Showing posts with label Painters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Painters. Show all posts

Monday, June 9, 2014

Richard E. Miller's Models in That Skirt

That Skirt probably was one Richard E. Miller's wife eventually cast off, and he thought it would be suitable for dressing models. Or not. I'm only guessing, and so will have to wait (for a long time, I suspect) for a good biography to appear that might clear up that detail. For now, there's this Wikipedia entry that covers the basics regarding his life and career.

Below is a collection of his images that I found here and there on the Internet where the model is wearing what appears to be the same skirt. Where the images were dated, the range is from around 1912 when Miller was living in the American artist colony in Giverny (near Claude Monet's house) or elsewhere in France, through the 1920s into the 1930s, a time when he lived in Provincetown on Cape Cod. I am not sure dates for paintings that I found on the Web are all accurate, but suspect they are not far off. The models' coiffeurs are usually based on long hair, something not fashionable during much of the 1920s, so most of the undated images are most likely from the previous decade. And the titles of the paintings? I'll use title format in the captions if that is what the source had; otherwise, I'll write a title as a sentence.

Moreover, I don't know who Miller used as models. One might well have been his wife, but I can't seem to find a photo of her, so that can't be confirmed. Perhaps some of the women in the early paintings were Giverny locals or wives of other artists. The same might be the case for Provincetown.

Setting aside that patchy background, let's take a look at some of the many appearances of That Skirt.

Gallery

The Miliner - 1909
The date might be a few years early.

Meditation - c. 1912-13
This was painted in the same room as the first picture.

Reverie - 1913
Ditto. Note the sewing (?) box with the open top is the same as in the previous painting.

Sunlight - 1913
Same window blinds, same table, same box, same chair, same foot rest and, of course, same skirt. I even suspect that both women in the painting were posed by the same person.

The Necklace - c. 1924
I notice that the model for all the paintings shown thus far seems to be the same person. The hair-do matches, as does the shape of the nose, for instance. Probably Miller's wife, because she'd be available to pose and wouldn't likely charge a modeling fee. I question the 1924 date; most like done ten years earlier.

Contemplation
Same model, skirt. Also the same french door framing.

Seated Lady with Red Hair
Big change, other than that persistent skirt. The subject is a different woman, but the room and some of its contents seem the same as before.

Red Haired Woman Seated at Vanity
The usual setting, although this mirror on the table has a square frame. The model might not be the same as the redhead in the last image, because her hair seems a little longer than the other's would have been had it been let down. But I could easily be wrong.

Woman in green chair
The mirror and skirt look the same as in the last image, but somehow the room seems different. Elsewhere in France, perhaps? Or maybe even Provincetown.

Girl reading
This might be Miller's daughter. The hair style suggests the 1920s. The skirt is similar to the others, but has a different hem.

Sunny Morning - c. 1930
Provincetown here, almost certainly. Different model, but the usual skirt.

Young woman holding necklace
This looks like that same model used for the painting above. French doors and venetian blinds return. I suspect these two final paintings were done later than 1930.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Maurice Greiffenhagen: Painter and Illustrator

Maurice Greiffenhagen (1862-1931) was a Royal Academician, an instructor at the Glasgow School of Art, and an illustrator. His Wikipedia entry is here, and a link containing some of his illustrations is here.

Greiffenhagen was highly competent as well as versatile. I tend to prefer his illustrations to his portraits (he did many), many of which tend to be rather dark with (as best I can tell from digital images) slightly fussy brushwork.

Gallery

Poster Art for London Midland & Scottish Railway

Carlisle, Gateway to Scotland - 1924

A Visit to Town

Piccadilly - 1926


Classical and Literary Scenes

Laertes and Ophelia - 1885

An Idyl - 1891

Cophetua - 1920-25

The Message - 1923


Portraits

Sir Henry Rider Haggard - 1897
Greiffenhagen was an illustrator of Haggard's books.

