Stanley Cursiter Portrays Poppy Low

The image above is of the painting "A Summer Night" (1923) by Stanley Cursiter (1887-1976) featuring Poppy Low. Cursiter was from the Orkneys, but spent most of his career in Edinburgh where, among other things, he was Director of the National Galleries of Scotland. During the Great War he devised a new means of interpreting aerial reconnaissance photographs. He was also a champion of modernist art and some of his paintings were in that mode both early and late in his career, though they were not very good in my judgment.

Biographical information on Cursiter can be found here, here, and here, but some important details vary.

Beside dabbling in modernism, Cursiter also painted landscapes, particularly of Orkney scenes. Where he excelled was portraiture. Besides the usual mix of politicians and military officers, he painted some interesting works featuring family and friends. One of those friends was Poppy Low, who seemed to be somewhere around 16-22 years old when Cursiter was using her as a favorite model. Several of those paintings were group portraits that included his attractive wife Phyllis and his sister.

The images below are copyrighted by his estate, but I hope the estate will not mind the publicity this post will provide Cursiter. Not every painting featuring Poppy is presented here. And it's possible that some of the young women who I thought were Poppy were actually someone else. (For instance, there's a portrait of "Roberta" that looks like Poppy. But might Poppy's actual name have been Roberta?) I should add that so far I have found no details regarding her life.

Gallery

Poppy and Phyllis at the Window
That would be Poppy on the right.

Black and White and Silver - 1921
An early paining featuring Poppy.

Girl with a Jug - 1921

Poppy Low - 1922

The Seamstress - 1923

Summer Afternoon
I think that's Poppy in the background.

House of Cards - 1924
I'm not so sure about this, though one source I skimmed stated the she was used for this painting.

Chez Nous: Artist, Self Portrait, Director of the National Galleries of Scotland, with his wife Phyllis Eda Hourston, and his model Poppy Low - 1925

Molti Ritratti: Charles X of France

Charles X (Charles Philippe, 1757-1836), the last main-line Bourbon king of France, ruled for almost six years (1824-1830) before abdicating and being succeeded by Louis-Philippe, duc d'Orléans. Two of his brothers, Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, preceded him as king. Louis XVI was beheaded after the Revolution and Louis VIII became king with the post-Bonaparte restoration. Charles' Wikipedia entry is here.

Charles was pre-photography, but barely. However, portraits of him by different artists show striking agreement regarding his appearance while king, so we can be reasonably sure how he looked. In several instances in the images below, he is wearing the same costume (though medals on his chest vary from portrait to portrait).

Note that several portraits have his lips slightly parted. This must have been a strong characteristic and one that Charles apparently didn't mind being displayed.

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Charles when Comte d'Artois, by Henri Pierre Danloux - 1798

By François Gérard (and atelier), detail - c.1825

By Georges Rouget

By Thomas Lawrence - 1825

By Robert Lefèvre - 1826

By Léon Cogniet

By Horace Vernet

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.

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."

Molti Ritratti: Queen Victoria

Victoria (1819-1901) became Queen of the United Kingdom in 1837, about the time photography emerged.

In theory, that makes it possible to compare photos of her with painted portraits. However, based on some Googling on my part, it seems likely that most photographs of her were taken during the last half of her reign. I was able to find a few that provide comparisons with most of the paintings I selected.

As for the paintings, because they are of a monarch, they tend to be cautiously done, perhaps even a bit more so than commissioned portraits of others.

Gallery

Photo by Bryan Edward Duppe and Gustav William Mullins - 1854 - image copyright HM Queen Elizabeth II
Victoria was about 35 years old when this was taken.

By Thomas Sully - 1838
Painted around the time of her coronation.

By Franz Xaver Winterhalter - 1842
Winterhalter was a go-to portrait artist for royalty and nobility.

Photo by John Mayall on a Carte de visite - 1861 - copyright Victoria & Albert Museum
This shows Victoria with Prince Albert who died 14 December of that year.

By Franz Xaver Winterhalter - 1859
Winterhalter seems to have firmed up her chin for this official portrait.

