Molti Ritratti: King George V

King George V (1865-1936, reigned 1910-1936) was photographed many times, but seems to have had surprisingly few painted portraits made of him. Most of the ones I was able to find on the Internet are shown below. His son, King George VI, whose reign was about half as long had more portraits made, if what can be found on the Internet is any guide. I also find it interesting that George V was portrayed by few of the leading British portrait artists of his time. Information on the life of King George is here.

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By the Lafayette photography firm - 1926
Reference photo.

By John Berrie
Shown as colonel of his army regiment. His early career was as an active-duty officer in the Royal Navy, the army connection shown here was ceremonial.  I think this is the least well-done of the set, especially due to the unconvincing depiction of the King's body.  Perhaps Berrie did the head during sittings and painted the uniform dressed on a mannequin in his studio .

By Isaac Snowman
Another lesser work.  I have no date for this, but it was probably painted early in George V's reign.

By Oswald Birley - 1928
Here the King is not dressed in ceremonial attire.

By Sir Arthur Stockdale Cope - 1928
A formal royal portrait. His dress naval uniform beneath the robe is nearly the same as the one below, pictured 17 years earlier.

By Sir Luke Fildes - 1911
This is a portrait of George V in his coronation robes.

By Solomon J. Solomon - 1914
Solomon is probably best known for his non-portrait work. This panting is more of a sketch than a finished work, and it's not signed. It's the only "casual" portrayal in the set shown here.

Mario Chiattone - Overshadowed by Antonio Sant'Elia

Mario Chiattone (1891-1957) is not nearly as famous as Antonio Sant'Elia (1888-1916), who I wrote about here. Both were architectural theoreticians caught up with extending the ideas of Otto Wagner while embracing the Italian Nuovo Tendenze and Futurist movements (Chiattone less so for the latter than was Sant'Elia).

I could find almost nothing about Chiattone on the Internet. A short Italian Wikipedia entry is here. A short sketch in Dutch is here. A longer piece, but with little biographical information is here, though it has many examples of Chiattone's and Sant'Elia's drawings.

The most detailed information I have is from this book. On pages 99-100 Esther da Costa Meyer writes:

"The only other architect [besides Sant'Elia] in the [Nuove Tendenze] group, Mario Chiattone, is a key figure in the understanding of Sant'Elia. Young, wealthy, and well schooled, Chiattone had a thorough grounding in modern art. His father, Gabrielle Chiattone, himself an artist and connoiseur of contemporary art, became one of the earliest patrons of [the Futurists] Boccioni and Carrà. Sant'Elia and Chiattone met in 1909 at Brera, where both were studying architecture... Between 1913 and 1914 they shared a studio building owned by Chiattone's father...

"On the whole it was Chiattone, not Sant'Elia who presented the most dazzling and, with the benefit of hindsight, the most prophetic vision of the modern metropolis... But although the verticalism is more pronounced and the antihistoricism more radical, this cityscape is less complex than Sant'Elia's. There is less emphasis on circulation, and the traffic levels are limited to two. Unlike [Sant'Elia's] Città Nuova, it is situated on the waterfront, although water itself is not exploited for transportation.

"Surprisingly enough, while Sant'Elia's projects were extolled for their modernity, Chiatttone was all but ignored by the critics [of the Nuove Tendenze exhibit]... Why Chiattone's contemporaries failed to notice him remains a mystery."

I do not know if Chiattone served in the Great War (Sant'Elia was a junior officer and killed in action). But by the early 1920s he had moved to Ticino, the Italian-speaking Swiss canton where it seems he spent the rest of his life.

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Sant'Elia - combined train and aircraft terminal, 1914.

Sant'Elia - Città Nuova scene.

Sant'Elia study.

Chiattone - Buildings for a Modern Metropolis, 1914.

Chiattone - City with raised railways, 1914.

Chiattone- Industrial building - 1914.

Chiattone - Apartment building with balconies.

Chiattone - Cathedral.

Vasily Yakovlev Echoes Ilya Repin

When I was in Málaga, Spain in November I visited a branch of St. Petersburg's excellent Russian Museum. It was holding a year-long (ending February 2019) exhibit titled "The Radiant Future: Socialist Realism in Art." A fine exhibit. Plenty of examples, some of which I even knew about before I visited. Of course I took lots of snapshots.

