An Especially Wild Boldini

Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931) was a representational painter, yet he painted so freely that many of his images are exaggerated, if not flat-out distorted. His Wikipedia entry is here and includes a number of examples of his work. I have posted about him as well.

San Francisco's Legion of Honor has Café Scene (c.1887) a small sketch-painting made in Paris. It interests me because, like many unfinished paintings, it offers some insight into how an artist goes about working.

In Boldini's case, it is sketchy indeed.

The painting: a cropped photo I took at the Legion of Honor. What was cropped was the frame plus a tiny bit of the painting.

Detail.

The Moody World of Henri Le Sidaner

Henri Eugène Augustin Le Sidaner (1862-1939) was a prolific painter despite the fact that he usually painted in a small-stroke divisionist fashion. Even though he is not well known these days, the Athaenium web site has nearly 400 images of his work, far above their typical image count for painters.

Sidaner's English language Wikipedia entry is brief, so consider the more detailed French entry and have it translate the text if you don't read French. A useful article about him from 2014 can be linked here on the (British) Spectator site.

As for his style, Sidaner's divisionism was a treatment he applied much of the time to fairly structured draftsmanship. That is, if you look at the thumbnail images at the Athaenium site above, many seem sharp. It's only when you link through to enlarged versions that the brushwork becomes more dominant.

Gallery

The Return of the Flock - 1889
An example of Sidaner's early style and subject matter.

Portrait of Madame Hemon - 1896
Divisionism is beginning to creep in here in the form of small color areas.  The arms and hands are poorly done.  In any case, he seldom painted people.

Sunday - 1898
A pleasant scene: one of his more interesting works with a Symbolist touch.

A Canal at Bruges - 1898
Le Sidaner avoided Paris, spending time at various places in France and Belgium.  A few of his works deal with the London area.

The Cathedral at Chartres - 1903-04
Note the small, lighted window.  This makes the image less relentless.  Examples of this can be found in a number of his paintings.

Full Moon on the River - 1919
Two lighted windows here (plus one reflected window) in this pleasantly moody painting.

Une petite Table au crépuscule - 1921
He often included tables with a bit of still life as subjects.  Here too is a lighted window.

La Fenêtre du Midi, Villefranche-sur-Mer - 1927
Another Sidaner trait was showing scenes beyond open windows.

La ville haute - 1937
A fairly late painting.  Color areas return, though some divisionism remains.

Evening Celebration - 1939
Painted not long before his death.  Atypical subject matter.  More of a sketch than a finished work (in Le Sidiner's sense).

A Portrait by Henry Brown Fuller

Henry Brown Fuller (1867-1934) was a capable painter who left few works of note, if the number of his paintings found via Google is any criterion. Plus, he had personal problems that might well have been related to this. His brief Wikipedia entry is here.

As for the quality of those few images is concerned, one painting, Illusions, is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection. Another, his portrait of Ebba Bohm (c.1905) was on display at San Francisco's De Young when I visited in December.

The Ebba Bohm portrait is interesting in part due to its comparative "flatness" -- not poster-like, but far from the rounded, hard-edge academic style that was prevalent only a few decades before Fuller painted Ebba. This characteristic is not so apparent in the images posted here, but for some reason stood out when I viewed the painting in person. I found it a very satisfying work by a not-well-known painter.

This is an image of the painting found on the Internet.

Here is a photo I took at the museum. For some reason it seems "flatter" than the image above. Perhaps it's because the colors seem less intense -- and those colors in my photo seem closer to what I saw than those in the first image.

A close-up photo. Modeling of the head is much less apparent here than in the Internet image.

Unfinished Le Nain

Unfinished paintings interest me because they reveal to some degree how an artist went about his business.

In December I encountered an interesting example at San Francisco's Legion of Honor museum in an exhibit of paintings by France's Le Nain brothers. The link (available as I write this) to the exhibit is here. The brothers' Wikipedia entry is here.

