Mikhail Vrubel: Square-Brush Paintings

Mikhail Vrubel (1856-1910) died blind and not totally sane. Before that, he was one of the most interesting artists Russia produced as the traditionalist-academic school of painting crumbled and Modernism worked its way to ascendancy.

Vrubel had a law degree, but then studied painting at the Imperial Academy of Art in St. Petersburg. For a few years he worked on a project in Kiev to replace 12th century murals and was able to travel to Venice, but also began to work on images of a demon based on an epic poem by Mikhail Lermontov. His first Demon painting in 1890 was noteworthy enough to launch his career. This and more biographical in formation can be found here and here.

Vrubel could vary his style, but his best-known paintings feature a good deal of square-brush work to create a fragmented, jewel-like effect around more smoothly painted faces and other features of his subjects. The best place I know of to view Vrubel's art is in Moscow's State Tretyakov Gallery a short distance south of the river bordering the Kremlin. When I was there, an entire room was devoted to Vrubel.

Gallery

Head of a Woman (Emilia Prakhova) - study for "The Virgin and Child" - 1884 or 1885
Pencil and gouache. I include this to show Vrubel's approach early in his career. Later drawings were more wispy with plenty of possibly excess lines included.

Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel - 1904
The artist's opera singer wife. This was painted not long before he lost his sight. Vrubel was not completely wedded to the square-brush - jeweled effects he is most famous for.

Seated Demon - 1890
As noted, he made several Demon-themed paintings, and this is the first and most famous.

Swan Princess - 1900
His wife depicted in a role she sang in a Rimsky-Korsakov opera. Another of his best-known paintings.

Fallen Demon - 1902
Vrubel continued the Demon a dozen years after the first painting.

Artist's Wife in a Stage Dress - 1898
More of a sketch than a finished work here.

Siren - 1900
Absent the woman, this would be an abstract painting.

Six-Winged Seraph - 1904
Another classic Vrubel image.

Lyonel Feininger's Crystalline Images

Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) got his start as a cartoonist, even though he was given formal training in art. So it can be helpful to be a well-fed young artist rather than a starving one while working on one's skills. As this biographical sketch mentions, he finally got around to the Fine Arts trade when he was in his mid-30s.

Feininger is best known for images that were probably originally inspired by Cubism, but usually lacked the Cubist rationale that subjects were supposedly simultaneously depicted from various points of view in one image. Instead, Feininger simplified subjects using straight edges and planes, often extending edge lines across the picture plane accompanied by transitional value shading. The result was a clean, somewhat crystalline appearance that has appealed to me for as long as I can remember. Other artists picked up on this, including C.R.W. Nevinson and Ray Hill, the latter an instructor at the University of Washington when I was an art student.

Below are examples from what I consider to be Feininger's Golden Years.

Gallery

Gross-Kromsdorf - 1915

Hohe Häuser IV - 1919
This seems to be about as Cubist as Feininger could manage.

Gelmeroda VIII - 1921
Even people are reduced to lines and angles.

The High Shore - 1923
A crystalized landscape.

Gaberndorf II - 1924
Another somewhat Cubist image.

Church of the Minorites II - 1926
Gothic arches are reduced to angles here.

Bird Cloud - 1926
The bird's wings seem Futurist-inspired (think: Giacomo Balla's Dinamismo di un Cane al Guinzaglio -- "Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash" - 1912).

Sail Boats - 1929

Gelmeroda XIII - 1936

Lewis Baumer: Cartoonist and All-Rounder

Lewis Baumer (1870-1963) made his career as a cartoonist and book illustrator, but like some of his English contemporaries (I'm thinking of you, Heath Robinson), he was capable of a lot more. That was because he was trained at the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal College of Art, among other places. Biographical information on him can be found here and here.

I'm not sure that Baumer had the right stuff to succeed doing fine arts painting, and perhaps he came to a similar conclusion. At any rate as early as 1893 his illustrations began appearing in the Pall Mall Gazette, and by 1897 was in Punch, England's leading humor periodical. Besides magazine work, he also illustrated many books -- a list is in the first link, above. By the 1920s, he was doing some portrait painting on the side.

Gallery

The Paralysing Fascination of The Latest Step - Punch Almanack - 1922
A cartoon from before the era of the strong punchline.

Etching
Baumer was also an etcher of some skill.

Illustration

The Little Model

Eileen - ca. 1925

Girl in a Red Coat - 1927
This is the largest image I could find.

Noel Streatfeild - ca. 1926
I like this portrait a lot, though can't quite explain why.

Charles Hermans: Belgian Painter

Charles Hermans (1839-1924), was born in Brussels and died in Menton, France (at the edge of the Italian border on the Riviera). As this brief biography indicates, his art training was not formally academic. Yet his style was representational and almost without modernist technical influence. Where he differed mostly from pure academia was in his selection of subjects, as can be seen below.

