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.

Towards the End: Brangwyn at Radio City

Frank Brangwyn (1867-1956) was in his mid-60s when he painted murals for the lobby floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the tallest building in the original Rockefeller Center complex in New York City. (In its early years, Rockefeller Center was popularly called Radio City, and the Radio City Music Hall is the name of its famous huge theatre where the Rockettes danced.) The Center's web site mentions him here.

Brangwyn is an artist that interests me greatly, especially for his work as a muralist. I posted about that aspect of his career here.

It seems that the Rockefellers were in the market for Big Name Artists to create murals for their huge, Depression-era project. Matisse and Picasso were approached, but weren't interested. Diego Rivera, the well-known Mexican muralist accepted, but he famously created a work of political propaganda that was inappropriate for its setting and destroyed.

So the Rockefellers dropped to their B-list, selecting Josep (José) Maria Sert and Brangwyn to paint huge, monochrome murals. Sert's murals are rather bombastic, and are better known than Brangwyn's because some are located in a large, open area. All of Brangwyn's are found on a side corridor.

Worse, Brangwyn's murals are not very good. He was an interesting colorist, but the Rockefellers apparently desired monochrome murals that would blend with the rich, late Art Deco interior architecture and decoration of the building. It is possible that Brangwyn was also losing his touch due to age.

When I was in New York City in September I made a point of tracking down his murals and photographing them. Unfortunately, lighting conditions and the comparatively cramped setting made it impossible to get decent photos. Still, I hope you will find them of interest.

Gallery

If you enter 30 Rockefeller Plaza from the eastern, sunken plaza side, this huge Sert mural awaits you. Branwyn's are to be found around the corner by the pillar seen at the far left of the mural.

For some reason Brangwyn filled his Rockefeller Center murals with ugly people.

Another mural.

Detail of the mural in the previous image. Not being able to use color, Brangwyn had to resort to hatching. This, and his use of lightened paint to depict depth, resulted images that are weak by normal Brangwyn standards.

The murals would wrap around corners. Here is a side-aisle example that's distorted because I couldn't shoot the photo squarely-on.

This is a squared-up photomontage image found on the internet. Brangwyn used it for the mural shown in the next few images. This mural wrapped around a corner, and the soldier shown in the previous photo can be seen here at the left.

That is Christ at the top. He is facing away because the Rockefellers apparently decided His face should not be shown.

Detail of the above mural.

Another detail. Note that in this set of murals Brangwyn chose to have many of his subjects depicted with large, oddly-shaped noses.  I can speculate why, but won't because I have no way of reading his mind.

A Review, then Towards the End: Hugh Ferriss

Hugh Ferriss (1889–1962) is my favorite architectural delineator. He has plenty of other fans, if the nearly 200,000 results from Googling his name is any indication. A brief Wikipedia entry about him is here.

Ferriss is probably best known for two aspects of his work. The first deals with 1920-1930 renderings of skyscrapers actually built or that were proposed but not built for one reason or another. The other is the set of speculative rendering of a future city collected in his book "Metropolis of Tomorrow" (1929). Many of these images are iconic of their times.

He usually rendered using pencils, charcoal and related shading media. This suited the high-rise architectural themes of the 1920s -- styles known as Art Deco and something that might be called streamlined Gothic.

The 1930s saw the Great Depression with its general lack of new construction aside from government buildings that often featured highly simplified classic themes with a hint of Deco. Post- World War 2 architecture soon conformed to International Style dictates. That is, tall buildings were severely rectangular with glass-and-steel cladding while lacking any form of decoration.

Ferriss' successful 1920s rendering style and mediums were not really appropriate for depicting International Style buildings. They worked best with buildings with more intricate shapes, stone or brick cladding, and ornamentation. Although he was involved in some major projects, the resulting renderings were not nearly as impressive as his earlier works. This was despite an effort to adjust his style to the new circumstances.

Gallery

Wanamaker's Bridge (New York City) - 1917
Wanamaker's was a major Philadelphia and New York City department store.

American Radiator Building (New York City) - completed 1924
The building still stands on West 40th Street across from Bryant Park.

Fisher Building (Detroit) - 1928
Located on West Grand Boulevard across the street from what then was General Motors' headquarters.

The Majestic Hotel (Chanin Construction Co.) - 1930
A speculative project, probably in New York City.

Future city scene
As was the case for the previous images, Ferriss' style matched the architectural style very well.

