John Singer Sargent: Same Subject, Different Media

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) probably needs no introduction to Art Contrarian readers. A painting of his that I would really like to see in person is the subject of the present post.

Fumée d'Ambre Gris - 1880It is part of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute collection, whose description of it is here. Unfortunately for me, I seldom get to Massachusetts, so my chance of viewing the painting in person seems pretty slim. Yet I once spent more than four years in not-so-far-away Albany, New York -- but that was when I was still brainwashed by modernist propaganda and thought the Clark not worth visiting, if I had been aware of it at all.

Perhaps even more embarrassing, in recent times I was unaware that Sargent created some studies for it, including a watercolor now held at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. I've visited the Gardner, but (once again!!) failed to notice it (that is, if it had actually been on display at the time).

Here it is:

Incensing the Veil - c. 1880
A rambling discourse on Sergent's painting and the substance ambergris is here, and some supporting images are here.

Logan Maxwell Hagege's Retro Deco Southwest

Do you have a soft spot for those 1920s vintage railroad posters from the likes of the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific railroads? I certainly do.

That also seems to be the case for Los Angeles based artist Logan Maxwell Hagege, who has made a great many paintings in the spirit of those posters. His web site is here, and a short biographical sketch here.

Hagege's images are carefully designed, often making use of profile views of his subjects (it can be easier to turn a profile into design elements than trying the same from, say, a three-quarter view). And since he returns often to the same subjects, viewing a large number of his paintings at once can cause a fall-off of interest. However (not having seen one of his paintings in person), I think having only one hanging in a suitable wall, might be quite nice for some of us retro fans.

Gallery

Striped Blanket

Above the Mountains

Light on the Round Clouds

The Storm Clears

Evening Song

Mesa Near Hopi Land

Images of Hagege at work

Édouard Detaille: War Artist of the Third Republic

Even though France was humiliated in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War, paintings featuring military subjects were popular in France during the early decades of the Third Republic. Perhaps the most prolific artist of that genre was Jean-Baptiste Édouard Detaille (1848-1912), who had a reputation for thorough research on details of uniforms, weapons and battles of both the Napoleonic era and 1870 and its aftermath. His Wikipedia entry is here.

Perhaps because he churned out so many drawings and paintings, a few being huge dioramas, I find them not usually satisfying as works of art. I mostly prefer the work of his contemporary, Alphonse de Neuville, who I wrote about here.

Gallery

Photo of Detaille at work
Here he is, dabbing away on a huge canvas. Many human figures, horses and other items to depict, and he probably didn't have the time to paint them with thought and care. Yet this sort of painting was what he was known for, so he kept making them.

Le rêve - 1888
This immense painting was on display at the Musée d'Orsay when I visited last September. It shows bivouacing contemporary (or 1870) French soldiers dreaming of the gloire of their Napoleonic forebears. Despite its size, it doesn't seem to have been as rushed as some of his other works, which is perhaps why the Orsay displayed it.

Charge de Mosbronn - 1870 war

The Charge at Friedland - 1894

La salu aux blessés - 1877
Saluting the wounded.

Mounted First Empire Dragoons

Hussar
I don't know if this was an elaborate sketch or a finished work. Regardless, as best I can tell from this digital image, it's nicely done. Apparently when he wasn't painting vast action scenes, Detaille was able to focus and show us what he was capable of.

Un officier des cuirassiers, fin 19eme
Another portrait of sorts, but a crowd of soldiers and horses manage to intrude as background.

"The Cornish Wonder": John Opie

Joshua Reynolds dominated the English portrait painting scene in the 18th century, with Thomas Gainsborough as his most serious rival. That's my 21st century impression, anyhow.

But in those pre-photography days there was plenty of demand for portraits, and Reynolds and Gainsborough could not satisfy it by themselves. There were many other artists at work in that field, some competent, others not so much. One of the fairly competent ones was John Opie (1761-1807) who died young and was buried next to Reynolds in Westminster Abbey, a sign of the esteem he was held in his day.

I sheepishly admit that I was ignorant of Opie until I noticed a portrait by him that was used as the cover illustration for a book published by Barnes & Noble. So I did a little research, turning up biographical information here and here. I also discovered plenty of images of his works on the Internet, a few of which are presented below.

He tended to place his subjects against dark backgrounds, giving his portraits a dramatic quality that probably helped distract from the fact that his drawing was sometimes slightly flawed. That said, Opie was better than most of his competitors.

Gallery

Self-Portrait - 1785

Self-Portrait - 1805

The Murder of Rizzio - 1787

A Country Girl

Mary Wollstonecraft - c.1797

Elizabeth Searle as Miranda

Portrait of a Young Man

Amelia Opie - 1798

More on Raeburn's Blurred faces

A while ago I wrote about how Henry Raeburn (1756-1823), one of my favorite portrait artists, tended to emphasize his subjects' crisp, white collars while usually leaving faces (normally the focus area) somewhat blurred.