Gallery

Monks Playing Bowls - 1867
An early painting influenced by what he saw in Italy.

Portrait of a Young Woman
Free brushwork, aside from the face.

The Flower Seller
The flowers stand out, the rest is flat.

Two Dancers
Some color overlays here along with plenty of visible brushwork.

La belle voisine
I wonder if she was Hermans' pretty neighbor.

Circe
Modern-dress Ulysses episode.

Le bal masque à l'Opera
This is the most modernist-influenced of the images shown here; sketchy background, but more carefully painted foreground subjects.

At the Masquerade

L'aube - 1875
Hermans' career breakout painting depicting the morning after a ball or similar event.

Howard Chandler Christy Painted the Gamut

Howard Chandler Christy (1873-1952) won fame illustrating scenes from the Spanish-American War, solidified his status by creating the "Christy Girl" in his illustrations, did posters to help the U.S. effort in the Great War, painted saucy nudes to decorate bars, made portraits of famous people and spent more than two years creating a huge painting for the U.S. Capitol Building. He was a fortunate artist to have experienced great professional success in his lifetime; posthumous fame strikes me as being sad.

A brief Wikipedia entry about Christy is here, a longer illustrated link is here and a Society of Illustrators tribute to him is here.

Part of his training was under William Merritt Chase, a grounding that must have enhanced his versatility, the facility that gained him success in the variety of undertakings noted above.

Gallery

Rough Riders illustration
This seems to be a scan from a book published soon after the war in Cuba ended.

The Puritan Girl - book illustration - 1911

Navy Recruiting poster - ca. 1917

Liberty Loan poster - 1917

Angel of Mercy - 1922
A wartime scene, but I'm not sure whether it was for a story or another purpose. Christy was highly skilled using water media.

Late Night Conversation - 1923
A story illustration that looks like it was done using pen and brush.

Grace Coolidge portrait - 1924
She was the wife of the U.S. President, Calvin Coolidge.

Self-portrait with model - ca. 1935
Did I mention that he liked to paint saucy nudes?

Publicity photo of Christy and model
The model standing at the left of the easel is draped a little, but the image on the canvas is draped not at all.

The Signing of the Constitution of the United States - 1940
This huge painting is in the United States' Capitol Building.

Wyndham Lewis' Excellent Modernist Portraits

Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) divided his career between art and writing, winning esteem and controversy in both fields, but not a lot of money. By his late 50s he was undergoing serious bladder operations. Not long after, a growing pituitary tumor degraded his optic nerves to the point that in 1951 he announced that he had gone blind. Myself having had a vision scare recently, I have an inkling of the horror he must have experienced. (It turns out that a tentative diagnosis of macular degeneration was false, and my problem was almost entirely fixed by surgery.)

As for his art, Lewis was a vocal modernist in traditional England, promoting Vorticism, a form of Cubism around the time of the outbreak of the Great War. This was in part through his own works and also via his publication "Blast." More biographical information can be found here.

For this post, I'm setting aside his Vorticist work to focus on his portraiture. This was highlighted in a 2008 exhibit at London's National Portrait Gallery.

Early in his career Lewis considered himself a modernist, one of those self-anointeds who were to remake just about everything, including art. But by the late 1930s he conceded that things weren't working out as intended. And as early as 1919, Lewis' portrait drawings were an interesting blend of modernist simplification and accurate portrayal. His subjects' appearances and personalities show strongly in part because simplification was only lightly applied and tended to be dominated by his sure control of line. This ability resulted in drawings that usually outshone his painted portraits.

Gallery

Ezra Pound - 1919
Lewis and the poet were good friends when this drawing was made.

James Joyce - 1921
Lewis did several portrait drawings of Joyce.

Edith Sitwell - 1921
His drawings of Sitwell eventually led to a painted portrait that I included in this post (scroll down).

Girl Seated (Gladys Anne Hoskins) - 1922
Lewis married Hoskins in 1930. She was called "Froanna" by then, but mostly remained in the background while Lewis was alive.

Augustus John - 1932
Portrait of a fellow portrait artist.

Dorothy Alexander (Lady Harmsworth) - 1932

Dame Edith Evans - 1932

Rebecca West - 1932
Lewis and West were miles apart politically, but got along personally.

Girl Reading (Froanna) - 1936

Froanna - 1937

T.S. Eliot - 1938
This, and his portrait of Sitwell, are perhaps Lewis' best-known portrait paintings.

Miss Close - 1939
I'm not sure who the sitter is, but include this because it was painted only a few years before he realized that he was starting to go blind.  Lewis continued to paint while he was able, but quality began to fall away.