Portraits by Bernard Boutet de Monvel

Bernard Boutet de Monvel (1881-1949), Wikipedia entry here, was a highly successful portrait painter and fashion illustrator whose mature style was precise, spare, somewhat geometrical (for illustrations) in works that were carefully composed.  I find his drawings more interesting than his paintings, though most of his works are very good examples of Art Deco / Moderne style.

Below is some of his portraiture.

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Self Portrait at the Place Vendôme
Boutet de Monvel himself was a member of French and American high society.

Elizabeth Fuller (Bobsy) Goodspeed under her portrait by BdM - 1934
A member of Chicago society.

Portrait of Elizabeth Goodspeed - c.1933
Moderne, almost Japanese.

Portrait study drawing
Showing his careful, precise workmanship at this stage of the process.

Finished portrait, sitter unidentified (by me)

Bobby Jones, golf champion

George-Marie Haardt devant son autochenille "Le scarabée d'or" - c.1925
He was a Citroën executive.  An autochinelle is a half-track.  Citroën sponsored treks in Africa and Asia to publicize their vehicles.

Portrait de S.A.R le Prince Sixte de Bourbon Parme - 1934 or before
Having a complicated multi-national family background, he served in the Belgian army during the Great War, hence the portrait setting.

Duc de Brissac
Another portrait of a man seen from a low angle.

Duchess de Brissac en robe du soir - 1945
She is wearing an evening robe.

Mme. Pierre Champin
Similar costume to the unidentified subject's above.  (Or might that have been another portrait of Mme Champin?  Hairdos and facial expressions differ, but that's not conclusive evidence.)  This was probably painted around 1948, to judge by her hair.

Millicent H. Rogers in Charles James gown - 1949
Painted the year he died in an Air France Constellation crash.  Also killed was former world welterweight boxing champion Marcel Cerdan.

Bernard, his wife Delfina and daughter Sylvie

More Jean-Gabriel Domergue

Back in 2012 I wrote about Jean Gabriel Domergue (1889-1962, French Wikipedia entry here).

I mentioned that some of his early illustrations and paintings were interesting, but the pin-up style he eventually developed was not: mostly stereotyped and repetitious.

That said, it's time to present more of his earlier works.

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À l'ombre d'une jeune fille en fleur - 1922

Mme Spinelli - c.1922

Perfume advertisement illustration - 1925

Portrait of Maria Luisa Cabral Metelo - 1925

Mrs Heathcote - 1927

Mme O'Deril - 1930

Cabaret scene - c.1935
The face of the woman at the right is a verion of his pin-up style.

Élégante en profile

Woman in uniform
I can't quite read the date, thought it might be 1939 when World War 2 began.

Sagrada Familia Exterior Details

Barcelona's most famous building is the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) basilica designed by Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926).  Construction began in 1882 and will likely miss its 2026 completion target.  The Spanish Civil War and other delay events contributed to that timeline.

The photos below document parts of its exterior seen by me in early November 2021.

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The east Nativity side that was in place before the 1936 start of the Civil War.  It is noted for its "melting" spires -- an astonishing concept in its day.  Might that have influenced the melting "Persistence of Memory" watches of Salvador Dalí, who lived not very far away?  The sculpture on the pedestal in the foreground obscures many of the sculptures on the facade.

The northeast corner showing a transition from "melted" to more structured forms.

North side elements including the low-level West Sacristy.  The west-side spires in the background are mostly structured, not "melting."

The east front again, showing the combination of original and newer Gothic elements distinguished by their differing coloring.

The soon-to-be completed Virgin Mary spire.

Part of the west side, looking south from the entrance.

And seen looking north.

Paul George Lawler's Pan American Posters

Above is a well-known poster from around 1941.  The setting seems to be largely imaginary or exaggerated, but the airplane is correctly shown.   Pan American Airways was featuring its new Boeing 314 "Clipper" flying boat airliners.

A series of posters featuring Boeing 314s and, occasionally, other aircraft was commissioned by Pan Am in the years leading up to the USA's entry in World War 2.  The artist was Paul George Lawler.  My Internet search yielded essentially zero information regarding Lawler.  Nor did I find him listed in my illustration reference books.

This is somewhat surprising, because Lawler did nice work for Pan Am, and the airline almost surely did not want to trust such important publicity to someone without credentials.

Below are some examples of his Pan Am work.  A few images can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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This poster is an early one because it shows the poorly-drawn original Boeing 314.  It had a too-small single tail that, after some testing, finally was replaced by a triple tail.

The aircraft in this poster seems to be based on Pan Am's Martin M-130 flying boat, though its sponsons are not shown.

Pan Am began flying Boeing 314s to Europe in 1939, shortly before the war.  By this time, Lawler had access to more and better reference photos of the 314.

Another well-known (in Hawaii, anyway) poster.  The size of the 314 was greatly exaggerated.  Compare the size of the passengers by the aircraft to those in the photo below.

Some Trieste Heads

The Italian port city Trieste was under Hapsburg rule for more than 500 years ending in 1918 at the conclusion of the Great War.

The sculptures of human heads I noticed on many buildings in the city probably date from Austrian, rather than times of Italian rule.  I don't know the ethnicity of the sculptors or the buildings' architects, however.  Many such heads were placed atop entries of buildings.

I was in town in October 2021 and took the following photos of some of those heads.

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This 1930s Moderne style bas relief is in Trieste's cruise terminal area.

Robert Fawcett -- Discovering the Murder

Robert Fawcett (1903-1967) was partly colorblind.  Perhaps that was why his strengths as an illustrator were in composition and depiction of people and objects.  A brief biography is here.  I wrote about his early work here.

In the 1950s Fawcett illustrated many stories that appeared in major American general-interest magazines such as Saturday Evening Post and Collier's.  Quite a few of those were murder mystery stories.  Since those involved bodies, it made dramatic sense for Fawcett to show the body being discovered or perhaps examined by the detective.

Some examples are shown below.

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These first three illustrations depict participants unknown to me.

From a Sherlock Holmes story in Collier's Magazine.

Another Sherlock Holmes story in Collier's.

Hercule Poirot finds this body in another mid-1950s Collier's issue.

Ferrara's Palazzo dei Diamanti

Ferrara Italy's painting museum, the Palazzo dei Diamanti, was built as a residence during the years around 1500.  As such, it has no particular architectural style, the exerior being something of a decorated box.  But the exteror décor is what distinguishes it, because the surface is covered with four-sided triangular shapes that were called diamanti (diamonds).

The building's Wikipedia entry is here, and its Web site is here.

I briefly visited Ferrara in October and took some photos of it.  Unfortunately, the day was gloomy, as are most of the pictures.

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The corner facing the corsi Biaggio Rossetti and Ercole I d'Este -- the duke d'Este had the palazzo built as his home.

Ornamentation was placed at the corner.

Some details.

The Corso Biaggio Rossetti side.

Close-up view of the diamonds.

Corso Biaggio Rossetti entrance.