By Carl Rudolph Sohn (from a photograph) - 1883

Photo by Alexander Bassano - 1882

By Heinrich von Angeli - 1899
Victoria was about 80 when this was painted.

Mr. Munch and Mrs. Schwarz

In July I was working my way through the Edvard Munch (1863-1944) portion of the Rasmus Meyer collection at the Bergen, Norway Kunstmuseet when I noticed the painting that I then immediately photographed (see above). It is a portrait study of Mrs. (Fru in Norwegian, Frau in German) Helene Schwarz, made in 1906 when Munch was in Berlin.

I am ambivalent regarding Munch, who I wrote about here. I'm not fond of most of his work, but acknowledge that he was capable of drawing and painting in reasonable and interesting ways at times -- mostly early in his career. I consider his Schwarz series among his better efforts.

He made at least three versions of Mrs. Schwarz that survive, all done in 1906; they are shown below. But it wasn't until 2013 that the identity of Mrs. Schwarz was provisionally found. The account is here. It seems that Helene Schwarz was the wife of Georg Schwarz, a consultant to the Cassirer art gallery in Berlin. Before marrying him, she served as a companion to Ernst and Toni Cassirer. It also seems that Georg wanted to buy the final painting, but Munch refused the offer and eventually sold it in Norway.

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An image of the above portrait study found at the The Athenaeum website (scroll down).

A drawing or lithographic print of Mrs. Schwarz.

The final portrait painting.

A photograph of Mrs. Schwarz (at right) with her son Andreas and perhaps a nanny.

Molti Ritratti: Lady Mary, Baroness Curzon of Kedleston

Mary Victoria Leiter (1870-1906), later Vicereine of India (1898-1905) and holding the title Baroness Curzon of Kedleston, was from Chicago, born about the time of my paternal grandmother, also in Chicago. Unlike my grandmother, she came from a wealthy, well-connected mercantile family. This information and more can be found here.

Unfortunately, she died young, and sat for few portraits.

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Photo (cropped) - 1903

Mary Victoria Leiter by Alexandre Cabanel - 1887
Painted when she was in her teens and not long before the artist's death in 1889.

Mary, Baroness Curzon by Franz von Lenbach - 1902
In the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Lenbach (1836-1904) was a prominent painter based in Munich and noted for the many portraits he painted of Otto von Bismarck. He painted at least three portraits of Mary Curzon, two of which, including this one, might be considered studies.

Mary, Baroness Curzon by Franz von Lenbach - 1901
This Lenbach portrait is in the collection of the Washington, D.C. National Portrait Gallery. This can be considered a finished portrait.

Mary, Baroness Curzon by Franz von Lenbach - 1901
I get to view this portrait (study?) by Lenbach fairly often because it can be found in Seattle's Frye Art Museum.

Posthumous portrait by William Logsdail - 1909

Molti Ritratti: Grace Coolidge

A while ago I posted about illustrator and portrait painter Howard Chandler Christy, and included an image of his portrait of Grace Coolidge, wife of President Calvin Coolidge.

It seems that Grace was somewhat the opposite of Calvin, in that she had a sparkling personality. So it stands to reason that given her status and attributes, there ought to have been a number of portraits painted of her.

And there were. Except that there are few decent images of them to be found on the Internet, and some original works might have gone missing. Below is what I've been able to locate here and there on the Web thus far.

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This is the official portrait by Christy that hangs in the White House.

A photo of Grace Coolidge.

Grace Coolidge with Rob Roy, who also is in the official portrait.

Another Grace Coolidge portrait attributed to Christie. It doesn't look as skillfully done as his other work, and the subject doesn't quite look like her.

A Christy portrait at the Coolidge Presidential Library in Massachusetts from this source. I like this one better than the official portrait. Too bad I can't locate a decent image of it on the Internet.

Grace Coolidge by an artist named Frank Ashford.

Photo of Juliet Thompson with her painting Grace Coolidge taken 8 February 1927. I could find no other image of this portrait.

Grace Coolidge with Frank O. Salisbury and his portrait of her. Again, I couldn't find an image of the portrait.