And it's true that men's dress shirt collars of the early nineteenth century were white and very crisp, creating a sharp line at their edges that was sharper than adjoining facial features. Coat and jacket collars also yielded sharp edges. So Raeburn had some reason for his practice. Yet I think he often took the facial blurring a bit far from reality. No doubt he was striving for an effect that pleased him -- and perhaps his sitters, who often were older gentlemen with the usual wrinkles and complexion defects that age brings on.

A fairly extreme example of this is his portrait of James Watt from 1815. I included it in the post linked above. No long ago I revisited the Huntington Library in Marina, California (near Pasadena and the Caltech campus) and took more photos of the painting that I present below to further illustrate my point regarding Raeburn.

Here is a general view of the painting as it appeared when I visited the Huntington in November. The crisp collar area and contrasting facial details are obvious.

This is a close-up of the face. I included a bit of the frame when I snapped it to ensure that the camera's automatic focus would not get confused by the lack of sharp details on Watt's face. Note that Raeburn did include some sharp detailing for the eyes, leaving the rest of the face blurred.  So while he blurred the face, he did take care have the center of interest in sharp focus.

Bastien-Lepage's Three Bernhardts

In a comment (by Hels) on the previous post (3 February 2014), it was asked if Bastien-Lepage painted the portrait of Sarah Bernhardt from life.

Good question, because photography was in full flower by the end of the 1870s, and it might have been possible for him locate some reference photos and go from there.

Fortunately, I happen to have this book by the Musée d'Orsay in my collection. On page 110, it is reported:

Jules Bastien-Lapage éprova, durant ses séjours parisiens et londoniens, une réelle passion pour le théâtre. ....

Ce fut le cas en juin 1879, lorsqu'il se trouva à Londres en même temps que la troupe de la Comédie Français, venue pour donner six semains de représentations. Bastien-Lepage recontra et fréquenta alors plusiers des membres de la troupe: Sophie Croizette, Jeanne Samary, ou Mounet-Sully, mais ce sont surtout ses liens avec Sarah Bernhardt, dont c'était la primiere tournée outre-Manche, qu'a retenu la postérité. Instalée à part du rest de la troupe, Sarah Berhardt logeait dans une maison au 77 Chester Square où elle reçut Bastien-Lepage. Nul doute qu'aparavant il avait visité l'exposition des oeuvres -- peintures et sculptures -- de l'actrice qui se tenait au même moment dans une galerie du 33 Piccadilly, et que tous deux évoquèrent à loisir leur untérêt commun pour le peinture et la sculpture.

[As for the portrait of Bernhardt...] Cet hommage du peintre à la femme, actrice et sculpteur, a été peint durant les derniers mois de l’anée 1878 et au début de 1879. Ce fut d’alleurs un hommage à double sens puisque le modèle accepta de ne pas poser en costume du scène ni avec une de ses propres oeuvres, mais en tenue de ville et avec une statuette modelée par Bastien-Lepage … vers 1876. La tradition veut que les quarante-cinq séances de pose eurent lieu dans l’hôtel particulier de Sarah Berhardt, rue Fortuny, mais peut-être eurent-elles lieu aussi, quelquefois dans l’atelier de l’artiste, au 7 bis, impasse du Maine, où se trouvait le fragile modelage d'Orphée.

Après quelques recherches graphiques et une esquisse très enlevée du seul portrait conservé à Stockholm, ... Bastien-Lepage opte pour une réresentation de profil, de type quattrocentesque "en medaille" (de "camée" diront certains commentateurs) sur un fond neutre, et vêt son modè d'une robe de soie à motifs. ....

La réception du portrait à l'exposition [Salon des Champs-Élysées] fut presque unaniment favorable.


It seems that Bastien-Lepage was a theater enthusiast, and Bernhardt liked painting and sculpture, so they hit it off well, the example referring to a time in June, 1879 when they both happened to be in London. But they must have become acquainted before that, because he began work on the portrait in 1878, the work continuing into 1879 with numerous sittings at her place and perhaps some at his. The article on the Bernhardt portrait also notes that copies were made by Bastien-Lepage.

The book had images of three versions of the portrait. They are as follows:

This is a study from 1878 now at the National Museum in Stockholm.

The subject of this post.

This extant copy/version (at a slightly smaller scale) by Bastien-Lepage is held by the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, France.

Up Close: Bastien-Lapage's Sarah Bernhardt

Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884) was short-lived, yet influential in his day and for a few years thereafter. Along with many other talented and inventive painters of the late nineteenth century, he was doomed to decades of obscurity because his style did not fit the revealed historical narrative of Modernism's march to the end-state of painting: abstraction as practiced in New York City in the 1950s.

Bastien-Lepage's Wikipedia entry is here and examples of his work can be found via "Images" on Google or other search sites.

Although he usually featured people as subject matter, he seems to have painted only a few formal portraits. The best-known of these is his Sarah Berhardt of 1879 (for more information on the actress click here). I stumbled across the painting not long ago while at San Francisco's Palace of the Legion of Honor to view an Anders Zorn exhibit that I posted about here. The Bernhardt is not in the museum's permanent collection, being on loan from the Anne and Gordon Getty collection.

