Alma-Tadema's New Springtime

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) is shaping up to be the new Andy Warhol.

That's so if you consider recent auction results. Last November his "The Finding of Moses" sold for $35,922,500 and more recently "The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra: 41 B.C." went for $29,22,500. Not bad for a once-forgotten artist whose paintings were selling for hundreds 50 or 60 years ago.

The Finding of Moses - 1904

The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra: 41 B.C. - 1885
The link above is to a lengthy Wikipedia entry. Plus there are books about Tadema, so I won't dwell on his career other than to mention that he combined great talent, research skills and a not-dour personality to reach great popularity in his lifetime -- a popularity that has been re-emerging since the 1960s.

One popular painting that's accessible to many Americans is "Spring" -- a star of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. It's large (80 x 179.1 cm / 31.5 in. x 5 ft. 10.5 in.) containing a jumble of figures whose faces (if memory serves) are only about two or three cm. high.

To celebrate Tadema's newfound stature, below is Spring along with a few detail photos I took a while ago. You can try clicking to enlarge them, but the results will be somewhat fuzzy because those enlargements are much bigger than the original art. All the images pictured here can be enlarged.

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Spring - 1894

A slightly closer version of the preceding detail.

Raymond Hood: America's Most Competent Architect?

Many observers claim Frank Lloyd Wright to be America's greatest architect. Maybe. I think he was the most creative, but creativity doesn't have to be synonymous with greatness.

So if Wright is iffy greatest-wise in my book, then who might be another contender? I nominate Raymond Hood (1881-1934). And as the title of this post suggests, he has claim as America's most competent architect, even if the matter of greatness can be disputed.

I base my contention on Hood's ability to do outstanding work in several styles: traditional, Deco and modernist. Besides his skyscrapers, Hood also designed a resort and houses -- including his own traditionally-designed place in Stamford, Connecticut. Unfortunately, decently detailed biographical material is hard to find on the Internet; for instance, consider his puny Wikipedia entry here. Fortunately, some books dealing with Hood can be found, though no significant ones are recent.

Hood's career was short but brilliant, lasting about a dozen years up to his early death at age 53 when he was associated with the Rockefeller Center project. It's difficult to predict how he might have evolved had he lived another 20 or so years. Certainly the Depression would have curtailed his output, yet he would have been around in time for the start of the post- World War 2 building boom. My best guess, given the flexibility he exhibited in the 1920s and early 30s, is that he might well have out-Miesed Mies van der Rohe in the 50s.

Below are examples of Hood's work.

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Tribune Tower, Chicago - 1924
The Howells & Hood firm won the famous Tribune Tower competition, launching Hood's fame. Modernists sneered at it, preferring the entry by Finland's great Eliel Saarinen, father of noted architect Eero Saarinen.

American Radiator Building, New York City - 1924
The Tribune win quickly led to a commission for the American Radiator Building on the south side of Bryant Park. Georgia O'Keeffe made a notable painting of this building.

Rex Cole showroom, Brooklyn
Hood designed a few showrooms for appliance dealer Rex Code. The one shown was located in the southwest Brooklyn neighborhood of Bay Ridge. That's a model of a General Electric refrigerator atop the building.

New York Daily News Building - 1929
Hood's Daily News Building was the first tall Modernist building in New York, though purists thought the vertical emphasis was slightly "dishonest" (in terms of their rigid ideology). That's the Third Avenue Elevated station at 42nd Street in the foreground.

McGraw-Hill Building - 1931
So Hood flipped the emphasis to horizontal for the McGraw-Hill publishing firm headquarters. This was more "honest" for the purists, who then complained the the Deco top decoration was (ugh!) decoration and therefore "dishonest." One just can't win when trying to please the hardcore, it seems. Actually, I never warmed to the McGraw-Hill -- that horizontal windowing motif made it seem stubbier than it really was. Like the Daily News, the McGraw-Hill was on 42nd Street, but towards the west side of town; the station seen here is for the 9th Avenue Elevated.


Even though I clearly like Raymond Hood a lot, there are other architects I find as appealing in different ways. I'll feature them from time to time in future posts.

Sir James Guthrie, Glasgow Boy

Sir James Guthrie (1859-1930) was one of the Glasgow Boys, a group of late-19th century Scottish painters influenced by French realist Jules Bastien-Lepage.

Like some other artists of middle-class origin in those days, his family sent him to university with the idea that he would practice law. And like the others he abandoned that line of education to take up art, though his art training came largely by self-education.