One of the featured, huge paintings on display was "Prospectors Writing a Letter to the Creator of the Great Constitution" completed 1937. The "Creator" of that marvelous, idealistic and fraudulent constitution was Josef Stalin, of course.

Its painter was Vasily Nikolayevich Yakovlev (1893-1953), background here, not to be confused with the Vasily Yakovlev (biography here) who was liquidated by Comrade Stalin in a 1938 purge.

What I find interesting is that Yakovlev, consciously or otherwise, borrowed the theme of the famous painting "Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire" (Wikipedia entry here) by Ilya Repin (1844-1930), painted over the years 1880-1891.

The letter Repin dealt with was negative in tone and that of Yakovlev was positive, which explains difference in body languages of the subjects.

Images are below. Click on them to enlarge.

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Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire - 1880-1891 - Ilya Repin

Prospectors Writing a Letter to the Creator of the Great Constitution - 1937 - Vasily Yakovlev
One measure of how large this painting is can be seen with reference how close to the floor it had to be hung.

Detail of the central part of the composition.  Yakovlev used a hard-edge style.  His depiction of clothing reminds me of some of Salvador Dalí's work.

Perspective in Pompeii Paintings

Our cruise ship docked at Naples and, I suspect, most of the passengers going ashore had signed up for tours of Pompeii and other sites on the far side of the Bay of Naples.

Not me. Been there done that a couple of times. But I'd previously spent only two or so hours in Naples and really wanted to visit the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (National Archaeological Museum, Naples). That's because it has a collection of the better-preserved wall paintings from places covered by Vesuvius' ash. (What's left on-site is mostly low-quality in terms of preservation.)

In this post I deal with how Roman artists dealt with situations calling for one-point perspective. That is, where buildings or parts of them are portrayed.

Geometrically-derived linear perspective wasn't discovered until about the time of the Renaissance, though some Classical artists were aware of its general effect and attempted to include that in their work. Sadly, aside from the buried art in and around Pompeii, little has survived due to its perishable condition (as compared to robust sculptural art).

Here is an interesting article dealing with Pompeiian perspective. Precise single vanishing points are not found, though clusters of convergences in small areas are. The article makes the further claim that in the real world we don't really observe one-point perspective aside from limited circumstances, this due to eyeball movement as we view things.

Here are some snapshots I took of items in the museum depicting structures. Click on images to enlarge.

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The face at the top is of a mask.  Assuming a high viewing point, the receding lines of the tall yellow building roughly approximate linear perspective. Other structural objects do not.

Two related paintings. Linear perspective is essentially absent here.

Perspective here seems mostly isometric.

Only the buildings at the left have a sense of perspective.

The central (framed) structure with multiple columns relates to the upper part of the projecting structure to the left, which otherwise is isometric. The tiled roof is completely at odds with perspective.

The main structures depicted here exhibit a cluster of vanishing points not far from where Renaissance painters would place a single point. Only the structure with columns at the left deviates seriously.

Aleksandr Bubnov's Historical Pantings

Aleksandr Pavlovich Bubnov (1908–1964) was, in my judgment, one of the most skilled of Soviet-era painters. And that's saying a lot, because while Western art had degenerated into Modernism where skill was largely irrelevant, Russian artists were "encouraged" by the State to retain circa-1890 standards. There is little about Bubnov in English on the Internet, though some information can be found here and here.

Although he painted obligatory paintings featuring Joseph Stalin, Bubnov's true interest seems to have been the semi-mythic Russian past. The Great Patriotic War (the Soviet label for World War 2) interrupted the Socialist Realism of the 1930s that featured idealized views of life under Communism. In its place, again encouraged by the State, Soviet artists often created paintings harking to historical triumphs of Russian arms. Bubnov's great example of this is shown below along with some of his other works.

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At the Congress of Collective Farmers
Probably painted in the late 1930s, this is typical of much Soviet art from those times.

Young Oleg on Campaign
One of a series of paintings featuring Oleg, who I'm guessing was not a historical figure.

Boris Godunov
A successor to Ivan the Terrible who became the subject of a play by Pushkin and an opera by Mussorgsky.

