Art Contrarian: The Golden Years

Showing posts with label The Golden Years. Show all posts

Monday, February 29, 2016

George Washington Lambert, 1905-1910

George Washington Lambert (1873-1930), born in St. Petersburg, Russia, lived in Germany and England before migrating to Australia in 1887, went to Paris around 1900, to London the following year where he remained until returning to Australia in 1921, living there until his death from heart failure, age 57. He is generally regarded as Australian, as that was his citizenship.

His short Wikipedia entry is here. It mentions that he was the father of noted musician Constant Lambert (1905-51).

So far as I am concerned, the most distinctive period of Lambert's career was approximately 1905-1910, and the images below are from then. Lambert's style was strong, featuring solid, visible drawing. Faces are usually painted smoothly, but other parts of the same painting are often somewhat blocked in using disciplined, visible brush strokes.

Gallery

Equestrian Portrait of a Boy - 1905

Sybil Walker in a Red and Gold Dress - 1905

Lotty and a Lady - 1906

Portrait Group: The Mother - 1907

The Sonnet - 1907

Portrait Group - 1908

Miss Alison Preston and John Proctor on Mearbeck Moor - 1909

King Edward VII - 1910

Holiday in Essex - 1910

Monday, October 26, 2015

Frank Brangwyn's Mural-Style Art

Sir Frank William Brangwyn (1867-1956) was largely self-taught, as this Wikipedia entry mentions. That supposed lack was no obstacle, because Brangwyn had a long, successful career. I wrote about his railroad poster work here.

He had a strong, interesting style suited to mural painting. An 1895 mural commission definitely launched the style featured below, but he was already heading in that direction. In the early 1890s he traveled to North Africa and Turkey, and the scenery there brightened his palette. He also began to paint in a flatter manner and introduce outlining, and important feature of murals that had to be seen and read from a distance.

Some of the images below are quite large, so click on them to view in even greater detail.

Gallery

Venetian Scene - 1906
An example of Brangwyn's signature painting style.

Buccaneers - 1892
This pre-1895 painting approaches his mural style, though stronger outlining is lacking.

Tank in Action - 3 panels - 1925-26
A later work showing British troops and a tank in action during the Great War

The Wine Press

Venice: Santa Maria Through Rigging

Music - 1895
"Music" and "Dance," below, were panels in Siegfried Bing's famous Galeries l'Art Nouveau in Paris that gave the name to that stylistic movement.

Dance - 1895
The other Galeries l'Art Nouveau mural. This is one of my favorite Brangwyn works.

Dance - detail - 1895
I find Brangwyn's use of color and outlining fascinating because I'm not sure if he had a system for this or whether it was intuitive.

Monday, April 6, 2015

Lyonel Feininger's Crystalline Images

Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) got his start as a cartoonist, even though he was given formal training in art. So it can be helpful to be a well-fed young artist rather than a starving one while working on one's skills. As this biographical sketch mentions, he finally got around to the Fine Arts trade when he was in his mid-30s.

Feininger is best known for images that were probably originally inspired by Cubism, but usually lacked the Cubist rationale that subjects were supposedly simultaneously depicted from various points of view in one image. Instead, Feininger simplified subjects using straight edges and planes, often extending edge lines across the picture plane accompanied by transitional value shading. The result was a clean, somewhat crystalline appearance that has appealed to me for as long as I can remember. Other artists picked up on this, including C.R.W. Nevinson and Ray Hill, the latter an instructor at the University of Washington when I was an art student.

Below are examples from what I consider to be Feininger's Golden Years.

Gallery

Gross-Kromsdorf - 1915

Hohe Häuser IV - 1919
This seems to be about as Cubist as Feininger could manage.

Gelmeroda VIII - 1921
Even people are reduced to lines and angles.

The High Shore - 1923
A crystalized landscape.

Gaberndorf II - 1924
Another somewhat Cubist image.

Church of the Minorites II - 1926
Gothic arches are reduced to angles here.

Bird Cloud - 1926
The bird's wings seem Futurist-inspired (think: Giacomo Balla's Dinamismo di un Cane al Guinzaglio -- "Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash" - 1912).

Sail Boats - 1929

Gelmeroda XIII - 1936

Monday, February 23, 2015

Leo Putz: The Golden Years

Leo Putz (1869-1940), an Austrian painter who spent most of his career in Germany, did some very interesting work during the ten years or so between 1903 and 1912. Unfortunately for his reputation here in America, his last name is a slang term of disparagement, though in German it can refer to fashion, ornamentation and such. (The German word schmuck, with a somewhat similar meaning, suffers the same fate for perhaps the same reason.)

Biographical information about Putz can be found here and here. He was highly regarded in Munich where his career was centered. His favorite subject was women. He painted his attractive wife, the artist Frieda Blell, a number of times during what I consider his peak years. Putz also made a large number of paintings of nude women, but I consider most of these less interesting, especially those done from around 1912 on. His later paintings were sketchier than his more solid earlier works, and incorporated light touches of fauvist coloring along with fading hints of his earlier flat-area style.

What interests me most is his use of large, flat brush strokes. This is a mannered style that works best, I think, in small doses. Perhaps that is why Putz drifted away from it. Nevertheless, when I think of Leo Putz, his square-brush style comes to mind first.

Gallery

Drawing of woman's head - 1899

Gasthaus in Schenna - 1900
These first two images show Putz' degree of skill depicting representational subjects before he shifted to a more mannered style.

Porträt Veronika Kirmair im Schleissheimer Garten - 1903
An early square-brush effort.

Hinter den Kulissen - 1905
"Behind the Scenes" is the English version of the title. Nice job on facial expressions. Note that Putz abandons or minimizes flat-brushing on faces that require a softened approach.

Sommerträume - 1907
"Summer Dreams" is a large painting that's particularly striking when viewed in person.

Spiegelbild - 1908

Am Ufer - 1909
Two paintings featuring Frieda Blell.

Cara Sophia Köhler - 1911
By now, Putz is abandoning his classical style.

Blond und Brünett - ca. 1913
Another example of his new stylistc direction.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

The Golden Years: John La Gatta

One of the most successful American illustrators of the 1930s was John La Gatta (1894-1977). His last name is also rendered as LaGatta, the way it usually seemed to appear in his distinctive signature block. But I see where his son has it as La Gatta, so I will use that version here even though I'll likely slip back to LaGatta in other posts dealing with him.

La Gatta was born in Naples, Italy, and came to America when he was a young boy. His art training was at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art. By the early 1920s he had begun to establish a reputation as an illustrator of beautiful women, and from the mid-20s through most of the 1930s his career was at its peak. His earnings allowed him to live on the posh North Shore of Long Island and own a yacht. More about his life and career can be found here, here and here.

Unlike many 1920s vintage illustrators, and perhaps because in some sense he was a fashion artist, he relied heavily on drawing with charcoal or other drawing tools, adding color when required using water-based or thinned oil paint washes. Examples of this classic La Gatta style are shown below. Of course, he also used other styles and media when called for, and I might deal with that in another post.

Gallery