Secret Lives of the Artists is a British documentary series which forms part of the channel's "Imagination" art strand, in which art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon sets out to investigate the "secret lives" of three artists: Constable, Vermeer and Caravaggio.
The series originally aired in the UK on BBC2 from 22 March to 5 April, 2002. There are three hour-long episodes in the series.
Secret Lives of the Artists premiered in South Africa on DStv's BBC World channel on Saturday 24 May 2008, at 10h10.
Repeats
Saturdays: 19h10
Sundays: 03h10, 16h10
Synopsis
Constable, Vermeer and Caravaggio are among the most famous painters of all time, but the dramatic sagas of their personal lives – tales of love and frustration, betrayal and murder, war and madness – remain surprisingly little known.
In Secret Lives of the Artists, Andrew Graham-Dixon sets out to explore the “secret lives” of these three extraordinary painters, revealing the latest discoveries in archival research.
Each programme is a different kind of detective story: a journey through their cities and their landscapes; and a vivid and entertaining quest for the evidence needed to unlock the secrets of the past.
Episodes
Episode 1: The Madness Of Vermeer
"Looking for Vermeer is a pastime bordering on obsession," presenter Andrew Graham-Dixon comments, as he tries to shed light on the secret life of the Dutch master for Secret Lives of the Artists.
"Madness is the last thing associated with Vermeer’s work, but I’m interested in the passions that run beneath the calm waters of his art."
Recent archival research reveals a reality far removed from the idealised settings of Vermeer’s paintings, which portray a life of peace and domestic bliss.
Graham-Dixon visits Delft in Holland and discovers that the harmony and tranquillity depicted in Vermeer’s luminous canvasses belie a life of near-constant struggle and turbulence.
Born to Protestant parents in Delft in 1632, Vermeer’s family life was anything but peaceful: his grandmother ran an illegal lottery and often ran into trouble with the police; and his grandfather was imprisoned for counterfeiting coins.
His wife’s relatives – a well-to-do Catholic family – also had their share of difficulties. Records show that Catharina’s mother, Maria Thins, was often beaten by her husband and that the family finally split up acrimoniously.
Against this backdrop, it becomes easier to understand why Vermeer chose to capture moments of serenity in his paintings.
Vermeer achieved some success as a painter during his lifetime, becoming the head of the Saint Luke’s Guild in 1662. Ten years later, in 1672, his fortunes were to change with the invasion of Holland by the French army.
As a defence, the Dutch decided to flood their own land, which destroyed the homes rented out by Vermeer’s mother-in-law. Their family income plummeted and the art market nose-dived. A year later, Vermeer’s patron died.
Set adrift from a regular supply of money, Vermeer descended into debt and despair and even cheated his mother-in-law out of some cash. He died penniless in 1675, aged 43.
Episode 2: Constable in Love
Constable is one of the world’s greatest artists, yet little is known about the private passions that motivated the man.
In Constable In Love Andrew Graham-Dixon tells of Constable’s obsession with one woman, Maria Bicknell, and argues that it was through this devotion that he found a new way of painting landscape.
Graham-Dixon finds that there’s certainly much more to John Constable than the Haywain.
"I get the feeling that Constable is seen as a bit of a fuddy-duddy these days... a traditional English painter of a traditional English landscape," he comments.
"But Constable’s a hell of a lot more revolutionary. He turned landscape painting into a vehicle for emotional self-expression. No one had done that before. I’ve always been curious about how he came to make this great breakthrough. I suspect it may lie in his extraordinary love affair with Maria Bicknell. That’s the story I’d like to get to the bottom of."
Born in 1776, John Constable enjoyed a "careless boyhood" in his beloved Suffolk. Places like East Bergholt, Dedham and Langham inspired him to paint the daily country life that eventually secured his reputation as a great landscape painter.
But the true catalyst of Constable’s art was his passion for Maria Bicknell.
The painter first met her in 1800 when she was a young girl of 12. It took nine years before he could declare his love but Maria’s father and grandfather disapproved of the match – her family lived in East Bergholt’s Rectory but Constable’s father was a miller – and tried to get Maria to break off the relationship, even threatening her with disinheritance.
But after seven years of on-off courtship, including five years of contact only by letter writing, Constable and Maria finally married in October 1816: he was 40 and she was 28.
They were together for 12 years and had seven children before Maria died of consumption in 1828. For Constable it was the beginning of many dark years. He wrote to a friend: "Never again will I feel as I have felt. The face of the world is totally changed to me."
Episode 3: Who Killed Caravaggio?
In July 1610, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, the most famous painter of his age, died in mysterious circumstances.
Andrew Graham-Dixon's investigations, first shown in the Omnibus strand, take him to Rome, Naples and Malta.