Modigliani's Wife at the Norton Simon

The Norton Simon museum in Pasadena, California has one of the many portraits Amadeo Modigliani made of his common-law wife Jeanne Hébuterne during the few years of their relationship before his death and her suicide.

A lengthy (for Wikipedia) biography of Modigliani (1884-1920) is here, and the entry for Jeanne Hébuterne (1898-1920) is here. A commentary on their relationship is here.

Below are images of Jeanne.

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A formal photographic portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne, perhaps taken before she met Modigliani.

Snapshot of Jeanne Hébuterne, who appears to be pregnant with either her daughter Jeanne or the child never born.

Portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne by Modigliani, 1918. Well, that's who Wikipedia says it is. But the woman shown here has brown eyes, and Jeanne's were blue or gray. Also, the shape of the bottom of the nose is wrong.

"Portrait of the Artist's Wife, Jeanne Hébuterne 1918" is the caption of this painting at the Norton Simon.

Here is the painting as seen by my camera.

Closeup photo: click on images to enlarge for a better view of brushwork.

An odd thing about Modigliani's art, at least as a Modernist, is that his female "portrait" subjects are nearly or entirely unrecognizable, and those of men not much better. This Telegraph article mentions that he would paint his subjects indirectly, combining visual memory and his feelings about them.

John Spencer Stanhope: Little-Recognized Pre-Raphaelite

John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope (1829-1908) painted (in oil and tempera) scenes that were distinctly Pre-Raphaelite, though the Wikipedia entry just linked does not, as of 18 January 2017, include him in its lists of Pre-Raphaelites, associated artists, and "Loosely Associated Artists."

His Wikipedia entry is here. Art Renewal Center's take on his is here. Clearly, Spencer-Stanhope knew and was influenced by Pre-Raphaelites and their Victorian successors, particularly his friend Edward Burne-Jones. And the renewed interest in that aspect of art history has led to rising prices for his works.

Below are images of some of his paintings in chronological order by year.

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Thoughts of the Past - 1859
Although all the details differ, this reminds me of "Mariana," a 1850-51 painting by John Everett Millais.

Study for "Thoughts of the Past" - c. 1859

The Robins of Modern Times - 1860
Any allegorical or symbolic meaning in this painting was more clear to viewers in 1860 than it is to me in 2017.

Juliet and the Nurse - 1863
A Shakespearean subject.

The Wine Press - 1864
Lacking a 19th century elite British education, the reference of this painting also escapes poor me. However the Tate offers this discussion regarding it.

The gentle music of bygone days - 1873
The title is a line from the poem 'The Earthly Paradise' by William Morris.

Love and the Maiden - 1877

Eve Tempted - 1877
Very Burne-Jones- like. Spencer-Stanhope painted several close variations on this, but titles differed.

The Rescue - 1880

The Expulsion form Eden - c. 1900
Note the similar stylized appearance of the males in this image and the one immediately above.

Rinaldo Cuneo: Terence's California Artist Uncle

Rinaldo Cuneo (1877-1939) was part of a generation of artistic siblings who were born and grew up in San Francisco. His Wikipedia entry states that his paintings were quite popular and that he was dubbed "the Painter of San Francisco" (though it isn't clear who did the dubbing).

Rinaldo interests me because of his brother Cyrus, who I wrote about here. Cyrus made his comparatively brief career in England and, in turn, mostly interests me because he was the father of the well-known illustrator Terence Cuneo. One of my posts about Terence is here.

As for Rinaldo, his paintings tended to be solid-appearing, slightly simplified representations of landscape scenes (mostly) and urban setting (less so). Aside from a self-portrait, I didn't notice any significant images by him featuring people.

Furthermore, Rinaldo is not considered a California Impressionist. Well, none of the reference books in my library dealing with that school mention him at all. So far as I am concerned, his paintings are generally inferior to those of the best California Impressionists. Perhaps this is because the paintings shown below are mostly from the 1920s or 30s, a period when artists were trying to deal with the advent of Modernism, as I described in my ebook Art Adrift. The result was a lot of inferior artistic work for for painters who were influenced by that fad.

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Marin Dairy Farm

Lover's Point, Pacific Grove
Pacific Grove in on the Monterey Peninsula, just west of the city of Monterey.

Sierra Lake
Stylistically a cross between Edgar Payne and Paul Cézanne.

Storm Mountains - c. 1930

Owens Valley

San Francisco Seascape (Baker Beach) - 1928

The Embarcadero at Night - c. 1927-28
The Embarcadero is San Francisco's stretch of waterfront between Market Street and Fisherman's Wharf that was its center for docks and shipping in Rinaldo's day.