Regardless of how he mastered his skills, Guthrie became one of the most prominent Scottish artists of his time. By 1902 he was president of the Royal Scottish Academy and in 1903 was knighted.

The best place to find Guthrie's painting is Glasgow, of all places. Unfortunately for me, the last time I was in Glasgow I hadn't yet launched into serious study of art history and skated through Kelvingrove faster than I really should have.

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A Funeral in the Highlands - 1881-82

To Pastures New - 1882-83

Schoolmates - 1884-85

Old Willie, A Village Worthy - 1886

Summer House, St. Mary Isle - 1886

Maggie Hamilton - 1892-93

Molti Ritratti: Dame Edith Sitwell

Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), poet, critic, female component of a trio of artsy siblings well connected to the English upper crust, did not escape the portrait painter's brush as can be seen below. Her Wikipedia entry is here.

Sitwell's depictions are of interest because several of the artists were her friends -- especially Pavel Tchelitchev (transliterations of his name from the Russian vary). Of more interest is that these artists were modernists of one stripe or another in a period where all artists were trying to figure what to do with modernism in the wake of that decade or so of all those "isms" cascading down from (mostly) Paris. Adding to the complexity of the situation, they were painting portraits -- meaning that the results had to relate in a least some small manner to their purported subject.

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Photo of Sitwell

By Roger Fry
As best I can tell from citations, both the portraits by Fry were painted 1918 or thereabouts. Fry was an art critic and theoretician (popularizing the term "Post-Impressionism") who also did portraits and some other works.

By Alvaro Guevara, c. 1919

By Pavel Tchelitchev - c. 1930
Tchelitchev is best known as a Surrealist, but that movement was still more literary and political than painting-oriented when Sitwell sat for this work.

By Windham Lewis
Lewis was England's best-known modernist portrait artist when this was painted (begin in 1923 but not "completed" -- her hands were never added -- until 1935).

By Pavel Tchelitchev - 1935
According to the link above, Sitwell was quite taken with Tchelitchev even though their approaches to sex probably destined the relationship to be on the Platonic side. Neither Tchelitchev portrait shown here (as well as others) depicts Sitwell in a remotely flattering light. But she apparently didn't mind. The image above seems to be a scan from a book.

By Feliks Topolski
This portrait is an exception in that it was made decades later than the others and when Abstract Expressionism was the flavor of the day.

Goutte d'Eau Style: Late-30s French Streamlining

I recently posted about the teardrop design motif favored by Norman Bel Geddes in the early 1930s. The linkage of the teardrop shape to aerodynamic streamlining resulted in an industrial design fashion during the 30s that eventually reached cliché proportions. Nevertheless, that shape is pleasing and its use in car bodies usually resulted in improved aerodynamic efficiency when compared to similar cars build prior to, say, 1935.

Although the teardrop motif was applied to large, often bulky sedans, it achieved its aesthetic zenith with sports cars. French sports cars, to be more specific. America didn't do sports cars in those days and the English apparently were too conservative style-wise to abandon traditional fenders for the teardrop kind. Same for the Germans, though a few examples of teardrop sports sedans can be found. And some late-1930s Alfa Romeos sported the teardrop motif.

But it was the French who dominated that style scene, with the coachbuilding firm Figoni & Falaschi leading the pack. If this interests you, try to locate a copy of Richard Adatto's book (French edition shown above, but the English version has a similar cover). It seems to be out of print, but it's worth tracking down if you love that kind of styling.

Here are some examples.

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Peugeot Andreau prototype - 1936
A sports sedan rather than a sports car, but I include it because it illustrates what was in the air of France when the cars show below were being conceived.

Dalahaye 135 Competition by Figoni et Falaschi - 1936

Delahaye 165 by Figoni et Falaschi - 1939
This car was sent to the USA for inclusion as part of the French exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

Delage D8-120 by Letourneur et Marchand - 1939

Talbot-Lago T150-C-SS by Figoni et Falaschi - 1938

Talbot-Lago T23 by Figoni et Falschi - c.1938
The ultimate French teardrop sports car.

Art News from The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal has been evolving its Saturday/Sunday edition. A few months ago some morphing yielded two new sections. One is titled "Off Duty" and it deals with fashion and lifestyle matters. The other is "Revue," dealing with everything from longer pieces related to recent news events, to science developments, the arts and books.

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I noticed a lot of good stuff in the 7/8 May edition. Off Duty had a cover piece devoted to fashion magnate Ralph Lauren's car collection, part of which is on show at the Louvre in Paris. Well, not the Louvre Louvre, but instead the Musée des Arts Décoratifs part -- you know, way out there at the western end of the north wing along the rue de Rivoli.

