Frederick Varley and Norma

Frederick (Fred) Horsman Varley (1881-1969) was a member of Canada's famed Group of Seven artists. A wikipedia entry about him is here, and I wrote a general post about him here.

More recently I wrote about him and his most famous portrait subject, Vera Weatherbie, here. The present post touches on another important subject that I briefly treated in my original Varley post. Her first name is Norma. Her last name seems to be either Park or Parks -- I've seen both versions in various tiny snippets of information on the Internet, but nothing conclusive.

The Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts (now the Emily Carr University of Art and Design) was established in 1925 and not long after that Varley moved to Vancouver, British Columbia to teach there. Around 1929 his students included Weatherbie and Norma.

Below are three or four of his versions of Norma. If anyone could supply more information regarding Norma, I would greatly appreciate it if that could be included in a comment to this post.

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I am not sure that this painting is of Norma. The subject has a bobbed hairdo like those seen on known portraits of Norma, but such hairdos were common during the 1920s.

This is either a study for a painting of Norma or an abandoned attempt. It is on the reverse side of the painting below.

Norma as seen in an unusual composition with her at the upper-left corner of the painting and looking out beyond the frame.

I wish I could have found a larger version of this portrait of Norma. The neck appears exaggerated (compare to the previous painting), and I quibble with the lighting down towards the tip of her nose. Nevertheless, a striking portrait of a striking young woman.

Jeremy Mann: Free and Tight on a Single Painting

Jeremy Mann (b. 1979) is a young (mid-30s) artist whose work disproves the modernist conceit of the 1950s that there was no point to realist or naturalist painting in the age of photography, and that abstraction was the viable Fine Arts alternative.

The link to a Fine Arts Connoisseur magazine piece featuring Mann is here, and a gallery web page regarding Mann is here. They contain snippets of biographical information.

Mann's style is a combination of sketchy, impressionistic backgrounds delivered using a variety of means for attacking a wood panel with paint along with tightly-painted details, especially in his depictions of beautiful women. He is also hugely prolific, as his own web site reveals. Click on the images below to enlarge.

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Bay Evening

Raised freeway

Hell's Kitchen

Rooftops in the Snow

Soho

The Muse

Undressing

Untitled (Grace)

The White Vanity

The Forgotten (Version Two - Neglect)

Frederick Varley and Vera Weatherbie

What follows is a greatly simplified, fascinating fragment of Canadian art world history.

It has to do with Frederick (Fred) Horsman Varley (1881-1969), a member of the Group of Seven who I wrote about here (Wikipedia entry here). Unlike most Group of Seven artists, he favored portraiture over landscape painting. And his character was erratic, being prone to stumbling from one personal relationship or financial crisis to another.

He spent 1926-36 in Vancouver, British Columbia teaching and painting. One of his students, Vera Olivia Weatherbie (1909 or 1910 - 1977), became both his lover and muse. There is not much about Weatherbie on the Internet, but here is one link. Varley painted Vera a number of times (see below), and one portrait is now considered iconic in Canadian art.

Weatherbie married photographer and art patron Harold Mortimer-Lamb (1872-1970) on 4 May 1942 when she was in her early 30s and he was about 70. It seems to have been a happy marriage. When she was in her mid-50s she developed dementia or insanity and was lobotomized late 1967 or in 1968. She died choking on a piece of steak on the occasion of her brother's visit from Seattle.

These details were gleaned from the book "Harold Mortimer-Lamb: the art lover" that is reviewed here.

Here are many of Varley's paintings of Vera plus a reference photo.

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Portrait of Vera by John Vanderpant

Vera - c. 1928

Vera

Dharana (probably Vera) - 1932

Vera

Vera - 1934

Vera

Vera - 1931
This is the Varley portrait of Vera Weatherbie that I and others call "iconic."

In the Beginning: J.M.W. Turner

Some readers might be tempted to think that when I mention that I'm not fond of paintings by Joseph Mallord William (J.M.W.) Turner (1775-1851), it means that I'm striving too hard to maintain my Art Contrarian credentials.

Not so. Ten or so years ago I was in the Tate Britain, where there are ten rooms containing his works. This gave me plenty of opportunity to see his paintings "up close and personal" as they used to say. And I didn't like most of the later, archetypical Turners that Modernist apologists gush over because of their near-abstract qualities. So there: I really, truly didn't like what I saw.  During later visits to the Tate, I never set foot in those Turner rooms again.

