Jules-Alexandre Grün as Painter

Jules-Alexandre Grün (1868-1938) is perhaps best known as a poster artist, having worked for the great Jules Chéret. But he also painted, which is the focus of this post.

Grün's English language Wikipedia entry is tiny, so readers interested in biographical details should consider consulting the French entry.

Most of his paintings that I could find on the Internet are crowded social scenes, often containing small portraits of people well-known at the time he painted them. In a way, Grün picked up on social scenes from the Danish painter Peder Severin Krøyer (1851-1909) after the latter died.

Those paintings are necessarily "busy" compositionally, but Grün was skilled at it, and the works draw viewers into the details of the depicted people.

Gallery

Oops, here is painting of just one person, a woman serving fruit.

But here she is again in this social setting.

This seems to be a study for Un groupe d'artistes.

The final Un groupe d'artistes, 1929.

This large paintings is titled "Friday at the French Artists' Salon," painted in 1911.

This is a detail from the above.

My favorite Grün is Fin de souper, 1913. The young woman at the left seems entrancing. I wonder who she was.

Giacomo Favretto: Next-To-Last Really Good Painter from Venice?

A while ago I wondered if Ettore Tito (1859-1941) was "The Last Really Good Painter from Venice."

Since then, I discovered another Venetian artist who, in his way, was Tito's equal. His name is Giacomo Favretto. But Favretto, 1849-1887, was born ten years before Tito and died of typhoid fever at age 38, so he couldn't claim to be the last really good painter from Venice.

English language information regarding Favretto is skimpy on the Internet. A brief Wikipedia entry is here. More details can be found here.

Favretto painted a number of 18th century costume scenes, but I prefer his paintings related to Venice. Here are some examples:

Gallery

La raccolta del riso nella terre del Basso Veronese - 1878
Okay, this isn't Venice, but a setting a ways farther inland. I include it because he rarely did landscapes.

L'ultima parola - 1879

Mercato in campo San Polo

Poveri antichi! - 1880
A commentary on art restoration, I think.

Una riva a Venezia - 1881

La calle

Il traghetto della Maddalena - 1887

Susanna e i due vecchi - 1887
The title can be translated as "Susanna and the Elders," but here Susanna is fully clothed and quite happy to be part of the scene.

Liston odiero - 1887
A view of Venice's Promenade Day. Favretto was working on it just before he died. At first glance, it seems finished, but closer examination shows that some of the background figures are only sketched in. Click on the image to enlarge.

Favretto had a very nice touch that, for me, cancels any potential criticism that his subjects lacked profundity.

William L'Engle, Well-Connected Interwar Modernist

William L'Engle (1884-1957) graduated from Yale University in the field of naval architecture, but became a painter instead. A chronology dealing with L'Engle's career is here.

Although L'Engle was capable of painting in a traditional representational manner (see the portraits below), he became a run-of-the-mill, middle-of-the-road modernist of the 1920-1940 variety that I describe in the book Art Adrift. Not that his paintings were bad; he was a competent artist. But they were typical of his times, where many painters had to decide whether or not to accept modernism, and if they did, to what extent they would embrace it.

Like many of his contemporaries, L'Engle never quite settled on a distinctive, personal style. Instead, he drifted along, following the American modernist fashions of his day.


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Update - 8 February 2015 -- The images on the original post were removed at the request of their copyright holder who also requested that I remove the link to the official L'Engle web site, to which I complied. I retained the image captions so that interested readers can track them down using Google image search.

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Gallery


Self-Portrait - 1914
The "L'E" symbol on many of the images here is probably related to a source claiming copyright, which I hereby acknowledge, if that is so.


Portrait of Lucy - 1919
Lucy was his wife, and also an artist.


Cranberry Pickers - 1926


Trapeze Artists - 1926


Martha Graham Dancer - 1927


Madeline and Thelma - 1930


Paintings on front and back of panel.