Lady with coral necklace - c. 1910

Sons of William Parkinson - 1915

Lady Emma J. Biles - 1917


Nude

Nude with a Wrap - 1924

Monday, May 26, 2014

Christian Schad's portraits

According to his Wikipedia entry, Christian Schad (1894-1982) was never very successful financially as an artist. Nor was he very famous until late in life when he was rediscovered. Moreover, even though he is classed as a Neue Sachlichkeit (usually translated from the German as New Objectivity) painter, his style and subject matter were far less extreme and less political than others in that group such as George Grosz and Otto Dix. I touched briefly on Schad here.

After about 1920, Schad had settled on a hard-edge style of painting that included a slight degree of form and surface simplification and caricature. But nothing so extreme so as to fall into the Nazis' "degenerate art" category. What Schad did do was inject elements and juxtapositions into some of his paintings that made them what we now call "edgy." Today a number of American representational painters depict scenes with similar elements, though without modernist distortions.

Below are examples of Schad's portrait painting, which actually was pretty much all he did when not involved in photography.

Gallery

Cafe d'Italia - 1921

Marcella - 1923

Marcella - 1926
Marcella Arcangeli was Schad's first wife.

Bildnis einer Englaenderin (Portrait of a Young English Woman) - 1926

Baroness Vara Wassilko - 1926

Graf St. Genois d'Anneaucourt - 1927

Joseph Mathias Haeuer - 1927

Lotte - 1927

Sonja at the Romisches Cafe - 1928

Bettina Mittelstädt- 1942

Bettina Schad - c. 1977
Bettina became Schad's second wife.

Friday, May 23, 2014

B. Fleetwood-Walker of Birmingham

Hard-edge or else soft and more impressionistic. These largely sum up the portrait painting approaches of Bernard Fleetwood-Walker (1893-1965), who proudly spent most of his career in the industrial city of Birmingham.

His Wikipedia entry is here and a site run by his family is here. The latter attempts to include all Fleetwood-Walker's works, major and minor.

As you will notice from the images below, he changed his style sometime around World War 2. Through the 1920s and 30s he painted crisply and smoothly, almost achieving an airbrushed look. Then he shifted to a much more casual style.

Gallery

Repose - 1925
The subject is Marjory White, his first wife.

Two women
Thought to be the artist's wife and her younger sister.

Amity - 1933

The Family
From the appearance of the woman, I'd say that this depicts his own family.

Mr and Mrs R.H. Butler and Their Daughters - 1936
Fleetwood-Walker painted several family portraits like these.

Joan - 1930s

Peggy in a Black Hat - 1949
I think this Peggy was his second wife. By this time, he had dropped the hard-edge style for something more casual and painterly.

Miss Bryant - 1949

Dr Edward Bramley - 1950

Christine - c. 1961
This is better drawn than some of his casual paintings. I have the feeling that Fleetwood-Walker had trouble placing eyes on faces (see the second link above and do some sub-linking for many examples of his work). But be aware that eye placement is not always easy, aside from full-face and profile views.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

George Morland, Dissipated Genre Painter

Yes, he was dissipated, throwing away an otherwise successful career through lack of financial and personal self-control. That was George Morland (1763-1804). What I find interesting is that he was a prolific painter of mostly countryside genre scenes that had little to do with his wild, largely urban life. An extensive Wikipedia biography is here.

I don't find Morland's works very interesting from an artistic standpoint. On the other hand, they can be useful documentation of aspects of late 18th century English life. Let's take a look.

Gallery

Coast Scene -1792

Winter Landscape

Herdsman with Cattle Crossing Bridge

Cowherd and Milkmaid - 1792

Pigs in a Sty
Morland painted many pigsty pictures.

Lovers Observed

Easy Money

The Public House Door - 1792

The Fortune Teller

The Artist in His Studio and His Man Gibbs - 1802
No fancy studio here, for Morland was trying to avoid his creditors after leaving debtor's prison.