Metropolis of Tomorrow - 1928
Again, the buildings are sculpted masses where windows are comparatively small details.

Metropolis of Tomorrow - c.1928
Dramatic night scene. I wish I were at that cocktail party on the terrace at the lower right of the rendering.

United Nations Headquarters - c.1948
A proposed ensemble.

United Nations Headquarters - c.1948
More about the UN Headquarters here. Design began in 1947, a cornerstone was laid in 1949 and the initial grouping was completed by 1952. The tall Secretariat building is steel-and-glass on the longer sides, and all this reflective material is hard to depict using Ferriss' toolkit. Here he did his best to emphasize massing rather than fenestration.

Lever House (New York City) - c.1949
The Lever House, built 1950-52, was an early International Style office building in New York. Sensational when it was new, but now nondescript. It is on the west side of Park Avenue between 53rd and 54th Streets. In this rendering, Ferriss selected a night setting that allowed him to capture some of the structural elements without the complication of reflections off the glass.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts - c.1959
The main Lincoln Center groundbreaking was in 1959, and the original ensemble largely complete by 1966. Shown here is the Metropolitan Opera House. It was completed in 1966. Given that Ferriss died in January 1962, it is likely that this is one of his last renderings.

Towards the End: Roberto Matta Does Mark Tobey

Roberto Matta (1911-2002) was a surrealist and abstractionist painter from Chile who had a long, successful career, dying age 91. His Wikipedia entry is here.

Around the time he was 80 he painted in a style that reminds me of that of Mark Tobey (1890-1976), who I wrote about here. Matta lived in the USA for most of the 1940s, so it's hard to believe that he was unaware of Tobey's emerging "white writing" style. But it's possible that, 45 years later, he might have forgotten what he had once known.

For what it might be worth, below are some examples of Tobey's work along with some late Matta's that strike be as being similar in style and spirit.

Gallery
Tobey ...

People - 1945

The New Day - c.1945

Lovers of Light - 1961

Matta ...

L'Ultima Cena - 1985

Cosmos Mental - 1991

The Fall (Autoritratto d'ognuno) - 1991

Towards the End: Grant Wood

Grant Wood (1891-1942) was what was called a "Regionalist" or "American Scene" painter, his best-known work being the truly iconic "American Gothic." His Wikipedia entry is here.

I wrote an "In the Beginning" post about Wood here, and included images of paintings from mid-career along with one from the year before his death from pancreatic cancer.

The present post features paintings dated 1939, 1940 and 1941, when he was 48-50, prime ages for many artists. So, unlike some Towards the End subjects, there is not much difference from his most famous works made when he was in his early-mid 40s. The main difference is that some tend to be a little bit less Moderne, simplified, geometrically-solid than the early 1930s paintings.

Gallery

Haying - 1939

New Road - 1939

Parson Weems' Fable - 1939

January - 1940

Sentimental Ballad - 1940

Spring in the Country - 1941

Spring in Town - 1941

Towards the End: Lawren Harris

Lawren Harris (1885-1970), who I wrote about here, was a key member of Canada's famous Group of Seven painters. His Wikipedia entry is here.

Unlike most noteworthy artists, Harris never experienced even moderately serious financial problems because his family was the Harris of Canada's Massey-Harris farm implement firm. And of course he had many of the right social connections that allowed him to gain influence in the Canadian art establishment of his time.

Due to his circumstances, besides his efforts to get the establishment to accept modernism, Harris' "struggles" in art largely had to do with improving his skills. And perhaps more importantly, seeking a kind of art that meshed with his strong interest in Theosophy, a spiritual belief system that had a burst of popularity during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Theosophy-related concerns seem to have strongly influenced Harris's drift from representational to abstract painting over the arc of his career. The turning point took place during the years he lived an Santa Fe, New Mexico, whose art colony included other budding abstractionists.

Gallery

The Corner Store - 1912
An example of Harris' representational works.

North Shore, Lake Superior - 1926
One of his best-known paintings from the mid-point of his career where real-world objects were simplified.

Abstract No. 7 - ca. 1939
Harris for a while had the habit of testing abstractions by viewing them with different orientations -- the idea being that the abstract design would hold up no matter which way the painting was displayed. I've seen at least two orientations of this on the internet. The one above is that used by the Vancouver Art Gallery, where the painting resides.

Composition No. 1 - 1940
One of his most strictly geometric works.

