An Unusual Presidential Portrait

I just returned from a trip to Texas and other states along the Gulf of Mexico. My wife enjoys visiting museums associated with presidential libraries, so we stopped by the George W. Bush library in Dallas and the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin (skipped the George H.W. Bush library in College Station due to constraints).

I'm not as big a fan of such places as she is, though I found the Franklin D. Roosevelt library (when I visited in 1971) and the Ronald Reagan library interesting. One item that struck me at Lyndon B. Johnson's library was a portrait by Ft. Worth artist Wayne Ingram. It was painted in 1968, LBJ's last full year in office, but was not the "official" portrait of the man. Because it was unofficial, its style was freer like some society works done by the painter (about whom I found next to nothing on one of my typically brief Google searches).

The multiple-views approach Ingram used can be a bit contrived, but is a huge improvement over the Cubist conceit that Picasso and the rest were providing simultaneous multiple views in a single depiction. Ingram includes two ghosted portraits of LBJ that do not detract from the primary portrait. His painting style is a skilled blend of naturalism and abstraction that also borders on being contrived. Nevertheless, the painting is striking.

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The portrait in its setting.

A detail view. Click on the images to enlarge.

Molti Ritratti: Nancy Cunard

Nancy Cunard (1896-1965) was a rich heiress of the kind who led a messy, self-destructive life that ended in poverty, alcoholism and a degree of insanity. I speculate that, because she reached maturity when Modernism (and its rejection of the past and quest for a fabulous, new, to-be-determined-by-the-Modernist-elect, future) was becoming fashionable, this made things even worse than they might have otherwise been.

I'll spare you more details of her foolishness, but this link provides the basics.

Cunard's portraits were mostly photographic, but a few were painted. Here are examples of both:

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By Man Ray (un-cropped version)
This seems to be a contact print.  Man Ray tended to cut the bottom at or just below her left elbow.

By Cecil Beaton
A fashion magazine image.

By Cecil Beaton - ca. 1930
This is one example from several taken at one shoot.  Probably not used for publication, as others were better.

By Ambrose McEvoy - ca. 1925
Doesn't really look like her.  Plus, I don't see her trademark bangles.

By Alvaro Guerva
A Russian look, but that was in fashion during the early 1920s.

By John Banting
Edging towards Surrealism, but a few bangles still show up.

By Oskar Kokoshka - 1924
A mess of a painting.

By Wyndham Lewis - 1922
Several sources mention that Lewis and Cunard were having an affair that year. This bangle-free drawing exhibits his skill in judicious modernist simplification that nevertheless retains the character of the portrait subject.

Molti Ritratti: Iris Tree

Iris Tree (1897-1968) came from an established English family, and was well-connected socially and with artistic groups. Her brief Wikipedia entry notes that she was "an English poet, actress and artists' model, described as a bohemian, an eccentric, a wit and an adventuress." (The entry at the time I wrote this post includes a Modigliani painting said to be of Tree. I question this because, first, all Modigliani nudes look pretty much the same, and second, the image has long hair whereas Tree had bobbed hair at that time.)

A more detailed biographical sketch is here. Below are various portraits of Iris.

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Photo by Man Ray - early 1920s
Iris Tree had an interesting face that Man Ray captured nicely.

Photo: Lytton Strachey and Iris - ca. 1930
Perhaps taken at Ham Spray.  Compare Iris' figure with 1915 portraits below.

Iris and Dora Carrington - ca. 1930
Taken the same day as the photo above. The Wikipedia entry on Carrington is here.

Sculpture by Jacob Epstein
Epstein made at least three sculpture portraits of Iris.

By Vanessa Bell - 1915
Now for three portraits made in 1915 by central members of the Bloomsbury set. (Vanessa was the sister of the more famous Virginia Woolf.)

By Duncan Grant - 1915
Grant was the love of Vanessa's life and the father of her daughter, even though he was homosexual. (Bloomsbury relationships are extremely complex, and are touched on in several of the Web pages linked here.) This painting and the one above seem to have been made at the same sitting: note the setting and differing points of view.

By Roger Fry - 1915
Fry was a more marginal Bloomsbury figure, though he did have an affair with Vanessa. As with the two paintings shown above, Iris was about 18 years old when she sat.

By Adolphe Borie
I'm not sure if this was painted in America or Paris.

By Augustus John - 1920
In my judgment, John was a better artist than Bell, Duncan, Fry and Borie, so this is the best portrait of the bunch. He knew Iris since she was a girl.

Drawing by Augustus John
Another nice image by John.

Dante Rossetti's Similar Faces of Different Models

One of my posts that's most often linked is this one dealing with Helen of Troy of the Homeric epic. Here is yet another version of Helen.

