivière and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Grasset’s numerous posters include ...

(Joseph)

(b London, Feb 25, 1866; d Melbourne, May 16, 1929).

Australian architect, theorist and writer of English birth. He trained as an architect in London from 1881 and then worked in various architectural offices there. He emigrated to Australia in 1889 and worked in various states before settling in Melbourne in 1899. He designed a number of offices, residences, churches and other public buildings, often for other architects. Through this work and his teachings and writings, he influenced many Australian architects by his strong principles of originality and simplicity in design, harmony and balance in composition, and national sentiment. These principles were closely allied with those of English architects working in the Arts and Crafts Movement; however, his use of nature for inspiration and his relaxation of past rules of composition and decoration also place him within the Art Nouveau movement. Haddon’s designs were characterized by plain façades, the careful use of simple ornament and the positioning of elements to produce a distinctive and often delicately balanced composition. Examples of this work include his residence, Anselm (...

(b Brussels, Nov 26, 1865; d Brussels, July 5, 1916).

Belgian painter and decorative artist. He showed a precocious talent, first exhibiting in 1875. His only formal study was at a local school of drawing. Between 1884 and 1886 he showed at the Essor group in Brussels paintings that were based on Dürer and Holbein and closely related to those of Lemmen’s contemporary, Khnopff. When Lemmen became a member of Les XX in 1888 his style developed quickly, influenced principally by French Neo-Impressionism and the English Arts and Crafts Movement. Lemmen adopted the pointillist technique following Seurat’s first showing with Les XX in 1887. His best pointillist canvases include The Carousel (1890–91; priv. col., see Belgian Art, 1880–1914, exh. cat., New York, Brooklyn Mus., 1980, p. 118, fig.) as well as portraits of Julie (1891; Chicago, IL, A. Inst.) and Mme Lemmen (1894–5; Paris, Mus. Orsay).

In the early 1890s Lemmen became a leader in the burgeoning decorative arts movement. In ...

(b Pesitza, Austria–Hungary, June 10, 1867; d Vevey, Switzerland, June 5, 1935).

German art historian. He studied engineering in Munich, Zurich and Liège, before moving to Berlin in 1890, where he attended the university and became involved in artistic circles. In 1894 he co-founded the periodical Pan, becoming its art editor and financial manager, though he was dismissed in April 1895 by wealthy and conservative patrons unhappy with the emphasis given to French art, after publication of the first issue. He moved in 1895 to Paris, where he had already met avant-garde artists, and in 1898 founded the periodical Dekorative Kunst, in which he championed Art Nouveau; he opened an Art Nouveau gallery, La Maison Moderne, in Paris in 1899, which closed in 1903. Returning to Berlin in 1904, he published his most significant contribution to art history, Die Entwicklungsgeschichte der modernen Kunst, in which he was concerned to define the specifically artistic (‘das Bildhafte’) in isolation from socio-economic or historical factors, to trace its development in the 19th century, and to offer a basis for a new aesthetic: 19th-century painting from Delacroix to the Post-Impressionists was presented as a series of solutions to formal problems. In further controversial essays on Arnold Böcklin and Adolf Friedrich Erdmann Menzel, Meier-Graefe questioned prevailing academic and nationalistic judgements. Subsequently he published studies devoted to Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Courbet, and to the French Impressionists. His ...

(b Mataró, Oct 15, 1867; d Barcelona, Dec 24, 1956).

Spanish Catalan architect, architectural historian, archaeologist and politician. He graduated from the Escuela Superior de Arquitectura, Barcelona, in 1891, afterwards working as a municipal architect in Mataró. In 1897 he began working as an independent architect in Barcelona, while also teaching at the Escuela Superior de Arquitectura and writing on architectural history. His first works as an architect, the Casa Martí (1896) in Carrer de Montsió, Barcelona, and the Casa Garí (1898), El Cros, Argentona, are typical of Catalan Art Nouveau (Modernismo) in that they show a neo-medieval influence, as do his slightly later projects in Barcelona, such as the improvements (1898–1900) to the Casa Ametller in the Passeig de Gràcia, the Casa Macaya (1901) in the Passeig de S Joan, the Casa Serra (1903–7; now the main seat of the Diputació de Catalunya) on the Rambla de Catalunya, the Casa Terrades or Casa de les Punxes (...

(b Turin, Nov 10, 1869; d Turin, Feb 16, 1925).

Italian poet and critic. He published two collections of poetry, Il poema dell’adolescenza (1901) and Poemi d’amore e di morte (1922), and contributed as a literary, artistic and social critic to many daily newspapers and magazines, including La Stampa, the Gazzetta letteraria, The Studio and Emporium. Up to 1889 he was part of the Liberty movement in Turin; he was a great admirer of the Liberty style, which he considered to be the sole great achievement of contemporary art, and was a proud adversary of Impressionism and the avant-garde. He was a founder of L’Arte decorativa moderna (1902–7), and for ten years director of the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna in Turin. From 1905 to 1912 La Stampa printed several of his most controversial articles, in which he fiercely attacked the most important contemporary painters in Europe, from Renoir and Cézanne to van Gogh and Matisse. His own concept of art as an ‘ideal transcendence of reality’ led him to prefer the Pre-Raphaelites, especially William Holman Hunt, as well as Arnold Böcklin, Giovanni Segantini and Gaetano Previati. His most famous book, ...