Earth Patterns - c. 1932

Friedrich von Kaulbach Paints Hanna Ralph

Friedrich August von Kaulbach (1850-1920), an important Munich artist in his day, occasionally painted several portraits of one subject. I previously wrote about his multiple portraits of opera singer Geraldine Farrar here. Some background on Kaulbach is here.

Besides Farrar, Kaulback devoted a fair amount of canvas and oil paint to Hanna Ralph (1888-1978) née Johanna Antonia Adelheid Günther, a stage and screen actress. Her Wikipedia entry is here.

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Photo of Hanna from 1918.

Kaulbach portrait probably painted around 1915-17.

This version from Seattle's Frye Museum includes the same hat and pose as in the previous painting.

Another portrait, this dated c. 1917.  Might have been made around the same time as the others: note the similarity of Hanna's hair styles.

Victor Arnautoff, 1930s California Muralist

Victor Mikhail Arnautoff (1896-1979) had a career featuring several interesting real or apparent contradictions, as his Wikipedia entry indicates.

He was born in Russia, fought in the Great War for the Imperial army, served in the anti-Bolshevik White army, and then fled the country for China. He eventually came to the USA, painted murals and canvas-based paintings, and taught art at Stanford University. As part of his mural painting, he worked with Diego Rivera which, perhaps along with other factors, led him to left-wing politics. Following the death of his wife and retirement from Stanford, Arnautoff moved to the Soviet Union, dying in Leningrad.

So he "progressed" from anti-Bolshevism to leftism, depicting proletarians while teaching at an elite university. I'd call it a nice trick, but aside from the anti-Bolshevik part, the rest isn't uncommon today.

As for his mural style, Arnautoff was mainstream in his Modernism-lite technique. His approach to subject matter was essentially representational, but tempered by modernist conventions so that picture-plane flatness, considerable simplification, and a little distortion of forms were included. The result has a cartoon-like character to my eyes. But that style was a 1930s artistic fashion.

His major work was a mural titled "City Life" that was part of the Coit Tower mural set (that was recently restored). It is featured in the images below that include a few other works intended to provide some sense of his artistic range. Click on images to enlarge.

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Here is an image of the entire City Life mural. At the center is an actual door that Arnautoff framed using a news stand.

A detail from the left-hand panel. Near the news stand is a man being held up at gunpoint. In the upper center area is a dead man in the street being photographed by newsmen. Above it (not seen in this segment) is a street leading up to San Francisco's Legion of Honor art museum that in fact was far across town beyond the Golden Gate.

Detail from the right-hand panel.

And a further detail. The tall man in the image is a self-portrait of the artist. The newspaper rack above the boy at the left contains "The Masses," a far-left magazine and the "Daily Worker," the U.S. Communist Party newspaper. Arnautoff took some critical heat from this sly stunt, but it was far less blatantly leftist than what could be seen in other Coit Tower murals. Almost all the murals were politicized to some degree because most of the artists were leftist. But keep in mind that the Great Depression was in full force in 1933 and '34 and that Stalin's show trials and his later deal with Hitler (which gave a number of Communist sympathizers food for thought) were years in the future.

From a 1932 vintage mural he did for the Palo Alto Medical Center. The bared breasts were controversial.

Photo of a 1935 mural at the Presidio Chapel -- the Presidio being a military base established by Spaniards and occupied by the U.S. Army at the time the mural was painted.

Photo of a 1940 mural for the Richmond, California Post Office. It was removed and forgotten for many years, but turned up not long ago.

Easel oil painting "At Baker Beach" from around 1945. Modernist flatness is gone, but the male at the right has the head of an adult and much of the body of a boy. Makes me wonder what he was teaching Stanford art students at the time.

"City Hall, San Francisco" from the late 1940s (I'm using the poorly drawn cars to date this). Arnautoff is far from his precise mural style here.

Sergei Bongart Paints Walser Greathouse

Sergei Bongart (1918-1985), emigré Ukrainian painter, had a successful career in America as an artist and teacher. His early training included a sound grounding in traditional painting, but he also was strongly influenced by Russians whose styles were Impressionism-derived. There is not a lot concerning Bongart on the internet, so this post of mine is about as good a place to start as any.

The present post features a Bongart painting that captured my interest at this exhibit at Seattle's Frye Museum. The exhibit showed a few examples of art acquired for the museum by each its various directors over the years since its establishment in the early 1950s to supplement the founding collection of Charles and Emma Frye. Many examples from the founding collection are always on display in accordance with the Fryes' wishes. The more recent acquisitions are less often seen, and I had never laid eyes on that Bongart.

The subject of Bongart's portrait is Walser Sly Greathouse who was executor of the Frye estate and when the museum they wished to establish was opened in 1952, Greathouse was its directer, a position he held until his death in 1966. The Bongart painting does not have a precise date, being classified as "circa 1966." So it likely was posthumous with regard to Greathouse. On the other hand, Bongart and the Frye were on very good terms, and 21 of his paintings have entered its collection since 1961. Five of these were acquired before Greathouse died, so Bongart knew him and didn't just create the portrait from photos and nothing else.