Tale illustration - 1946
This painting and the two previous ones feature strong, wide brushwork.

Taras Bulba
A character in a Gogol novel set in an earlier century.

Morning on the Kulikovskoye Field - 1943-1947
Bubnov's greatest work, in my opinion. It deals with the Battle of Kulikovo 8 September 1380 where early Russians defeated the Tatars who ruled large parts of the country. Started during the war and completed two years after, this painting won the Stalin Prize for painting in 1948. Click on it to enlarge and get a better view of how Bubnov composed the figures and handled the atmospherics.

Grain - 1948
A postwar scene.

In the Field - 1958-1960 (detail)
My photo of part of a painting showing farm workers. Click to enlarge and view Bubnov's brushwork.

Fashions and Automobiles by Leslie Saalburg

Leslie Saalburg (1897-1974) was highly successful for most of his long illustration career. This despite the fact that his style changed little -- often the cause of a career foundering when illustration style fashions changed. Some of this had to do with timing. His use of India Ink pen outlining and watercolor or perhaps colored ink washes to fill areas was in line with 1920s fashion illustration styles and also the general illustration shift from heavy oil paints to washes during the 1930s. By the 1950s Saalburg thickened his washes for some of his work as a slight concession to later style trends, but the results remained easily identifiable as his work.

Although many Saalburg illustrations can be found on the Internet, biographical information is sparse. One site with a good deal of information regarding his work and working practices is here, though it has little about his personal life. For what it's worth, I can add that, although he was American, he was born in London and died in Paris -- fitting places given the scenes he usually portrayed.

An illustrator a decade older than Saalburg who had a similar career with regard to style and subject matter was Lawrence Fellows (1885-1964) who I wrote about here.

Below are some examples of Saalburg's work.

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Women's fashion illustration from 1929.

Men's fashion illustration.

British country clothes.

Illustration for Nettleton shoes advertisement.

Page from Esquire magazine.

French Line advertisement from 1933.

Saalburg also made many illustrations for series dealing with classic automobiles. Shown here is a 1933 Packard Dual-Cowl Phaeton.

1933 Pierce-Arrow Silver Arrow, Brooklyn Bridge in the background.

1937 Cord 812 Convertible Coupe.

1954 Buick Skylark pictured at West Point.

Gordon Grant, Illustrator and Marine Painter

Gordon Hope Grant (1875-1962) began his career as an illustrator but gradually shifted to producing marine paintings and lithographs. A short Wikipedia entry is here. It does not mention that Grant, born in San Francisco, was sent to Scotland for schooling. That involved months at sea on a sailing vessel rounding the Horn. He studied art in London before returning to America, where he then lived in New York City.

Many of his works seem to be undated, and for this post, I make little attempt to guess when they were made. However, I did my best to arrange them in approximate chronological order.

From images found on the Internet, Grant's marine art was much better than his early illustrations, though he had the skills to have made better illustrations. Perhaps expectations of art directors in the early 1900s was a factor. His 1930s Saturday Evening Post covers (not shown here) were done fairly well.

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Puck cover - 1909

Puck Cover - February 1912
Many early illustrations featured pretty women.

Army recruiting poster - c. 1919
Pretty static. I would have been inclined to give the background Rhine castle more emphasis to appeal to a sense of adventure with more to it than holding a rile.

Arching Elms - lithograph
Nice use of shade.

Old Windjammer - lithograph
Strong composition.

Photo of Grant working on painting of USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) for the White House - 1926

Watercolor paintings similar to White House USS Constitution painting
I could find no image of the oil version.

Pulling in the Fish Net
Nice atmospherics here.

Fishwharves, Gloucester
Watercolor.

Clear for Action, USS Chester - lithograph
Judging by the biplane aircraft, this was probably made before 1941.

Photo of cruiser USS Chester CA 27
Although the pose is similar, this photo was World War 2 vintage because the tripod foremast has been changed to accommodate radar.

Task Group 21-6 Patrols the Atlantic (America Rises to the Challenge)
A World War 2 painting.  The positioning of the carrier, destroyer and cruiser is wrong. So is the perspective. If this were reality, a three-way collision was in the offing. Chalk it up to artistic license with the goal of dramatization.