Background information about Turner can be found here.

Turner's painting were not always the wispy things he is famous for. He evolved, as most artists do. Below are examples of his paintings made when he was in his late 20s and early 30s. They indicate his focus on landscapes and marine subjects along with a growing interest on the effects of light and atmosphere.

Included is one painting where people are the focus, and I consider it inferior to the others, some of which I find fairly likable. Also included is a late painting (he was 65) that is somewhat at odds with the atmospheric seascapes he is most noted for.

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Dutch Boat in a Gale - 1801

Holy Family - 1803

Bonneville Savoy - 1803

Windsor Castle from the Thames - c.1805

The Shipwreck - 1805

Cliveden on the Thames - 1807

The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizzen Shrouds of the Victory - 1806-08

Venice from the Giudecca - 1840

George Washington Lambert, 1905-1910

George Washington Lambert (1873-1930), born in St. Petersburg, Russia, lived in Germany and England before migrating to Australia in 1887, went to Paris around 1900, to London the following year where he remained until returning to Australia in 1921, living there until his death from heart failure, age 57. He is generally regarded as Australian, as that was his citizenship.

His short Wikipedia entry is here. It mentions that he was the father of noted musician Constant Lambert (1905-51).

So far as I am concerned, the most distinctive period of Lambert's career was approximately 1905-1910, and the images below are from then. Lambert's style was strong, featuring solid, visible drawing. Faces are usually painted smoothly, but other parts of the same painting are often somewhat blocked in using disciplined, visible brush strokes.

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Equestrian Portrait of a Boy - 1905

Sybil Walker in a Red and Gold Dress - 1905

Lotty and a Lady - 1906

Portrait Group: The Mother - 1907

The Sonnet - 1907

Portrait Group - 1908

Miss Alison Preston and John Proctor on Mearbeck Moor - 1909

King Edward VII - 1910

Holiday in Essex - 1910

Fernand Toussaint, Yet Another Interesting Belgian

Fernand Toussaint (1873-1956) was a Belgian painter who, like so many other competent artists from that country and elsewhere, failed to make a serious mark in the Paris-dominated art world of his time. Perhaps for that reason biographical information on the Internet is slim, the most detailed being here.

I just referred to Toussaint as "competent." There is nothing wrong with that, and it's surely better than being incompetent. His defect, to the extent he had one, was that his work didn't stand out strongly. To put it another way, there wasn't a large dose of individual style that proclaimed Toussaint!! to the world.

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Arranging Flowers

Le Sillon - poster
Around 1900 many Fine Arts painters also did commercial work such as this.

Bruxelles la vie moderne - c. 1905
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this looks like the Boulevard Anspach or thereabouts.

Jeune femme contemplant de croquis
She is looking at sketches, it seems. The style is also sketchy.

La collectioneuse - 1913
A more committed appreciator of art.

Portrait de femme
This looks unfinished, but Toussaint signed it, so it's done.

Three Strollers

Seductive Pose
I guess I forgot to mention that one of Toussaint's specialties was painting attractive women.

Woman with a Fan
I like this mural style painting, probably because it reminds me of the work of Frank Brangwyn (who spent time in Belgium).

Saturnino Herrán: A Mexican Brangwyn and Lambert

Saturnino Herrán (1887-1918) was a Mexican painter who died aged 31 after an operation for a gastric problem. His Wikipedia entry is here and a longer biography that includes an evaluation of his work is here. Charley Parker blogged about him here.

Herrán was an almost exact contemporary of Diego Rivera, a more famous -- but lesser, in my opinion -- painter. One wonders whether Herrán would have evolved his subjects and style in the direction of Rivera, Orozco, Siqueros and others whose careers spanned the 1930s and often dealt with political subjects.

As it was, his style apparently was influenced by Frank Brangwyn and, to my mind, is similar to many of George Washington Lambert's works. Herrán was an excellent draftsman and his paintings include lines that help define his subjects. In a word, it can be called muralistic.  But then, he also painted murals, so it all makes sense.

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El rebozo - 1916
A study for the paintings below.

La criolla del rebozo

El Ciego - blind man - 1914

La criolla del mantón - 1915

Girl with Calabaza - 1917

La dama del mantón - his wife

La criolla del mango

La cosecha - 1909

La ofrenda - 1913