Anyway, Dan Neil, the WJS's pit bull automobile reviewer interviewed Lauren in Paris, trying to make him confess there might be a tennsy bit of synergy in play between the exhibit and Lauren's commercial empire. Lauren pretty much sidestepped the issue, but Neill did allow in conclusion that Lauren was indeed an actual "car guy."

Gee, I could have told him that. I've been to two Pebble Beach Concours d'Élegance and saw Lauren up close both times. One year he was standing by his Bugatti Atlantique, the other he was helping a bunch of guys pushing his 1939 Alfa Romeo around the 18th Hole site; rolls up his sleeves when need be, he does.

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Over in Reviews it was reported that Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema's "The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra: 41 B.C." was auctioned at Sotheby's for $29.2 million. Forty years ago one could hardly give his paintings away. We're making progress, realism fans!

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Art writer Karen Wilkin reviewed the book "Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter" by Patricia Albers. It seems that Mitchell was a piece of work, whatever her Abstract Expressionist abilities might have been. But the part of the review that caught my attention was this paragraph:

Ms. Albert's book is not the place to turn for an understanding of art. It is punctuated with extended, over-written and yet imprecise descriptions of paintings that fail to evoke particular images despite the self-consciously "vivid" prose and lists of colors. A discussion of "the gorgeous Canadian paintings" made in 1974 is typical. "The diptych Canada V beguiles with the bosky masses, its incantatory lights and darks, its use of white around the cut between the two panels, and its oddly right colors (pale mint, white claret, and the color of night)."

Agreed, that is pretty turgid. My personal problem is that I have an aversion to just about any written description of a painting. Ditto descriptions of music. Music must be heard and paintings (or their reproductions) viewed if they are to be comprehended at all. A few apt remarks and a decent amount of background information are usually okay, but otherwise my eyes glaze even if there's a reproduction right above all that text.

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As a final note, the section also had a short piece about Modernist collector Peter Brant. Among other quotes from him is this: "The thing is, when you look at a great work of art, it has to evoke in you something that's troublesome. If you hate it, it's probably a better indicator than if you just think it's OK. An artist is supposed to be telling you something that's not obvious or something you've not thought about in that way before."

Shh. Please don't mention this to Monet, Renoir, the Hudson River School or even poor, ignored Alma-Tadema.

Tiepolo's Female Faces

Giovannia Battista (Giambattista) Tiepolo (1696-1770) -- Wikipedia entry here -- began and cemented his career in Venice, spent a few years in Germany and died in Spain, leaving a trail of masterpieces on canvases, walls and ceilings.

Many of his subjects were religious, commissioned by churches and rulers such as Prince Bishop Karl Philip von Greiffenklau of Würzburg. Unlike typical depictions of the Virgin and female saints painted in his time and before, he injected both glamor and reality. That is, his women were both attractive and looked like people one might see in streets, cafes and shopping centers today (if costuming is ignored).

When I thumb through my books about Tiepolo I find myself noticing a certain facial type or perhaps even the same face appearing from time to time. Might he have had a favorite model? Was she a relative? A mistress? Or maybe he was simply depicting a facial type that appealed to him.

Below are examples of some of his women. Most of the images are details, sometimes not of the main subject of the painting. Not all the subjects are religious. I apologize that image quality is not top-notch; that's because I needed to crop to the faces as closely as possible, so tried to start from large images that often were not sharp.

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An Allegory with Venus and Time (detail)
This is the sort of babe that pops up in Tiepolo's work, though she seems younger here than elsewhere.

Woman With a Mandolin (detail)
Same model, but a little older?

Beata Laduina
Same model, but with hair darkened?

Venus and Vulcan (detail)
Whoever she might be, she qualifies as his Venus.

Education of the Virgin (detail)
Now for some different faces; consider the one at the upper left. Older, and a bit more serious or stern.

The Last Communion of St. Lucy (detail)
The model for St. Lucy might be the same as for the painting above; note the longer nose than in the first several.

The Virgin Mary Appearing to Dominican Saints
St. Catherine of Siena (in white) is gorgeous. And not quite like Tiepolo's other women, pretty though they may be. Oh, and that's St. Rose of Lima next to Catherine; she's simply pretty, as is the Virgin.

Tiepolo obviously had a "modern" eye for feminine beauty. Apparently so did the people who commissioned his works, both religious and secular, because he was in demand during his long career.