Helen of Troy - 1863

The model - Annie Miller, ca. 1860

It was by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), a founder of the famous Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of young, mid-19th century British artists. He mostly painted what amounted to portraits of women in literary settings. He used various women for this purpose, and in his paintings, they all looked fairly similar, as we shall see.

The Wikipedia entry for Rossetti is here.

Regardless of who the model was, Rossetti usually transformed her into a woman with a long nose, a short upper lip/muzzle zone, a strong chin and a long neck. Also, her hair tended to be parted at or near the the center of her head and was usually long and wavy. Below are more examples of Rossetti's women along with photographs of the models.

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Beata Beatrix - 1864-72

The posthumous model - Elizabeth Siddal, ca. 1860
Siddal (1829-1862) was Rossetti's wife, who died young.

La Ghirlandata - 1871-74

The model - Alexa Wilding, ca. 1875

Bocca Baciata - 1859

The model - Fanny Cornforth, 1863
She was Rossetti's housekeeper and mistress for many years.

Astarte Syriaca - 1875-77

Beatrice - 1879

The model - Jane Morris (neé Burden), 1865
She was married to William Morris of the Arts & Crafts movement. It seems that Rossetti was infatuated with her, and her looks tended to merge into the paintings he made using other models, as can be seen above.

Molti Ritratti: Violet, Duchess of Rutland

Marion Margaret Violet (née Lindsay) Manners, Duchess of Rutland (1856-1937) was a famous Victorian beauty who was also an able amateur artist. A biographical sketch is here.

Given her social position and the fact that she was in her prime during a golden age of British portraiture, I find it surprising that Violet was little depicted. And those major portraits of her, as best I could locate via Google, were by only two artists, George Frederic Watts and James Jebusa Shannon.

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Photo of Violet Lindsay Manners

Self-Portrait

By George Frederic Watts - 1879

By George Frederic Watts - 1881

By James Jebusa Shannon - c. 1890

By James Jebusa Shannon - c. 1900
Other images on the Web have a blue cast to this image. I don't know which color scheme is correct, but am posting this one because it is larger.

By James Jebusa Shannon - 1918
Similar to the previous portrait, but Violet was now about 62 years old.

Molti Ritratti: Queen Alexandra

Alexandra of Denmark (1844-1925), wife of King Edward VII and therefore Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India, was the subject of many photographs, but surprisingly few painted portraits. A substantial Wikipedia biography is here.

Thanks to Queen Victoria's longevity, Alexandra was Princess of Wales for nearly 38 years. And because Edward was only 68 when he died, she was queen for little more than nine years. A small flurry of portrait activity followed her coronation.

Back in those times, and to a considerable degree today, commissioned portraits of royalty feature formal poses and conservative representation. So it was with Alexandra. Photographic and painted portraits of her with few exceptions showed her face-on or with her head only slightly turned, usually favoring her left side.

Artistically, portraits of Alexandra offer little interest. Nevertheless, I hope that showing some here will provide some context to paintings of similar vintage that I post about.

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Photo - 1889
To set the scene.

By Franz Xaver Winterhalter - 1864
Winterhalter was no stranger to portraying royalty.  This painting, in the Royal Collection, was painted soon after her marriage.  A curiosity is his treatment of the royal nose, which looks rather lumpy here.  Yet photographs show Alexandra with a nose of regular shape.  It's hard to image that Winterhalter made a mistake, but absent more information, that seems to be the case.

Photo showing left profile
This photo was taken years after Winterhalter's portrait.  Here Alexandra sports a nose with a straight bridge.

By unidentified artist

By Luke Fildes - 1893

By Luke Fildes - coronation portrait

By John Longstaff - 1904
Longstaff was an Australian artist.

By François Flameng - 1908

Molti Ritratti: Lady Diana Cooper

Diana Olivia Winifred Maud Cooper, Viscountess Norwich, née Lady Diana Manners (1892-1986) was one of those society beauties who was too attractive to capture with oil or any other kind of paints. Not that a few artists didn't try, and some of their efforts are shown below.

On the other hand, cameras love certain kinds of beauty (and vice-versa, I assume). So the best images of Lady Diana Cooper seem to come via photography, as also can be seen below. The photo at the top of this post is by Emil Otto Hoppé (1878-1972), and is perhaps the iconic image of Diana.

Her Wikipedia entry is here, and views of how she lived can be found here.

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Also by Hoppé - 1916

Photo showing left profile

By Cecil Beaton

Time magazine cover - 15 February, 1926

Artist Gallery

By James Jebusa Shannon when Diana was young

By James Jebusa Shannon at the time of her marriage to Duff Cooper (1919)

By John Lavery - Lady Diana Cooper with Hazel Lavery and Viscountess de Janze - 1919

By Ambrose McEvoy

Drawing by John Singer Sargent