More In the beginning: Salvador Dalí

I previously wrote about early paintings by Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) here. I visited the Dalí museum in St. Petersburg, Florida again this May and noticed that on display were a number of paintings from his pre-Surrealist career.

I took digital snapshots of many of them for the purpose of this post, which is to further document his beginner's path. As usual, photos taken in museums vary in quality form mediocre to absolutely rotten trash, so take the images below as rough indicators of the actual works. You can click on them to enlarge.

What I found interesting are two things. First, apparently Dalí kept most of what he painted, not throwing away early items as many artists would be tempted to do. Second, I was impressed by how many different modernist styles he tried from his early teens into his early twenties before settling on the carefully rendered depiction style he is known for in his paintings. Many artists took a longer time to settle on their main style and tried fewer alternatives in the process.

Gallery

Vista de Cadaqués con la sombra del Monte Paní - 1917
Dalí was about 13 years old when he painted this oil-on-burlap scene.

Huerto de Es Llaner, Cadaqués - 1918-19
It's a little hard to see it at this resolution (try enlarging), but this small work is very thickly painted. He was 14 or 15 when he did this.

Autorritrato (Figueres) - 1921
Age 17. Perhaps more fantasy that an accurate portrayal.

El camino de Port Lligat con vistas sobre el Cap de Creus - 1922-23
At age 18 or 19 he tried this more traditional/impressionist approach.

Cadaqués - 1923
Now Dalí is around 19 and picks up on the retreat from Cubism to somewhat classical elements of early 1920s modernism.

Retrato di mi hermina - 1923
From about the same time he did this interesting playing-card format portrait of his sister. The museum has it hung with the more modernist end at the top. I am not sure of Dalí's intensions in this regard.

Retrato di mi hermina (flipped, detail)
Detail of the more traditional style segment.

Tieta, ritrato de mi tia, Cadaqués - 1923-24
Same vintage, but now Postimpressionist Divisionism. His aunt's face is mostly a color blob.

Naturaleza muerto: Sandía - 1924
At age 20 we have this Cubist-inspired still life.

Estudio de un desnudo feminino - 1925
Now about 21 years old, Dalí is experimenting with another variety of brushwork.

Cesta de pan 1926
Finally, about 22 years of age, we find him approaching the expected Dalí style in this painting of bread in a breadbasket. All this was a fast, wild, art-style ride.

Henry Young Alison: One-Eyed Scottish Painter

Henry Young Alison (1889-1972) both lost an eye and was captured by the Germans during the Great War. By the late 1920s he was an instructor at the Glasgow School of Art and for a brief period was its interim Director. That information, plus a bit more, can be found on this page of the school's web site. There might be more information regarding Alison, but it didn't turn up during my brief Google search.

He painted many landscapes, but I'll feature works below showing people, as I consider that a stronger test of an artist's abilities.

As you will see, Alison was no Modernist, at least not well into the 1930s. His paintings of people are strongly done, solid works.

Gallery

Cliffs and Rocks
An example of his landscape painting to show that even in this genre he could paint strongly.

Elspeth Galloway - 1914

Highland Chief

Elizabeth Payton

Self-Portrait - 1920s

Lilly Jamieson - c. 1931

Youth - c. 1936
Here Alison combines landscape and portrayal.

Thomas Hart Benton's "America Today" Mural at the Met

When I was in New York City last year, my visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art was rather hurried, so I didn't have time to track down Thomas Hart Benton's "America Today" mural, installed at the Met in 2014. This month, I had more time and found it.

The Met's website discusses America Today here, and here is a link to their publication dealing with the mural: very useful. I discussed Benton's early career here.

The mural was commissioned for the board room of The New School for Social Research's 1931 building designed by Joseph Urban. It was later purchased by Equitable, an insurance company in New York and displayed in linear fashion along a hallway. Then it was donated to the Met which restored it (with some difficulty: read the publication noted above) and displayed in a setting corresponding to the space of the New School boardroom where it initially appeared.

