Eugene Speicher: Forgotten Tepid Modernist

American portrait painter Eugene Speicher (1883-1962) has remained largely forgotten since even before his death. A brief Wikipedia entry is here. An extensive analytical piece on Speicher is here. And a bit more about him can be found here.

The links above stress that he was considered a leading representational painter largely uninfluenced by modernism and, in those artistically somewhat conservative times in this country, had a successful career. He trained with Georgia O'Keeffe and Edward Hopper, both of whom achieved more lasting fame. His most influential teacher was Robert Henri, whose painting style was not entirely traditional (take a look at his brushwork).

Based on the images of Speicher's paintings I found on the Internet, I find it a little hard to understand the praise he received at the height of his career. He did not employ dimensional distortion (a major modernist tactic), nor did he do much in the way of color modification. But he did employ the third major modernist tool, shape simplification, to a slight degree. The result was paintings that were not quite naturalistic depictions of their subjects. They clearly included mannerisms that were part of artistic fashions of the period 1920-1945. In sum, I consider him a good painter in terms of his time, but not a great one.

Gallery

Georgia O'Keeffe - 1908
Painted when they were students.

Portrait of a French Girl (Jeanne Balzac) - 1924

Jeanne Balzac
I don't know whether or not this is the actress Jeanne de Balzac (1891-1930).

Katharine Cornell (as Candida) - 1926
Perhaps Speicher's best-known painting. Cornell (1893-1974) was one of America's most famous stage actresses in her day. Both Speicher and Cornell hailed from Buffalo, New York.

Red Moore: The Blacksmith - c. 1933-34
His non-commissioned portraits included people from the Woodstock, New York area where he lived.

Girl in a Coral Necklace (Joyce) - 1935
Mid-1930s modernist-inspired simplification here. Too much contrast between the sharply-defined eyes and the the rest of the brushwork for my taste.

Kingston, New York - 1935
The nearest "big city" to Woodstock was Kingston. I never visited Kingston much when I lived in upstate New York, but this modernist-influenced painting is suggestive of a neighborhood at the edge of town.

John White Alexander's Women in Green

John White Alexander (1856-1915) rose from being an orphan to the upper reaches of the Art Establishment of his day, as is mentioned here. This was because he was technically very good and could create some interesting, though sometimes stylized, images.

The paintings shown below are neither formal, commissioned portraits nor the stylized works just mentioned. Instead, they seems to be more like exercises or experiments Alexander did when not working on major assignments.

This selection shows women dressed in green gowns. It happens that green seems to be a difficult color for many artists to work with, especially when the main subjects are people. For example, the somewhat orange color of skin often stands out sharply when placed in a woodsy or grassy landscape setting. For that reason, artists need to take special care to create paintings with that subject matter that are harmonious in terms of color. So even though Alexander was painting interior scenes here, he might have been working the flesh-green problem because the results are rather sketchy, unfinished. I note below that he was probably using the same two costumes for his models.

Gallery

Green Girl - 1896

Juliette - 1897

A Quiet Hour - c. 1901
The three paintings shown above feature a billowy gown that might be the same item shown from different model poses.

The images below are of paintings where clearly the same gown is used in all cases.  The model might also be the same.

A Rose

The Green Gown - c. 1904
This seems to be a sketch or study.

Study in Black and Green - C. 1906

Study in Black and Green - 1906
These two paintings are nearly identical, but the one immediately above is more finished.

Paul Nash: War Artist, Surrealist

Paul Nash (1889-1946) was a member of the Slade School's second surge of noteworthy artists, a group strongly influenced by modernism while retaining a bit of traditional British caution in the matter. A lengthy Wikipedia biography is here and here is a short note from the Tate.

It seems that Nash had a deficiency exposed while at the Slade: he wasn't very good at depicting people. As a result, he generally painted landscapes. During the 1930s when Surrealism became fashionable, he did works in that vein based on landscape art.

Nash is best known as a war artist, particularly for his works featuring the Great War (he also depicted World War 2). Unlike many men commissioned to do war art, Nash had had combat experience as an officer and knew full well what that war was like.

Gallery

The Ypres Salient at Night - 1918
A 1917 exhibit of works dealing with Ypres led to his posting as a war artist, according to the Tate link above.  This painting was done later.

Wounded at Passchendaele
Showing why Nash seldom featured people in his paintings.

The Menin Road - 1919
This and the Ypres Salient painting above are probably his best-known Great War paintings.

The Shore - 1923
A nice, bold composition, which accounts for the tilted horizon line, I suppose.

Event on the Downs - 1934
An early Surrealist work.

Landscape from a Dream - 1936-38
Much Surrealism supposedly dealt with dreams, something I find hard to believe.

Messerschmidt [sic] in Windsor Great Park - 1940
Nash wasn't any better with airplanes than he was with people.

Battle of Britain - 1941
Perhaps his best-known Second War painting.

Totes Meer (Dead Sea) - 1940-41

Defence of Albion - 1942
This painting is dreadful.  Perhaps Nash's frail health was overtaking his abilities.