And here is what the National Gallery has to say about the painting in question, "Three Men and a Boy" from around 1647-48. It seems it was previously known as "A Trio of Geometers." But a cleaning revealed an unfinished image of three men (some think it's a portrait of the brothers themselves) with an image of a boy made using a different style and a different light source. I wonder what the geometers version looked like -- a quick Google search for it turned up empty -- and why it was so easily revealed by cleaning.

A further question is which brother was the painter; it seems that they all signed paintings using only "Le Nain." The National Gallery does not designate who did it. The Athenaeum web site has Louis as the artist. Curators of the exhibit believe the painter was Mathieu.

Gallery

This image is from London's National Gallery, owner of the painting.

My establishment photo taken at the exhibit.

Closer photo of the main unfinished area. Click to enlarge for a better view of the brushwork.

Towards the End: Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) is one of the most famous French painters of Revolutionary and Napoleonic times. Many of his works were directly or indirectly political, and he was personally involved in political matters during the heyday of the Revolution. A fairly lengthy Wikipedia entry on David is here.

David's basic style was what has been derisively termed "Pompier" in reference to the Greek-style helmets worn by Parisian firefighters. This had to do with subject matter and the idealized depictions done in a highly "finished," hard-edge manner. More regarding his evolution can be found at the above link.

Given his political stances, David was reluctant to work in France following the Bourbon restoration. Having fled to what is now Belgium after Napoleon's fall, he remained in Brussels for the last years of his life.

Although David remained capable of making Pompier works during this time, some casual paintings of a greatly different character survive. I found two examples in December at San Francisco's Legion of Honor museum.

Gallery

Mars desarme par Venus - 1824
According to Wikipedia, this is David's last Pompier painting.

Laure-Emilie-Felicité David, La Baronne Meunier - 1812
A portrait of one of his twin daughters. Napoleon was still in power and David was still in Paris. But at age 64 this can be considered a late work.

Laure-Emilie-Felicité David, La Baronne Meunier - 1812
Close-up view. This seems to be little more that a sketch or study. Or might have David anticipated artistic trends 50 years in the future? Probably not, but I don't know enough to be categorical about this.

La bonne aventure (The Fortune Teller) - 1824
This was painted the same year as the Mars and Venus painting, within two years of David's death. Again, the style is casual and sketchy. Could this have been a study for a more finished work that was never made? Again, I don't know.

La bonne aventure (The Fortune Teller) - 1824
A slightly closer view.

Up Close: Edmund Tarbell's "The Blue Veil"

Edmund Charles Tarbell (1862-1938) was one of those "Ten" group Boston area painters who did a lot of interesting work during the decades around the year 1900. As his Wikipedia entry notes, he might be classified as an American Impressionist -- interested in French Impressionist coloring while giving more respect than Monet or Pissarro, say, to accurate drawing.

One of his most intriguing paintings can be found in San Francisco's de Young museum. It's titled "The Blue Veil," painted in 1898.

I viewed it (again!) in December 2016 and took some close-up photos showing Tarbell's brushwork in the hope that you, too, might be interested. Click on the images below to enlarge.

Gallery

The painting as seen on the Internet -- perhaps from the museum's web site.

My establishment shot, showing how my camera captured the painting in the gallery lighting conditions.

Note the contrast in brushwork. Thinner paint on the face and veil, impasto on the hat and some of the background.

Close-up of the subject's face The violet of the veil is duplicated in the facial shadows and the face's outline.

Sketchy Portraits of Women by John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) -- Wikipedia entry here -- made his living during the 19th century by painting portraits. He was very good at it, as many 21st century folks have been coming to realize.

His most famous portraits were made using oil paints. He also did finished portrait drawings. And he painted many landscapes, city scenes, and casual views of friends as well various anatomical studies. In other words, Sargent was a hugely prolific artist.

One aspect of his output that I find worth a blog post is casually-done, sketchy even, oil portraits of women. Some of these are shown below in roughly chronological order.