Below are a few photos I took, giving you an impression of how the mural is displayed at the Met. Not all panels are shown -- you can find plenty of images on the Internet. My purpose here is to remind you that the mural is there to be enjoyed when vising New York and the Met.

Gallery

When entering the gallery where America Today is housed, the panel Instruments of Power confronts you.

Panning to the right, we find Changing West.

Continuing to the right past Changing West are Midwest, Deep South, and City Activities with Subway.

Here is the door to enter the display.  At the left is City Activities with Subway.  Above the door is Outreaching Hands, and to the right is City Activities with Dance Hall.  To my mind, the City Activities panels are the most interesting of the lot.

Continuing the pan to the right, we have City Activities with Dance Hall, City Building, and Steel.  Farther to the right and not shown is Coal.

City Building, and Steel.

At detail from City Activities with Dance Hall. The woman with the red hat is Elizabeth England, Jackson Pollack's future sister-in-law. The woman at the lower left is Benton's wife Rita. Benton includes himself at the far right.

Some Hard Female Faces

Part of what keeps this blog chugging along (we're now at more that 1,000 posts) is that I seem to have a modest knack for finding associations, for making comparisons. One of those occasions happened a few weeks ago while visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I viewed two paintings that I was already familiar with with, noticed a similarity, then recalled a photograph that struck me in the same way.

The painters were Thomas Anshutz, who I wrote about here, Thomas Hart Benton, whose early career I covered here, and the was photographer Walker Evans, Wikipedia entry here.

The nature of the subject matter is young women with "hard" expressions on their faces. They are surprisingly similar.

Gallery

A Rose (detail) - 1907 - Thomas Anshutz
The subject is Rebecca H. Whelen, daughter of a Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts board member. Anshutz taught there for many years. This is an unusual pose for that time and place: a more tranquil expression would have been expected.

City Activities with Dance Hall (detail) - 1930 - Thomas Hart Benton
From a panel of Benton's America Today mural, now prominently displayed at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The subject is Elizabeth England, future wife of Charles Pollock, older brother of the more famous painter Jackson Pollock. The Pollock brothers studied under Benton, hence the connection.

Girl in Fulton Street (cropped) - 1929 - Walker Evans
From one of Evans' New York street scene photos of the late 1920s.

John Quincy Adams, Austrian Portrait Artist

The title of this post might cause a sharp reaction for many American readers. That's because John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) was the sixth president of the Untied States, and not at all an Österreicher, let alone a portrait painter.

Of course we are dealing here with another John Quincy Adams. This one was a descendent of the President and lived 1874-1933. He became an Austrian because he was born in Vienna (and died there), the son of a Boston-born opera singer. He did spend time in the USA at various points in his life, but considered himself Austrian. His career is sketched here, but it's in German and you might have to have your computer translate.

There aren't many images of Adams' work on the Internet. A large share of them are in black and white -- presumably photos of paintings that were lost due to World War 2 or are otherwise untraceable. The images I selected for presentation are all in color.

One image I would love to have included is a fine portrait of Sara Sherman Wiborg, later the wife of businessman and artist Gerald Murphy, both famed for their 1920s French Riviera lifestyle (Wikipedia entry here). But so far as I know, it hasn't yet turned up on the Web.

Gallery

Dame mit Schwartzem Kleid und Hut (Alice Hauser) - 1901
In English, "Woman with Black Clothes and Hat."

Portrait einer jungen Dame - 1908

Kaiser Franz Joseph I. in der Dienstuniform eines österreichischen Feldmarschalls - 1914
That's "Emperor Franz Joseph I in the service uniform of an Austrian field marshal."

Kitty Baronin Rothschild - 1916

Countess Michael Karoly - 1918

Girl with Flower Branch

Luise Eisner, later Princess Odescalchi - 1926

J. Allen St. John: Monochrome Illustrations

I previously wrote about J. Allen St. John (1875-1957) here, mostly dealing with his color illustrations for books by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950). Background information on St. John can be found here and here.

