Molti Ritratti: Otto v. Bismarck by Lenbach

The "Molti Ritratti" set of posts usually deals with views of a single person as painted by several artists. But this time, I'm pulling a semi-switcheroo. It's still a case of a single subject, but this time all the paintings are by the same artist.

The subject is Otto von Bismarck who more than anyone else can be said to have created the German Empire from a scattering of lesser states. The artist is Franz Seraph von Lenbach (1836-1904) who was an important and successful Munich School painter. A plaza in the city bears his name and his house is now an important museum. A major collection of Lenbach works in the United States can be found here.

So why did Lenbach paint so many portraits of Bismarck? (I forget when and where and how many, but once I came upon an estimated number, probably somewhat greater than a dozen. Seems to me that source or perhaps another mentioned that Bismarck did pose for Lenbach, but that Lenbach also made extensive use of reference photos to supplement the sittings. This seems to make sense, but keep a grain of salt handy.)

When I was in the army, someplace in each unit's facilities would be a chain-of-command photographic portrait collection starting with the President and working down through the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Army, Army Chief of Staff, commanding general of the army to which the unit was assigned, various unit commanders, perhaps a post commander and so forth. This sort of thing is found in many kinds of government agencies in the USA and probably elsewhere; it's what bureaucrats do.

I don't know that German bureaucrats and officials in the late 19th century did. Yes, photography was available, but it seems likely that someone as important as the Kaiser or his Chancellor should deserve more than just a photo. Which is one possible reason for Lenbach's Bismarck commissions. No doubt some such commissions were from nobles or major political figures. But lacking a catalogue raisonné for Lenbach, it can be troublesome to locate all of his Bismarck portraits and their provenance starting points.

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I find it interesting how much variety Lenbach was able to introduce in the form of costuming and even poses. No doubt this was influenced by what sort of commission he was working under. Even so, some near-duplicates are known to exist: the text in this link to the Walters Art Museum notes that the Baltimore painting is like one in Munich's Lenbachhaus.

Molti Ritratti: Georgette Magritte

Rather than posting a usual Molti Ritratti where views of one sitter by many artists are displayed, I thought I might as well show several views of the same subject painted by a single artist. So today we feature Georgette Magritte, wife of Belgian Surrealist René (1898-1967) who used her as a model for many of his works. Salvador Dalí's wife Gala had the same gig, but Georgette is far less well known, so why not give her a break?

According the the Wikipedia link above, Magritte met Georgette when he was entering his teens and (other sources say) again in 1920, this leading to their 1922 marriage. Magritte had formal art training 1916-18 while the Great War raged and didn't do his army service until later. This was because his part of Belgium was occupied by the Germans in 1914 and remained under their control until the war ended.

Georgette was about two years younger than Magritte. Pretty and photogenic, she apparently didn't mind being her husband's model and muse. After Magritte took up Surrealism in the late 1920s (and perhaps even before), images based on Georgette's modeling were not always intended to be portraits. For example, one has her nude from the waist down and from the waist up is the front half of a fish.

Below are some photos of Georgette along with a few of Magritte's paintings that were either actual portraits or images using her as a model.

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Georgette and René at the time of their marriage

Georgette - 1929
The photo is probably reversed; she should be looking to the left.

Georgette - c.1935-38
One source has this as from 1938, but 1935 photos show her in the same dress and hairdo.

Nu allongé - 1923

Drawing of Georgette - 1924

Georgette double portrait - 1935

La magie noir - 1935

Portrait of Georgette - 1937

Portrait of Georgette - early 1940s

Based on post-1930 photos of her, when Magritte's aim was to do an actual portrait of Georgette, he usually took care to accurately depict her.

Dictators, Portrayed

If you're a dictator, l'état c'est moi is the real deal. So if the nation requires glorification, you must humbly submit to at least a small dose of same.

In the age of photography, portrait painting seems to have taken a back seat to the lens and darkroom where dictators are concerned. Nevertheless, paintings were produced for many of the leading dictators of the era 1920-50.

My guess is that the Soviet Union's Stalin was depicted in paint the most. These paintings weren't not necessarily portraits; a good many showed him with workers, children, et cetera gathered around him or in other genre settings.

Stalin and China's Mao Tse-Tung had their faces on huge banners, but that's something different from a formal portrait; our Mao example is in fact a poster. Adolf Hitler, despite of or perhaps because of his background as a painter (of architecture, mostly) tended to favor photographers.