Gallery

Rosina Ferrara - 1878
She was a favorite subject at a time he visited the isle of Capri. I think this is one of Sargent's finest works.

A Spanish Woman - c.1880
A borderline sketch, the face fairly carefully realized while the rest of the canvas is little more than blocked in.

Vernon Lee - 1881
Sketch portrait of one of Sargent's friends.

Head of a Venetian Woman - 1881
Just enough facial detail to be quite convincing.

Mme Gautreau Drinking a Toast - c.1883
Madame X in a casual pose.

Mme Errazuriz - 1883-84
A flattering sketch that's interesting in terms of Sargent's choice of placement of light and shade.

Flora Priestley - 1885
Another portrait where only the face was given consideration.

Edith French - 1901
A very nice study, though her mouth seems too small.

Wilhelm Kotarbiński: The Good and Not-So-Good Paintings

Wilhelm (Vasily) Aleksandrovich Kotarbiński (1848-1921), a Pole who spent many years in Italy as well as in his native Russian Empire, is best known for his classical and religious paintings, though he also dealt with other subjects at times. His English language Wikipedia entry is here, and it has a link to the lengthy Polish entry that your browser might be able to translate.

Based on images of his works found on the Internet, what struck me was the great variation in quality. My guess is that the inferior paintings were primarily sketches or studies, but I can't be certain.

Gallery

Raising of the Son of the Widow of Nain - 1879
This painting was in the National Museum in Warsaw's Gallery of Polish Painting when I visited a number of years ago. It deals with the passage in Luke 7: 11-15. It was painted in Rome, and not intended to be placed in a religious setting.

On the Terrace
This is one of those inferior works I referred to. It is sketchily painted. Note how poorly the faces are drawn.

Evening Reverie
This is better that the previous painting, but the subject's face is still not quite right (her eyes seem too large).

Cleopatra
If you click to enlarge this image you will find that it is quite sketchy, so I'll assume it was a study.

Reverie
Painted in Rome. Given the lack of facial and other details, this too seems to be a study, though it was signed.

Crowning the Poet - 1881
Another painting from Kotarbiński's time in Rome. This painting is carefully done.

Venetian Serenade
Painted around the same time as the previous painting, but using a smoother style.

Favorite of the Seraglio with Her Handmaiden
Another carefully done work.

Roman Orgy
Kotarbiński put a lot of imagination and work into this painting.

Armand Schönberger: Derivative Modernist, But Nice

Armand Schönberger (1885-1974) was an Hungarian Modernist who studied in Munich and Paris as well as in Budapest. Internet biographical information is extremely sparse: this will have to do.

Even though he lived a long life that included World War 2 and nearly 30 years of Communist rule, I could locate none of his paintings dated outside the 1920s and early 1930s. In part this might be because the majority of his paintings seen on the web have no dates attached. Or maybe he painted less as time went by.

Schönberger painted in a composite of Modernist styles -- mostly Cubist, but with Fauvist coloring and perhaps a whiff of Futurism. So he was not especially "original." But to me this is no artistic crime. What's important, I think, is how well done paintings are in terms of how they look. As for Schönberger, even though I'm not much of a fan of Modernism, I find some of his works pleasing versions of that approach.

One more thing: Despite plenty of Cubist details, Schönberger's human figures did not stray far from normal proportions. This helps make his paintings more approachable to viewers indifferent to Modernism.

Gallery

At the Table

Cabaret

Concert in the Coffee House - 1928

Coffee House - 1931

Musicians - 1929

Mädchenportrait (Portrait of a Young Woman) - 1925
This is perhaps his nicest painting.

Self-Portrait with Daughter Vera - 1928

Model in Interior - 1931

Portrait of a Young Woman - 1930

Model in an Art Studio
Much less Modernist, so I suspect that it was painted after 1935.

Young Woman
Another likely later work, judging by the subject's hair style.