Molti Ritratti: Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) liked to portray people in his novels and, in turn, apparently didn't seem to mind being portrayed by some of Russia's best-known artists.

Those artists included Nikolai Ge (1831-94), Ivan Kramskoy (1837-87), Ilya Repin (1844-1930) and Mikhail Nesterov (1862-1942). Repin painted several portraits of the famed writer.

Unlike a beautiful woman in her simplicity, Tolstoy as he aged presented a feast of details to tempt the skills of portrait painters -- a craggy face, a bifurcated beard, rugged hands, peasant costuming and other paintable features of his persona. Below are some photographs and paintings of him.

Gallery

Photo - c.1897

Photo - 1908

By Ivan Kramskoy - 1873

By Nikolai Ge - 1884

By Ilya Repin - 1887

By Ilya Repin - 1891

By Ilya Repin: Tolstoy and his wife in Yasnaya Polyana - 1907

By Mikhail Nesterov - 1907

Evolving Airport Terminals

I'm pretty sure it has been happening at a large airport near you. That's because airports for larger metropolitan areas seem to be continually under reconstruction. For this post, I'm referring to the evolution of the airport terminal.

Not all that many years ago terminals had waiting areas and a few news stands and a limited, "captive" (contracted out to a single supplier) set of restaurants and snack bars. Those restaurants and snack bars seemingly invariably had overpriced goods.

Then cracks in the system appeared. The one that impressed me was the appearance of a McDonald's hamburger stand in the Minneapolis terminal maybe 20 or more years ago. Now, in America, I don't notice any more of those single-contractor operations for food services (news stands still seem to be another story). Better yet, in many airports, the price of a McDonald's burger or a cup of Starbucks coffee is the same as it is off-site.

Behold the contrast with 60 years ago. My example is Seattle-Tacoma International Airport showing old photos found on the Web and a few I took recently.

These are views of waiting areas in the years before major changes occurred. The top photo shows a waiting area near the departure gates and the lower photo shows the main lounge. There was a restaurant with a view of the airplanes that was situated on the second floor beyond the far end of the main lounge.

A few years ago, the central part of the terminal including the main lounge (already re-done a time or two since the photo above was taken), was extensively rebuilt. The photos below indicate the result.

That sign in the background is both fairly recent and seriously tacky. I'm not sure that "captive" passengers within the security zone need to be prompted to spend, because they're likely to do so anyway.

Where the main lounge was is now a food court.

There's also a huge window where aircraft can be observed. Some airport amenities don't change.

Blogging Note

For the last few months I've been on The Big Push, an effort to complete the first draft of a book about the crisis of innovation in Modernist painting. Well, I finally completed drafting all the chapters plus a preface, and I'm setting it aside for a while so I can take a more objective look at it later.

Another reason it's getting set aside is that I'm about to head to the British Isles for much of August. I'll mostly be touring, but will visit art museums where I can, probably in Dublin, Edinburgh and Glasgow (too bad the Hunterian will be closed).

Blog posts will continue to appear on the usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday pace while I'm away, thanks to the magic of scheduled posting times. What will probably suffer is response to comments. I'll bring my iPad, but will be at the mercy of Internet availability as well as that clunky iPad virtual keyboard.

I'll report what I find interesting after I return home 29 August.

Frank Xavier, the Other Leyendecker

Frank (Franz) Xavier Leyendecker (late 1870s-1924), better known as F.X. Leyendecker, was a good illustrator whose work was not as distinctive or appealing as that of his famous brother, J.C. Leyendecker.

Biographical information on F.X. is sparse. Even his year of birth is unclear: I have seen it given as 1876, 1877 and 1879. His Wikipedia entry is here and this site contains a paragraph of information and images of a number of his illustrations. The most information I could find is in this book dealing with the life and work of J.C. What follows was gleaned from it.

F.X. was born in Germany, the youngest of four siblings who moved to the United States in 1882. J.C. and F.X. traveled to Paris in 1896 for a year to study at the Académie Julian, where J.C. studied diligently while F.X. tended to focus more on drinking, drugs and carousing with other art students. After moving to New York City, F.X. was able to begin a long series of cover illustrations for Collier's magazine and also did advertising illustration. Unfortunately, his addiction problems continued and he also developed a bad attitude regarding doing commercial, rather than fine art painting. This attitude problem evolved into a kind of depression which affected his productivity which snowballed into loss of clients and commissions. In 1923 F.X. and his sister Mary moved out of J.C.'s New Rochelle mansion after a series of arguments with J.C. The next year F.X. was dead, done in one way or another due to his addictions.

Here are a few examples of his work.