Below are examples of dictator portraits.

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Joseph Stalin by Victor Oreshnikov - 1948

Adolf Hitler by Jacobs

Francisco Franco

Mao Tse-Tung poster

Jozef Pilsudski by Wojciech Kossak - 1928

Benito Mussolini by Gerardo Dottori - 1933

Molti Ritratti: Cleo de Merode

Cléo de Mérode (1875-1966) was a ballet dancer whose fame extended to popular culture in an age before the supermarket cashier stand magazine rack. I have a book about her titled Cléo de Mérode et la photographie: La première icône moderne, where the subtitle can be translated as "the first modern icon."

Cléo attracted painters, sculptors and photographers like a magnet. To see why, scroll down.

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Here are three photographs to set the stage.

Folies Bergère poster

By Alexandre Falguière - 1896
According to the book cited above, the location of this statue is unknown.

By Georges Clairin
Clairin is best known for his paintings of Sarah Bernhardt. I blogged about her portraits here.

By Manuel Benedito - 1910

By Giovanni Boldini - 1907
This is perhaps the most famous painting of Cléo. Click on the image to enlarge.

Molti Ritratti: Lillie Langtry

Lillie Langtry (1853-1929) was free with herself, as her Wikipedia entry describes. At least her favors were distributed in the better social circles, one of her lovers being the Prince of Wales, future King Edward VII.

Given her connections and notoriety, a number of portraits of her were painted and photographs made. Go to Google and Bing to view photographs; below are some of the painted portraits.

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A reference photo

By John Everett Millais

By Edward John Poynter

By George Frank Miles

By James Sant

By Valentin Prinsep

By George Frederic Watts

Photos of Lillie show no outstanding beauty. I'd rate her as conventionally attractive and have to conclude that her well-documented appeal must have been largely fueled by her personality, including how she carried herself.

As for her looks, it seems that she had a "good side," or thought that she did. Note that there are no views featuring the right side of her face.

Molti Ritratti: Sarah Bernhardt

The Divine Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) was certainly divine enough to inspire painted portraits along with many, many photographs. Her Wikipedia entry is here and a search for images on Google or Bing will offer many aspects of her.

Unfortunately for us, photos of her taken when in her physical prime are too staged to give much of an impression of her personality. By the time photography became flexible, she was already in her 50s.

So it was left for the painters to capture her spark. Below are some examples I culled from the Web.

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Here is a photo to set the stage.

By Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse

By Georges Clairin - 1871

By Georges Clairin - 1876

By Hans Makart - 1881

By Louise Abbema

By Theo van Rysselberghe - 18881

By Giovanni Boldini

By Jean-Léon Gérôme - 1895

By Alphonse Mucha - 1896

Molti Ritratti: Dame Edith Sitwell

Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), poet, critic, female component of a trio of artsy siblings well connected to the English upper crust, did not escape the portrait painter's brush as can be seen below. Her Wikipedia entry is here.

Sitwell's depictions are of interest because several of the artists were her friends -- especially Pavel Tchelitchev (transliterations of his name from the Russian vary). Of more interest is that these artists were modernists of one stripe or another in a period where all artists were trying to figure what to do with modernism in the wake of that decade or so of all those "isms" cascading down from (mostly) Paris. Adding to the complexity of the situation, they were painting portraits -- meaning that the results had to relate in a least some small manner to their purported subject.

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Photo of Sitwell

By Roger Fry
As best I can tell from citations, both the portraits by Fry were painted 1918 or thereabouts. Fry was an art critic and theoretician (popularizing the term "Post-Impressionism") who also did portraits and some other works.

By Alvaro Guevara, c. 1919

By Pavel Tchelitchev - c. 1930
Tchelitchev is best known as a Surrealist, but that movement was still more literary and political than painting-oriented when Sitwell sat for this work.

By Windham Lewis
Lewis was England's best-known modernist portrait artist when this was painted (begin in 1923 but not "completed" -- her hands were never added -- until 1935).

By Pavel Tchelitchev - 1935
According to the link above, Sitwell was quite taken with Tchelitchev even though their approaches to sex probably destined the relationship to be on the Platonic side. Neither Tchelitchev portrait shown here (as well as others) depicts Sitwell in a remotely flattering light. But she apparently didn't mind. The image above seems to be a scan from a book.

By Feliks Topolski
This portrait is an exception in that it was made decades later than the others and when Abstract Expressionism was the flavor of the day.