Konstantin Gorbatov: A Very 1920s Painter

I've only seen his paintings via the Internet, so my opinions are provisional. That said, I find the works of Konstantin Gorbatov (1876-1945) to be pleasant to view. But that's not why I'm featuring them in this post. It's because they strike me as solidly set within my mental concept of archetypical 1920s paintings of the minimally modernist style.

It's the colors that matter most. To me, warm, toned-down reds, oranges, greens and, yes, even blues set the mood. Such color schemes were found in enough advertisements, murals and other art of the period that I'm afraid that my poor brain has been imprinted with that association.

Another 1920s feature is a painterly technique wherein a painting is built up using solid, well-defined areas of color in its entirety or else used for significant parts that are offset by areas containing color gradations. Outlining shapes in a cloisonné manner often completes the 1920s stylistic package.

Gorbatov has been typed as a post-impressionist, a label probably as good as any. His biographical information, on the Web at least, is rather thin: here is one link and another is here.

Below are examples of his work.

Gallery

Town by Russian river

Sunny snow scene, Russia

View of Capri

Clifftops, Capri

Fishing Harbor, Capri - 1928

View of Venice - 1929

View of Basilica San Marco and the Ducal Palace, Venice - 1933

Chioggia

Railroad poster art: Salzburg - 1930

In reality, the "look" shown above is not strictly 1920s; it can be found in works from earlier in the century. And here the colors areas are small, creating a setting for "visual mixing" -- illustrator N.C. Wyeth was doing something like this around 1910, for instance. Nevertheless, this general sort of look was in full swing during the 20s for certain artists not willing to go whole-hog modernist. Consider the painting below.

This is a view of sailboats off Chioggia, Italy painted sometime 1922-24 by Edgar Payne, a leading California Impressionist. Compare to Gorbatov's Chioggia and Venice paintings above. Chioggia, by the way, is a small port city at the south end of the Venice lagoon. I've stayed there. It's an unpretentious place with a canal or two. You can travel to Venice from there by boat, but the trip takes a while. You'd probably be better off staying in Venice itself or perhaps a nearby coastal town such as Mestre, a short train ride away if the point of your trip was seeing Venice.

Jutting Ahead: 1938-39 Graham Cars

Although many makes of cars emerged in the United States since the mid-1890s, their mortality rate was high. By the start of the Great Depression of the 1930s there were only around 20 serious manufacturers remaining from hundreds that existed over the previous 35 years. By 1940 only 11 or so remained, three of which were on their last legs as car builders (war production kept some companies going in a different role).

One company on the way out was Graham. It nominally survived World War 2 to serve as the nucleus of the post-war Kaiser-Frazer organization, but the brand itself was dead by then.

Graham's next-to-last gasp (see the link above for more information about its final attempt to stay in the business) was the 1938-39 "Spirit of Motion" styled car, popularly known as the "shark-nosed Graham." It proved to be a sales flop, a few more than 8,000 being sold over the two-year run. Nevertheless, I've always rather liked the styling. It's outrageous rather than functional, which makes it lose points in a purist's reckoning. Me? I think the car is fun to look at, which is more than can be said for many cars having functionalist styling-snob approval.

The main designer of the Sharknose was the talented Amos Northrup who died from a fall on ice before the design entered production. For more information on Northrup, see here, here and, especially, here.

Gallery

Graham sedan - 1939

Graham two-door - 1939

Graham advertisement - 1938
I include this because it shows the sedan in profile.

Murray Body patent drawings
These suggest the forthcoming Graham design but include more advanced features such as the blended front fenders, though the flat, one-piece windshield was retrograde. The source of the image, along with information about Murray, is here.

Willys advertisement - 1938
This design with a slightly less aggressive nose was introduced for 1937, beating Graham by one model year.

Pennsylvania Railroad T1 locomotive - 1942
Another example of forward lean expressing potential speed.

Barney Oldfield driving "Blitzen Benz" - 1910
Photos of speeding cars taken in the early 1900s often showed a distorted image; the vehicles appeared to be leaning forwards. The was because of the design of the shutter for newspaper-type cameras of the day; they operated like two window shades with a slit-like gap between them, the gap moving upwards when the shutter was triggered. If the subject were a fast car such a Oldfield's Benz, the lower part of the car was captured first and the upper part last. Since the car was moving while the shutter was moving, its upper part was captured after it had moved forward a short distance, hence the distortion. (Note that the stationary flagman appears normal.) One result of this was that a symbol of speed to folks in the early 20th century was a forward lean such as was expressed by Graham, Willys and the Pennsy T1.