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Book illustration for "With the Night Mail" - 1909

Vanity Fair cover - December, 1915

Illustration, "The Fortune Hunter" - c.1915

Navy recruiting poster - c.1918

Life magazine cover - 1 September 1921

Ilya Repin's Portrait Studies

The image above is of the painting "Formal Session of the State Council in Honor of Its Centenary on May 7th, 1901" painted in 1903 by the Russian master, Ilya Repin (1844-1930). Information on the nature of the Council can be found here.

The painting is huge, occupying much of a wall in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. The museum is well worth seeing if you are interested in Russian art and have any time or energy left after traipsing through the Hermitage.

According to David Jackson in this book (pp. 168-70):

* * * * *
Repin was given extraordinary permission to study council meetings, having insisted that everything be done from life. He worked on the enormous canvas between April 1901 and December 1903 with assistance of two pupils, Boris Kusodiev and Ivan Kulikov. It presented formidable technical problems, not least the perspective of the circular chamber, but also the complexity of arranging scores of figures of varying sizes whilst seeking to retain a harmonious colour scheme amongst a riot of official uniforms and sumptuous furnishings. In the event the Tsar was pushed to the background as Repin was forced to reduce the actual number of members to a more manageable figure.

Several artistic devices were employed to to solve these difficulties. The fore-figures are painted larger than life to forestall the portraits in the background dwindling to minisule proportions. To solve the difficulties of perspective the chamber is seen from a number of converging viewpoints, rather than any single one. All lines in the picture bend rather than travel straight, since a true rendition would create the illusion of concavity and collapse. To harmonise the colour scheme complementary tones were highlighted; black, red and yellow, punctuated with the sky-blue of members' sashes.

There is some doubt as to how much of the finished work is by Repin as there are discrepancies in quality between the figures, though this does not necessarily point to his assistants. From the late 1890s he began to suffer increasing pains in his right hand which had begun to atrophy due to a lifetime's overwork.... According to Repin he painted the entire canvas with only the use of his left hand, though he was still stubbornly trying to use his natural hand as late as 1917....

Natalya Nordman, Repin's companion at this time, used a Kodak camera to assist in the process of recording data, but Repin insisted upon personal sittings which he integrated into the overall composition and the work was finished in a surprisingly short time, less than three years.

* * * * *
Here are some of the portrait studies Repin made.

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Count Dmitry Martynovich Solsky - 1903

Unidentified

Konstantin Pobedonostsev - 1903

Prince Mikhail Sergeyevich Volkonsky - 1903

Sergei Witte - 1903

Count Aleksey Pavlovich Ignatiev - 1902

Colors Affect Automobile Styling

Many people choose white as the color for their automobile. Some simply prefer it for its own sake. Others who live in hot climates select white because it reflects the sun's rays and reduces the expense of operating the air conditioner.

But the way I see it, there's a major problem with white cars: it kills one's perception of the shapes of an automobile's surfaces.

To Illustrate my contention, let's take a look at some Mercedes Benz E350s.

Gallery

As you can see, darker colors show highlights that help visually define the metal sculpting that has become increasingly elaborate in recent years. Surrounding objects are also reflected much more strongly, which some people might find objectionable. Perhaps that's why silver is a popular color: it reflects sunlight while making the sculpting more visible than does white paint.

John Holmgren: Chameleon Illustrator?

When an artistic style becomes fashionable, wannabes swarm in. I'm not quite sure that I can truly label R. John Holmgren (1897-1963) a "wannabe" or "Chameleon" (as the title of this post has it). That's because there is little of Holmgren's work to be found on the Internet.

Yet Holmgren seems to have been a fairly well known illustrator in his day. Walt Reed in "The Illustrator in America, 1860-2000" notes: "His illustrations appeared in most of the national magazines and for many advertisers, including Chevrolet, Ford, Alcoa, White Rock and Cunard Lines. A long-time member of the Society of Illustrators, Holmgren was its president from 1941 to 1944."

The White Rock illustrations included the "Psyche" girl in various settings done in 1940s wash-style. But I want to focus here on the work he was producing in the late 1920s and into the mid-1930s. There were some illustrators in those days with strong styles that were popular with viewers. These included Norman Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker, Mead Schaeffer, Henry Raleigh and Walter Biggs -- none of whose work could be confused with that of the others.

And then there were McClelland Barclay and John LaGatta, two other major illustrators back then. Barclay favored oil paints and used a form of Cloisonnism, outlining to emphasize his subjects. LaGatta usually drew images in charcoal and then applied oil washes to add color; he also favored outlining.

The point of this post is that Holmgren tended to mimic Barclay and, to a lesser extent, LaGatta in those days. I'm not sure what medium he painted in, though he seems to have made use of line and washes of some kind. Aside from seeming derivative, his illustrations were nicely done. Take a look:

Gallery

Life cover - 18 January, 1929

Life cover - 24 May, 1929

Judge cover - July, 1934

By McClelland Barclay: Fisher Body advertisement, 1928

By John LaGatta - 1930s