St. John is considered by many to be highly influential to later generations of illustrators dealing in Science Fiction and, especially, Fantasy art. That is probably more to do with establishing certain conventions than his abilities as an illustrator. In the post cited above I mentioned "reproductions of his paintings often strike me as having too-fussy brushwork." I think this tendency carries over to his monochrome illustrations, especially those rendered in pen-and-ink.

To demonstrate my point about St. John's dithering penwork, compare those illustrations to that of master pen-artists Franklin Booth (1874-1948) and Joseph Clement Coll (1881-1921). Some of the difference might be chalked up to the quality of paper used for printing their works. Book illustrations on the same kind of paper as the text couldn't support fine penwork. On the other hand, some books from the early decades of the 20th century had glossy paper tip-ins that allowed for much more detail and subtlety in the artwork. In such instances St. John would abandon pen-and-ink for charcoal or wash drawings.

Interesting fact: All the men mentioned above were near-contemporaries.

Gallery

From Tarzan and the Golden Lion
Here St. John does a better job on the lion than he does with Tarzan.

From Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
Some illustrations from another Tarzan book.

From Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar

From Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
Here the depiction of Tarzan's body comes off fussier than that of the foliage.

From Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
This seems to have some wash or diluted ink work. Still, the pen strokes are largely haphazard, resulting in lack of clarity for the scene depicted.

From Mastermind of Mars
Illustration for one of the John Carter of Mars novels. The background shading blends too closely to the definition of the subjects, reducing clarity.

From Swords of Mars
This illustration was intended for slick paper, but St. John's use of shadows again hurts the composition.

From Tarzan the Terrible
All the images thus far, including this one, are probably scans from old books. This one seems to be from a slick tip-in, but it's hard to be certain what medium St, John used.

From Tarzan the Terrible
My previous St. John post included a reproduction of this image from a book, whereas what we see here looks like a scan of the original artwork. So far as I am concerned this wash drawing is his most successful illustration ever. The fussiness seen in the other images is absent. Why? I have no idea.

George Spencer Watson: Portraits and Nudes

George Spencer Watson (1869-1934) is yet another Royal Academy painter active early in the last century who was competent, made a decent living, and is now largely forgotten. He mostly made portraits, but also turned out some very nice paintings of nudes, and painted some landscapes and religious scenes. A brief Wikipedia entry on him is here.

This post mostly deals with his portraits. Stylistically, he was not influenced by Modernism until perhaps near the very end of his career. Some unfinished works are shown that might interest readers who paint and others interested in how artists go about their business.

Office viewing warning: The nudes are at the bottom of the image stack, so scroll carefully.

Gallery

Lady in White (unfinished)
This probably dates from around 1900. I failed to notice any earlier works by Watson via Googling.

Hilda and Maggie - 1911
A portrait of Watson's wife in the Tate collection.

A Lady in Black - 1922
Also in the Tate collection.

Portrait of a Lady (unfinished)
I'll guess that this was painted after 1920, possibly not long before he died. If the subject's costume were more finished and the hair style more visible, dating would be easier.

The Orange Dress
This might be Mary, the artist's daughter.

The Cottage Garden - 1928
An example of Watson's landscape work.

Miss Beaton - 1934
This too is probably unfinished: note the date and the sketchy brushwork in the lower part of the painting. The subject is Barbara Beaton, a sister of Cecil Beaton, the famous photographer (though before finding a detailed caption, I was guessing that she was Nancy Beaton, her more famous sister).

Nude - 1927
I find the unconventional pose interesting.

Sunlight Nude
I like this painting a lot, partly because of the (again) slightly different-from-the-usual pose and setting. But the best part, to my way of thinking is Watson's treatment of color. This was probably painted in the mid-to-late 1920s, before high-quality color photography was available. So he had to do this without that kind of photographic reference.