The Greathouse portrait by Bongart was acquired in 1967 in part using funds from friends of Greathouse, so it probably can be regarded as a commissioned work. It was painted on masonite using acrylic paints.

What caught my interest was the contrast between the sketchy, colorful setting and the subdued, traditionally painted face that, despite all the Bongart pyrotechnics, is the strong focus of the work.

Let's start with two examples of Bongart's style when painting people. First is the brightly done "Girl with Red Shawl" from around 1975.

And using a different color scheme is "Man with Turban" c. 1965.

A photographic portrait of Walser Greathouse made many years before his death. This and the following photo are from the Frye web site.

Greathouse showing paintings at the Frye Museum, perhaps around the time it was opened.

Bongart's portrait of Greathouse. The reds of the furniture are more intense than indicated here. Given such shocking brightness, one would expect this to distract from Greathouse. But no: The cool-colored (again coloring a bit distorted by the camera, grays being less obvious) head and face remain the painting's focus. A real tour-de-force by Bongart.

Detail showing Greathouse's face.  The rest of the painting, aside from his face and hands, is sketchy -- even the attire shown here.  So it is the comparative lack of sketchiness on the face that also attracts our attention.

Friedrich von Kaulbach Paints Geraldine Farrar

Beautiful, famous women attracted well-known portrait painters. In some cases, the painters would create multiple versions of their subject. Such was the case of opera star Geraldine Farrar (1882-1967) and Munich-based Friedrich August von Kaulbach (1850-1920). Biogrphical information on Farrar is here, and a brief summary of Kaulbach's career is here.

I suspect that Kaulbach was fascinated by and infatuated with the 32-years-younger singer. He was probably not alone.

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Photo of Farrar when young, not very far from the time she was in Germany and Kaulbach painted her.

Farrar shown in a performance setting. This painting is in Seattle's Frye Museum collection.

Studie zu einem Bildnis der Sängerin Geraldine Farrar (Study for a Portrait of the Singer Geraldine Farrar), a 1906 painting.

This painting and the one above it portray Farrar wearing essentially the same costume.

Did Franz Stuck Ever Settle on a Style?

Franz von Stuck (1863-1928) was an important Munich artist during the decades surrounding the turn of the 20th century. He was both a rebel of sorts, helping found the Munich Secession, and an establishmentarian as a professor at the Munich Academy. His Wikipedia entry is here. I wrote about Stuck here and here.

Stuck can fairly be called a Symbolist when he wasn't painting portraits or genre scenes (I'm not aware of Stuck landscapes or still lifes, but there might be a few). His preferred subjects were nude or partly-clothed women, though he did paint some nude males, in more than one painting shown fighting over a nude woman.

His painting style varied considerably, but not in the form of moving from one style to another as time passed. That is, throughout his career we find fuzzy looking paintings along with crisp works and somewhat poster-like images. I presume Stuck established a set of painting styles during the first part of his career that he then deployed depending upon the subject of a work.

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Sphinx - 1889

The Guardian of Paradise - 1889
Two paintings from Stuck's 20s. Both completed the same year, but with different atmospheres. The murky style of Sphinx will reappear later, often with fuzzier brushwork.

Frau Braun - 1896
Considerable contrast between the carefully rendered face and the rest of the painting.

Two Dancers - 1896
Again, the greatest detail is in the faces, as might be expected. Otherwise, Stuck's anatomical work is still more true to reality than in some of the later paintings shown below.

Die Wippe - 1898

Franz and Mary Stuck in the Studio - 1902
I doubt that Stuck's clothing shown here were his usual painting togs ... but I just might be wrong.

Portrait of a Lady - 1912
Again, the contrast between carefully rendered parts and quite loosely done other areas.

Sounds of Spring - 1912
By the 1910s Stuck added a style to his repertoire that had a flatter, more illustration-like quality.

Badende Frauen - c. 1920
His "Bathing Women" is sketchy across the board. Perhaps this was a study (though it's signed). Or maybe he was reacting to works by younger, post-1900, Modernist painters.

Phryne - 1918
An example of his dark, fuzzy style. Only a few details are sharply depicted.

The Judgement of Paris - 1923
A poster-like painting. Flat, with some mural-style outlining along with some fuzziness for the women's bodies.

Marianne Mechler - 1924
Presumably a commission, because most Stuck effects are absent.

Pygmalion and Galatea - 1926
A dark, somewhat fuzzy painting from near the end of his career.

Wind and Waves (unfinished) - 1928
What Stuck was doing near the end of his life. Not far from what he'd been painting for many years.