Guilty confession: I wrote a Molti Ritratti post on Sarah Berhardt portriats, but somehow failed to include Bastien-Lagage's version of her. I humbly attenpt to atone for this omission below.

This is an image of the full painting that I found on the Internet. Below is a section of it it photographed at the museum.

This isn't much of a close-up because the original painting is fairly small. But it offers better detail than the image of the entire painting. Click on this image to enlarge.

Up Close: Curry's "State Fair"

John Steuart Curry (1897-1946) is best known as a Regionalist or American Scene painter who, like fellow American Scene artist Thomas Hart Benton, enjoyed making turgid scenes featuring people in exaggerated poses.  Perhaps a bit more than Benton, Curry often placed lots of people on his canvasses and murals.  Both artists were most active during the 1920s and 30s when, as my e-book (shameless plug!) explains, the painting world was adrift, not really knowing how to deal with modernism.

The Wikipedia entry for Curry is here, and a longer biographical sketch can be found here.

Living on the West Coast, I don't get to see much of Curry's work which is mostly found in the Midwest or East Coast. Fortunately, the Huntington Library (links here and here) in San Marino, California (near Pasadena) has a nice 1929 Curry in its collection called "State Fair." Click on the images below to enlarge.

Gallery

Here is an image of the entire painting that I found on the Web. As you can see, it contains a cast of hundreds, if not thousands. The dominant colors are red and a complimentary blue-green; more on this below.

I took this close-up photo and the one below when I visited the Huntington in November. Here you can see how Curry simplified most of the faces of his subjects. He also gave some a blue-green complexion while others have more normal pinkish skin. The most obvious examples here of the former are the boy just below the barker's hand and the gold-haired lady at the left with her back to us.

The image of the entire painting reveals that the woman featured here was given a rather large (excessive?) pelvis area and legs. But the segment I photographed seems anatomically satisfactory. Note Curry's use of both reddish and greenish hues on the unclothed areas. I suspect that Curry found her the most interesting part of the painting to deal with because he seems to have spent the most thought and care here.

Carl Moll: Secessionist of Sorts

Vienna artist Carl Moll (1861-1945) committed suicide 13 April, along with members of his family, ten days before his 84th birthday, when the city was surrendered to Soviet forces in the waning days of World War 2.

I could find no extensive biographical information on Moll on the first few pages of a Google search. But you can glimpse his career by linking here, here and here.

As this Wikipedia entry indicates, the Vienna Secession was essentially a rejection of, or rebellion against, the academic traditions and organizations of the city. But it did not promulgate any particular replacement style: Secession artists were basically free to do what they wished.

In Moll's case, this was to paint slightly simplified landscapes and townscapes, though his earlier paintings (and a fair number of Secession-era works) were traditional in style. He also seems to have followed his almost exact contemporary and fellow-Secessionist Gustav Klimt's landscape preference for square canvasses. Not having seen it in person, I'm not sure if I can call Moll's art great, but most of what I've found on the Web seems competently done and pleasing.

Gallery

Der Naschmarkt in Wien - 1894

Mein Wohnzimmer (My Living Room) - 1903

At the Sideboard - 1903

View of Nussdorf and Heiligenstadt in Twillight - c.1905

Winter Scene in Heiligenstadt - 1906

View of Heiligenstadt

Rain in Rapallo

Tuscany Near Volterra - c.1931

John Stanton Ward, Almost-Traditionalist

It seems like I've recently been stumbling across quite a few works by artists who might be known in their home countries, yet were unknown to me (and probably many others) here in the States.

So it is with today's subject, John Stanton Ward (1917-2007), an English portrait painter and, for a time, illustrator. Even though he was tight with the royal family, he was never knighted, so that might have helped reinforce his relative obscurity. And of course he wasn't a hardcore modernist or some species of postmodernist. In fact, he resigned from the Royal Academy in protest of the likes of Tracey Emin being featured in exhibitions at Burlington House.

You can learn a fair amount of detail regarding Ward on his Wikipedia entry here, but perhaps even more via his obituaries in the Guardian and, as one might expect, the Telegraph.

And yet. If Ward had no use for British postmodernism, his own work tended to be casual, though usually based on sound drawing. (However, aside from his deliberately sketchy paintings, Ward seems to have had trouble drawing subject's arms convincingly.) To some degree this was in the spirit of modernism, if only in the sense that conventions of academic painting were reacted against -- Ward's reaction being highly selective. Besides a casual style, he tended to paint thinly (obviously so when using watercolor, a favorite medium) while relying on linework to carry the image. Also of interest is his approach to composition, where elements strike me as being a bit "off" from conventional practice. All told, I find him a very interesting artist. Let's take a look:

Gallery

Ward painting Princess Anne - c.1988

Portrait of Princess Anne

Annabel's - 1985

Positano - 1987

Poppy

Sir Thomas L.P. Norrington, President of Trinity College - 1967

Sir John Ellis - 1982

Sir Roger Bannister, Master, Pembroke College, Oxford - 1987

The East Kent School - 1987

Gillian - pastel - 1993

Two Girls, Pictured Inside, with Grapevine - 1993