Luke Fildes: Painter of Poverty and Royalty

Sir Samuel Luke Fildes (1843-1927) began his career as an illustrator, then moved into painting. He also moved from depicting poor or common folk to making portraits of members of the royal family. Plus, he seemed to enjoy painting portraits of pretty young women. If he did any landscapes or still lifes, they were a small part of the output of his career.

Filde's Wikipedia entry is here. He had one son who died in childhood, that event serving as the basis for one of his best-known paintings, "The Doctor". Fildes lived a long life, as did two other sons, Luke and Sir Paul.

Given that his art training took place before French Impressionism was revealed to the world, Fildes' style remained traditional, though some of his informal works done after 1900 feature more casual brushwork than what he used when depicting royalty.

Gallery

Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward - 1874

A Venetian Flower Girl - 1877

Venetians - 1885

An Alfresco Toilette - 1889

Fanny, Lady Fildes - 1887

Portrait of Venetia - c.1900

Edward VII - 1905

Carina - 1910

George V - after 1910

Self Portrait - 1911

Naomi - 1914

Adoration - no date

Towards the End: Juan Gris

Juan Gris (1887-1927) died young, not long after his 40th birthday. I wrote a "In the Beginning" post about him, but found too few images to illustrate it properly.

Biographical information on Gris -- born José Victoriano (Carmelo Carlos) González-Pérez -- is here.

It seems that Gris never quite abandoned Cubism once he was converted to that branch of modernist painting. The images below that concentrate on the last year or two of his life are mostly in the so-called Synthetic Cubism vein, though there are dashes of other influences such as the "return to order," a post- Great War introduction of classical themes by modernist painters such as Picasso.

Gallery

Portrait of Pablo Picasso - 1912
An example of Gris' early cubist art. Gris had some technical education and preferred a tidier form of Cubism than Picasso himself used. Gris would establish a geometry-based structure for many of his works. In this painting, note the parallel lines flanking the buttons on Picasso's garment. At right-angles to these are some background lines in the upper-right part of the painting. Also note the vertical and horizontal motifs in that area.

Harlequin with Guitar - 1919
Painted towards the end of Synthetic Cubism's stylistic run. Gris included guitars in many of his paintings.

Bananas - 1926

The Painter's Window - 1925

Guitar and Sheet Music - 1926-27
Three late paintings featuring a guitar along with various objects defined by straight lines.

The Goblet - 1927

Bunch of Grapes and Fish - 1927
I found this in the Athenaeum site in its Juan Gris grouping. It has plenty of geometric character, but doesn't look like other Gris paintings. Is it truly a Gris?

The Reader - 1926
A human subject with a cubist touch in terms of the shading pattern on her face. Plenty of Gris-type geometrized (is that a real word? ...well, you ought to get its meaning) background material.

Woman with Basket - 1927
A women painted the next year, but entirely different in spirit. She looks classical like other modernists had been painting in the early 1920s. Comparatively few straight lines here, mostly found on the basket and in its vicinity.

Edwin Dickinson: In His Own Catergory

Edwin Walter Dickinson (1891-1978) was a modernist of sorts.

That is, he wasn't really a traditionalist painter even though many of his images included realistic details.

By the feel of some of his images, he might have been considered a Symbolist. Except it can be difficult to point out what was being symbolized.

Given some odd juxtapositions and choices of subjects, he might be considered a Surrealist. But only in a vague kind of way.

It seems Dickinson is hard to pin down when it comes to the evidence of his paintings.

Even verbally, he could be vague or impenetrable. At one point, he gave a lecture at Yale that left many in the audience puzzled. And then there's this interview regarding William Merritt Chase and Charles W. Hawthorne as his teachers, which contains bits that I found difficult to follow during a quick read.

Many of the links to Wikipedia dealing with obscure artists are brief, lacking the amount of detail I prefer to have. In Dickinson's case, his entry is huge. Then there's a fairly new online Dickinson Catalogue Raisonné that can be found here. If you want to read even more, there's John Perreault's take on Dickinson here and some observations by Mary Ellen Abell here.

Perhaps because he doesn't fit easily into the Modernist Establishment Art History Timeline handed down to me at university, and also because of the difficulty categorizing his work, I was totally unaware of Dickinson until very recently. So far as I know, I've never seen any of his paintings. But given what I found on the Internet, I would really like to, because many of them seem fascinating.

Gallery

Elizabeth Finney - 1915
A fairly early work.

An Anniversary - 1920-21
This seems to symbolize something ... but what?

Biala, Née Janice Tworkov - 1924

The Cello Player - 1924-26

Frances Foley - 1927

Frances Foley, Second Portrait - 1928
Foley became his wife in 1928.

The Fossil Hunters - 1928
When this was first exhibited, it was hung sideways. That's understandable, given the odd perspective Dickinson gave his subjects here.

Woodland Scene - 1929-1935

Composition with Still Life - 1933-37
These two paintings seem vaguely Surrealist ... or maybe vaguely Symbolist ... or something else.

Elsbeth Miller - no date

Self-Portrait in Uniform - 1942
Hmm. I had a great-grandfather who was a musician-stretcher-bearer in the American Civil War.

The Ruin at Daphne - 1943-1953
Yes, it took Dickinson about a decade to complete this painting.

View of Great Island - 1940
Dickinson did many landscapes in premier coup mode starting as a student under Hawthorne.