Painting and music

Painter of classical, historical, and literary subjects. John William Waterhouse was born in 1849 in Rome, where his father worked as a painter. He was referred to as "Nino" throughout his life.
In the 1850s the family returned to England. Before entering the Royal Academy schools in 1870, Waterhouse assisted his father in his studio. His early works were of classical themes in the spirit of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Frederic Leighton, and were exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Society of British Artists and the Dudley Gallery. In the late 1870s and the 1880s, Waterhouse made several trips to Italy, where he painted genre scenes.
After his marriage in 1883 to Esther Kenworthy, Waterhouse took up residence at the Primrose Hill Studios (number 3, and later, number 6).
Nino married Esther Kenworthy at St Mary's Church, Ealing, LondonPhotograph by Rob Cartwright
Future occupants of the same Primrose Hill studios would include the artists Arthur Rackham and Patrick Caulfield. Waterhouse painted primarily in oils, yet he was elected to the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour in 1883, resigning in 1889. In 1884, his Royal Academy submission Consulting the Oracle brought him favourable reviews; it was purchased by Sir Henry Tate, who also purchased The Lady of Shalott from the 1888 Academy exhibition. The latter painting reveals Waterhouse's growing interest in themes associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, particularly tragic or powerful femmes fatales, as well as plein-air painting. Other examples of paintings depicting a femme fatale are Circe Invidiosa, Cleopatra, La Belle Dame Sans Merci and several versions of Lamia. In 1885 Waterhouse was elected an associate of the Royal Academy and a full member in 1895. His RA diploma work was A Mermaid. However, as this painting was not completed until 1900, Waterhouse offered his Ophelia of 1888 as his temporary submission (this painting was 'lost' for most of the 20th century--it is now in the collection of Lord Lloyd Webber).
In the mid-1880s Waterhouse began exhibiting with the Grosvenor Gallery and its successor, the New Gallery, as well as at provincial exhibitions in Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. Paintings of this period, such as Mariamne, were exhibited widely in England and abroad as part of the international symbolist movement. In the 1890s Waterhouse began to exhibit portraits. In 1900 he was the primary instigator of the Artists' War Fund, creating Destiny, and contributing to a theatrical performance. The pictures offered to the War Fund were auctioned at Christie's. In 1901 he moved to St John's Wood and joined the St John's Wood Arts Club, a social organization that included Alma-Tadema and George Clausen. He also served on the advisory council of the St. John's Wood Art School where young and upcoming "neo Pre-Raphaelite" artists such as Byam Shaw numbered amongst his pupils.
Despite suffering from increasing frailty during the final decade of his life, Waterhouse continued painting until his death from cancer in 1917. From 1908-1914 he painted a series of paintings based upon the Persephone legend. They were followed by pictures based upon literature and mythology in 1916 (Miranda, Tristram and Isolde). One of his final works was The Enchanted Garden, left unfinished on his easel at his death, and now in the collection of the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool.
Very little is known of Waterhouse's private life - only a few letters have survived and thus, for many years, the identity of his models has been a mystery. One letter that has survived indicates that Mary Lloyd, the model for Lord Leighton's masterpiece Flaming June, posed for Waterhouse. The well-known Italian male model, Angelo Colorossi, who sat for Leighton, Millais, Sargent, Watts, Burne-Jones and many other Victorian artists, also sat for Waterhouse.
Waterhouse and his wife Esther did not have any children. Esther Waterhouse outlived her husband by 27 years, passing away in 1944 at a nursing home. Today, she is buried alongside her husband at Kensal Green Cemetery in north London.

(Source: johnwilliamswaterhouse.com)

Music: "Tu chiami una vita" by Jan A.P. Kaczmarek

Lyrics by Salvatore Quasimodo ("Tu chiami una vita")

"Fatica d'amore, tristezza, tu chiami una vita che dentro, profonda, ha nomi di cieli e giardini. E fosse mia carne che il dono di male trasforma."

Fatiga de amor, tristeza, tú llamas una vida, que dentro, profunda, tiene nombres de cielo y jardines.Y fuese mi carne lo que el don del mal transforma.

Jan A. P. Kaczmarek

Jan A. P. Kaczmarek is a composer with a tremendous international reputation that continues to grow. As a successful recording artist and touring musician, Jan turned to composing film scores as his primary occupation.
Jan's first success in the United States came in theater. After composing striking scores for productions at Chicago's Goodman Theatre and Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum, Jan won an Obie and a Drama Desk Award for his music for the New York Shakespeare Festival's 1992 production of John Ford's "Tis Pity She's A Whore," directed by JoAnne Akalaitis, starring Val Kilmer and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Newsday wrote that Jan's score "undulates with hypnotic force that gets under your skin," while Frank Rich of the New York Times found it worthy of the films of Bernardo Bertolucci and Luchino Visconti. Educated as a lawyer, he abandoned his planned career as a diplomat, for political reasons, to write music in order to finally gain freedom of expression. First he composed for the highly politicized underground theater, and then for a mini-orchestra of his own creation, "The Orchestra of the Eighth Day". The major turning point in his life, he says, was a period of intense study with avant-garde theater director, Jerzy Grotowski.
"Playing and composing was like a religion for me," Kaczmarek explains, "and then it became a profession."
"The Orchestra of the Eighth Day" began touring Europe in the late 1970's and to date, has completed eighteen major tours. They appeared at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the VPRO Radio International Contemporary Music Festival in Amsterdam,the Venice Biennale, and the International Music Festival in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia, where Jan won the Golden Spring Prize for the Best Composition. He is a five-time winner in Jazz Forum's Jazz Top Poll. At the end of the Orchestra's first American tour in 1982, Kaczmarek recorded his debut album, Music for the End, for the Chicago-based major independent Flying Fish Records.
Jan returned to America in 1989 to find a label for his latest composition for the Orchestra. Jan stayed in the United States where he expanded his horizons by composing for theater as he had already done in Poland with great success, capped by two prestigious New York theater awards in 1992. Having also composed music for films in Poland, he focused his attention to that medium, achieving recognition as a film composer with scores to such films as "Total Eclipse", "Bliss", "Washington Square", "Aimée & Jaguar", "The Third Miracle", "Lost Souls", "Edges of the Lord", "Quo Vadis" and Adrian Lyne's "Unfaithful."February 2005, Jan won his first Oscar for Best Original Score on Marc Forster's highly acclaimed film, "Finding Neverland."J.A.P.K. also won The National Review Board's award for Best Score of the Year, and was nominated for both a Golden Globe and BAFTA's Anthony Asquith Award for Achievement in Film Music. In addition to his work in films, Jan was commissioned to write two symphonic and choral pieces for two important national occasions in Poland. “Cantata for Freedom” (2005) to celebrate 25th anniversary of Solidarity movement, and oratorio “1956” (2006) to commemorate 50th anniversary of bloody uprising against totalitarian government in Poznan, Poland. Both premiers were broadcast live on national television.Jan is also setting up an Institute inspired by the Sundance Institute, in his home country of Poland, as a European center for development of new work in the areas of film, theatre, music and new media. The Institute website (currently under construction) is: http://rozbitek.org/. It is anticipated that Rozbitek will begin accepting students in 2007.

(Source: created by WIERZBICKI.ORG /jan-ap-kaczmarek.com)