Behind the Scenes

The photo above is of a corner of the small, former bedroom that I use as both a library and painting studio (most of my art-related books are on the wall opposite the one shown).

As I've mentioned from time to time, I majored in commercial art as an undergraduate and took a number of drawing and painting classes wherein the instructors were careful not to teach us much for fear of destroying our "creativity." After college, I dropped art to do other things that probably paid better. A few years ago I took up painting again. This was mostly because I was curious as to whether or not I might have been any good at it had I received any real instruction.

My main source of instruction is books, supplemented by visits to art museums and an occasional free demonstration at a local artists paint manufacturer. But it's all really a back-burner activity; I seldom paint, devoting my energy to studying art and writing about it.

If you look carefully, you'll notice that the paints I'm using are acrylics. That's because they are more convenient to use than the messier, slow-drying oils that would probably work better for me were I a serious painter.

I'm still experimenting with styles as the three paintings in the photo indicate. My subjects tend to be pretty girls because (1) I like attractive females and (2) people are the most difficult subjects to paint because viewers can immediately detect errors, so this is a challenge. (When seeing a painting of an unfamiliar landscape, viewers have little means for telling whether or not the artist got things right. But people have seen various kinds of other people throughout their lives and therefore have a pretty good idea what's right and wrong about an image.)

The lowest painting is adapted from a black-and-white photo of 1930s actress Jean Harlow; I made no effort to duplicate it, though it is similar to the original. The middle one is from my imagination. The one on the easel was begun using a black-and-white photo of 1960s actress Ursula Andress; I liked the pose and needed a nice light and shade reference. But as you can see, I painted an imaginary face bearing little detailed relationship to Andress.

Enough about my hack work; now back to our usual programming....

Precisely Delineated High Society

When I used "precisely delineated" in the title of this post, I didn't mean that high society was being pictured in its true state. Rather, I meant that the style of the artist had a precise look to it. At times it was almost geometric.

The artist is Bernard Boutet de Monvel (1881-1949), descendant of an acting family whose father, Louis-Maurice, was a well-known illustrator. The link to Bernard is in French, so I'll note a few key points (with a few details incorporated from other sources). He was trained by his father, painter Luc-Olivier Merson and sculptor Jean Dampt and began exhibiting in 1903. He served as an aerial observer in the Great War and then lived in Fez, Morocco 1918-25. Starting in 1926 he traveled frequently to the United States. He died in the same airplane crash that killed violinist Ginette Neveu and noted French boxer (and dear friend of singer Edith Piaf) Marcel Cerdan.

Boutet de Monvel painted orientalist Moroccan scenes, but is best known for his society portraits, fashion illustrations and advertising illustrations. The image above is the left-hand panel of a 1929 two-page spread illustration used in advertisements for Hupmobile cars (the right-hand side simply shows the rest of the car against an essentially blank background, so the illustration could be used in either single or double-page formats). Hupmobiles sold in the top part of the middle price range, competing with Buick and Chrysler. Hupp advertising around 1930 was therefore intended to appeal to a sophisticated audience and a number of striking ads were published; I think the one shown above is especially nice.

Below are other examples of Boutet de Monvel's work.

Gallery

Self-portrait

Jean-Louis Boussingault and Andre de Segonzac

Comte Pierre de Quinsonas - 1913 (image slightly cropped)

Maharaja of Indore - 1934

Hupmobile advertising illustration - 1929 (cropped)

Illustration: New York City

Drawing

Many of the images include various straight lines and curves used to build up the subject-matter, these lines often extending beyond boundaries and intersection points (click images to enlarge and see this more clearly). This is a bit mannered, but I must confess that I like the overall effect Boutet de Monvel achieves in many of these works; lesser hands might easily botch it.

He has been considered an Art Deco style artist, if for no other reason than his use of clearly visible geometrically related lines. Other artists and illustrators in the 1920s and early 30s tried the same thing, but so far as I'm concerned, Boutet de Monvel was perhaps the very best at the style.

Varieties of Railroad Travel Posters

This book about North American railroad company travel posters mentioned that early posters tended to feature locomotives, but by some time around 1915 the emphasis shifted to destinations offered by lines. Between these extremes must be a middle ground where voilà ! trains and destinations appear on the same poster. And voilà ! once more, there can be posters showing trains on their way to destinations passing by intermediate points of interest that the lucky tourist will be able to see if he rides the line in question.

This high-level theorizing leaves me breathless and my head woozy, so let's move on to viewing some examples.