Abstract Painting No. 20 - ca. 1943
Drifting from Geometry.

LSH 134 - 1950
A more "organic" look is now in place.

Untitled - 1952

Abstraction - 1964
This was painted around the time Harris had a heart attack.  By the time he died, he had developed dementia and his final painting were of blobs built up with wispy strokes somewhat like is seen here.

Towards the End: Jules-Alexandre Grün's Last Crowd Scene

Jules-Alexandre Grün (1868-1938) spent much of his career as a poster illustrator. But when the occasion arose, he had a good eye for portraiture and composing believable crowd scenes, as can be seen in some large paintings he made. I last wrote about him here, and here is his French Wikipedia entry (the one in English is skimpy, so have your browser translate this, if it can).

Below are two of his best paintings of that kind followed by his final crowd scene, made as he was coming down with Parkinson's disease. Click on images to enlarge.

Un vendredi au Salon des artistes français - A Friday at the French Artists' Salon - 1911Star of the painting (near the center, in white behind the woman in the mauve dress) is Geneviève Lanthelme (1883-1911), who died the same year the painting was completed under suspicious circumstances. Grün included himself and his wife. His wife Juliette is in front of the largest sculpture, wearing a violet dress. Grün is the bald, bearded man right behind her.

Fin de souper - After Supper - 1913This is perhaps his painting that I like the best. I think it has to do with the lively young lady at the left.

Sortie de la messe au Breuil-en-Auge (Calvados) - Leaving Mass - 1934This is the only image of this painting that I could locate on the Web, and it's marred because of the lighting where it's mounted, Église Saint-Michel - Pont-l'Évêque (near the junction of autoroutes A13 and A132 in Normandy).

Grün manages his crowd composition well, as usual, but the people are painted more thinly and sketchily than in the earlier works when he was in his prime.

Towards the End: J.C. Leyendecker

Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874-1951) was a leading American illustrator for much of his long career. He produced more than 300 covers for the Saturday Evening Post, America's leading general-interest magazine during the first half of the 20th century. He also was famed for his advertisement illustrations for Kuppenheimer, a man's clothing maker and for Arrow collars and shirts. More background on Leyendecker can be found here and here.

His distinctive style featured strong, crisp lines and form definition along with hatched and sometimes crosshatched color overlays. A sense of his stylistic evolution can be glimpsed via this chronological gallery of Post covers.

Illustration fashions change, so Leyendecker's highly distinctive style became increasingly passé as the 1930s rolled along. Apparently his personality was changing during this time, which might have been a further career hinderance. A major blow was changes in the Post's editorial staff during the years around 1940. New editors and art directors eventually cast Leyendecker aside.

Gallery

Detail from art in the Kelly Collection
I photographed this at an exhibit of Kelly items at Pepperdine University a few years ago. Note Leyendecker's distinctive brush style where there are regular brushstroke-related gaps between overpainting and an underlying color. Also, the background is created using a broad brush that blocks in the color while leaving visible strokes and gaps in coverage -- another of his stylistic characteristics.

Saturday Evening Post cover art - 24 November 1928
Another example of his style during his time of peak fame. Contrasted are a Pilgrim Father from the 1600s with a 1928 college football player.

Illustration for Arrow collars - 1932
The models are Phyllis Frederic and actor Brian Donlevy. Here the brush hatching is less prevalent. Leyendecker would use it or downplay it according to his feeling for the subject matter. Apparently, he opted for sleekness in this illustration.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 15 September 1934
Hatching returns for this Post cover. For some younger or overseas readers I need to mention that the overburdened fellow is a railroad porter doing his duty for the fancy lady.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 21 December 1940
Exhausted mailman during Christmas rush: the last Post cover not dealing with New Year babies.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 2 January 1943
This was his final Post cover, a continuation of his New Year's baby series. Leyendecker hatching is almost gone.

American Weekly cover art for 25 May 1947 issue
Crisp lines and fabric fold definition are still in the Leyendecker spirit. But I cannot be sure if the simplified style was an attempt to adjust to changing illustration fashion or else that he was simply dashing this work off to meet a deadline.

American Weekly cover - 19 December 1948
If it weren't for the signature, there is little here to indicate Leyendecker did this.

American Weekly cover - 20 November 1949
A very late illustration, again somewhat distant from his signature style. The orange circle is an echo of a Post cover theme from the 1920s and 30s.