Building New York - 1935


Cuban Scene - 1938


Nightmare, or the End - 1954


Sacrifice of Abraham - 1957
Painted the year of his death.

Ernst Kirchner: Messy Life, Messy Art

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) threw himself into modernist painting styles and the related bohemian lifestyle, making a name for himself as an Expressionist, Fauvist and (organizationally) Die Brücke artist. Considering the generation he was born into, this is understandable. It also meant that his art usually wasn't very good and, from my point of view, is destined to increasingly become a matter of historical curiosity.

A lengthy Wikipedia entry is here, detailing his fragile mental and physical state, numerous visits to sanitariums, and ultimate suicide.

Gallery

Berlin women...

Berlin Street Scene - 1913

Five Women at the Street - 1913
I think this series of paintings is the most interesting of his earlier works.

Self-portraits...

Portrait as a Soldier - 1915
His most famous self-portrait. His right hand is shown severed, though it remained intact in reality.

Selbstbildnis als Kranker (Self-Portrait as a Sick Man) - 1918

Self-Portrait - 1925
I suppose we are supposed to ignore the drawing and focus on the composition and colors.

Paintings of women...

Sitzende Dame (Dodo - Doris Grosse, a favorite model) - 1907

Portrait of a Woman - 1907
Two portraits featuring Fauvist color schemes.

Two portraits of Gerda - 1914
Gerda seems to have appealed to Kirchner, because she is drawn with more care than ususal.

Erna (Schilling, Kirchner's companion for much of his life) - 1930

Cityscapes and landscapes...

Nollendorfplatz - 1912

Brandenburg Gate - 1915

Bridge in Wiesen - 1926

Violettes Haus vor Schneeberg (Violet House before Snowy Peak) - 1938
This is one of his last paintings. It's more carefully composed than his previous works.

Disaster and Chaos as Depicted by John Martin

"If it bleeds, it leads" is an old newspaper saying, a comment on the taste of the general public when it comes to news. That's just human nature: how much might daily circulation increase if the top front page headline stated "Crocuses are Now Blooming?"

Before the advent of photography and even after, painters had the option of depicting scenes of mayhem and destruction. One artist who did quite well at this was John Martin (1789-1854). A lengthy Wikipedia biographical entry on him is here. In 2011-12 Martin was the subject of an exhibition at the Tate Britain, in London.

Actually, Martin's painting were more epic than gory, as can be seen below.

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Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion - 1812

Fall of Babylon - 1819

Belshazzar's Feast - 1820

The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum - 1822
This painting was badly damaged in the 1920s and required a restoration much more extensive than usual, as this Guardian piece indicates.

Pandaemonium - 1841

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah - 1852

The Great Day of His Wrath - 1851-53

The Last Judgement - 1853
Painted not long before Martin suffered a debilitating stroke.

Jean-Louis Forain: Painting as Commentary

Jean-Louis Forain (1852-1931) forged a successful career as a painter and illustrator, though he is not very well known today. His Wikipedia entry mentions that he was a friend of Degas (not always an easy task) and followed or admired by Lautrec. The article classifies his art as Impressionist, though I can't quite buy that. Rather than focusing on effects of light and color, his work strikes me as being closer akin to that of a sketch artist -- setting down that kind of impression.

Forain was happy to depict both French society's highlights and lowlights -- from courtroom scenes to fancy dress occasions, often with satirical intent. This link has a lengthy commentary on an exhibit of Forain's work that took place a few years ago, and offers another perspective regarding his work.

Gallery

Courtroom scenes...

Legal Assistance - 1900

Avocat et accusé - 1908

Witness Confounded - 1926

In the gardens...

Jardin de Paris c. 1882

The Public Garden - c. 1884

High life...

A Soiree at the Opera

The Buffet - 1884

Outdoors...

The Fisherman- 1884

La cavalière

Here and there...

Cafe Maxim, Paris

Dans les coulisses

Behind the Scenes

... and some portraits

Jeanne Forain

Anna de Noailles