Galllery

By Leslie Ragan for New York Central - 1938
Ragan created many fine poster illustrations for the New York Central. I selected this one because it features a locomotive to the exclusion of its setting.

By Walter Greene for New York Central - 1928
The New York Central railroad correctly boasted that it was the line that had the lowest level between New York and Chicago; competing lines had to deal with mountainous terrain in places en route. A 20th Century Limited would depart from New York's Grand Central Terminal and head north along the east bank of the Hudson River, crossing to the west side shortly before reaching Albany. From Albany it would proceed along the Mohawk River and then surmount a small crest near Utica to enter the Great Lakes drainage basin. From Syracuse through Buffalo and Cleveland to Chicago was a matter of traveling over fairly flat land.

The scene in the poster shows a train heading south along the Hudson at a point just north of West Point, where Storm King mountain looms on the river's west bank, a sight for passengers to enjoy if they were sitting on the right side of the coach. Storm King is certainly a large hunk of rock, but I suspect that Greene slightly dramatized it.

By Leslie Ragan for New York Central - c.1940
Here we find locomotives at a destination, Chicago in this case, with the Board of Trade building as the backdrop. Ragan depicts four locomotives, three steam powered and one new diesel engine (second from the left). At the far left is an ordinary non-streamlined locomotive. The engines at the right are steam powered streamliners; I wrote about them here.

By Edward Eggleston for Pennsylvania Railroad - early 1930s
Not a train in sight, but who would care about that if there was a lovely swinsuit-clad lass beckoning you to join her on the beach near Atlantic City's fabulous boardwalk? The Pennsy's main routes ran from New York to Philadelphia and then on to Chicago or St. Louis; to reach Atlantic City, one had to catch a spur line from Philadelphia.

How Duveneck Inspired Greg Manchess

The image above is of a study done by Frank Duveneck (1848-1919), an influential painter active in the late 19th Century.

Illustrator and Painter Greg Manchess recently posted this article on the Muddy Colors blog in which he explains how the Duveneck study profoundly inflenced his own painting style.

His post is well worth your attention if you are interested in painting technique.

In the Beginning: Haddon Sundblom

This post continues an illustrators' parallel to the series on early works by modernist painters.

The subject is Haddon Sundblom, who spent his career in Chicago and was highly influential in his day; many successful illustrators cut their teeth in the field while working at his studio. If you're fortunate enough to have a copy of the first issue of Illustration Magazine or its later reprint, the lead article deals with Sundblom.

In December 2010 Leif Peng had a series of posts on his blog dealing with Sundblom. The lead article, which dealt with his early career, can be found here. Go to the blog's archives for that month to access the related posts.

The source for Sundblom's early work shown in the present post was the Annual of Advertising Art, a yearly awards publication of the Art Directors Club of New York; the organization's present guise is here, and those awards are still being given.

Dates for the illustrations shown below are "circa" the year before the source Annual was printed because that was when the the work was probably published.

Gallery

Coca-Cola Santa Claus
For better or worse, these days Sundblom is best known for his Santa illustrations for Coca-Cola.

For Lincoln - 1924
This image was found on the Web; a black-and-white version was in the Annual of Advertising Art for 1925.

For Lincoln - c.1924
In the mid-1920s Lincoln had many advertisements using the general visual and content themes shown above. One factor that was not consistent was the artist doing the illustrations. Although Sundblom did some of this work, perhaps most were by Fred Cole. It is hard to tell which artist did any given illustration, because the artistic style is similar for the entire ad campaign, something surely imposed by the art director. What's not clear is whether the art director had this appearance in mind from the start or else liked what he saw in the work created by the initial artist and ordered it continued. In any case, that series was very attractive -- more so than Lincoln's cars of the time.

For Ford - c.1924

For Ford- c.1924

Illustration for unidentified automotive client - c.1924

For White Naphtha Soap - c.1927

For Camay Soap - c.1928
Yes, this was really done by Sundblom (unless the caption was botched in the Annual). The deviation from his usual style might be explained by the art director wanting an appearance in line with the simplified, poster-like modernist look common in fashion illustration in the late 1920s.

For White Naphtha Soap - c.1929
The original artwork was in color, but printed in black-and-white in the Annual.

For Packard - c.1930
In the late 1920s into 1930 Packard advertisements would have a scene of luxury painted by a well-known illustrator at the top of the page and an image of a car towards the bottom. This Sundblom illustration has been cropped on the right side because the page in the opened Annual curved towards the gutter and distorted the image I photographed; note some reflected light washing out the right section of the remaining image.