Bastien-Lapage: A Strong Influence

The word most associated with Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884) is influential. At times that influence was indirect. The link above cites British artist and critic Roger Fry contending the Bastien-Lepage greased the skids for public acceptance of Impressionism, an opinion that not everyone would support.

But it isn't hard to find examples of direct influence. For instance, Roger Billcliffe in his book The Glasgow Boys describes how several members of that group of Scottish painters were strongly influenced by Bastien-Lapage's work during the early-mid 1880s.

Other artists did paintings in his style. Interestingly, all the examples I've encountered thus far are not French, though I suppose there are a few French paintings that fit the pattern. Here is what I've turned up:

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Pauvre Fauvette - by Jules Bastien-Lepage - 1881
This is a typical Bastien-Lepage country scene that can be used for comparison to the images below.

"Noon" - by George Henry (1858-1943) - 1885

"Schoolmates" - by Sir James Guthrie (1859-1930) - 1884-85

On the Loing: An Afternoon Chat" - by Sir John Lavery (1856-1941) - 1884
Henry, Guthrie and Lavery are considered Glasgow Boys, though Lavery is more peripheral than the other two.

"Toil and Pleasure" - by John Robertson Reid (1857-1926) - 1879
Reid was Scottish, but trained in Edinburgh and did most of his work in England.

"Boy with a Hoe (April)" - by Elizabeth Adela Forbes (1859-1912)
She was Canadian, but spent a good part of her life in England as the wife of famed Newlyn School painter Stanhope Forbes (1857-1947).

Shepherd boy and flock by Charles Sprague Pearce (1851-1914)
Pearce was an American who went to France to study in 1873 and spent the rest of his career in France.

Henry Raeburn, Rule-Breaker

Sir Henry Raeburn (1756-1823) is a painter whose work I've liked for just about forever. I first encountered him years ago at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art while on weekend passes from Fort Slocum, then home to the Army Information School, where I learned the dark arts of journalism and public relations. Raeburn's Wikipedia entry is here.

Raeburn's mature style was based on strong, smooth brushwork that created portraits which conveyed painterly solidity slightly softened by some blending and use of selective small value distinctions. At its most characteristic, the sitter's face appears borderline out-of-focus. This Raeburn "touch"makes many of his works instantly identifiable.

As noted, the Met has some Raeburns in its collection and others can be found here and there in the United States. But a good place to find them is in his native Edinburgh in Scotland, specifically in the Scottish National Gallery main building and in the nearby Scottish National Portrait Gallery. I vised both museums recently and was able to see a number of fine Raeburns.

After a while I began to notice something.

Several portraits featured the almost-out-of-focus look on faces, yet other objects such as collars and other bits of clothing were sharply rendered. This is counter to conventional wisdom for portraiture where eyes and other key facial features are emphasized while less important details such as clothing are to be rendered less distinctly so that the face is the focus of attention.

Raeburn painted many portraits where the normal procedure was followed or else where face and clothing received equal emphasis. But a number of paintings of men (usually) done in the last 15 or so years of his career followed the pattern I had finally noticed.

Why did he do this? I do not know. Perhaps he stumbled onto the technique, saw that it could yield appealing results, and then continued to use it.

How did he get away from this deviation from convention? Probably because the face is the natural focus of attention almost no matter what.

Below are some examples.
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James Waldrop of Otbrane Hill - c.1820
Note the white collar that stands out more by its contrast to its background than by crisp edges alone.

John Playfair - c.1811
The same holds here. Those early 19th century Scots certainly liked dressing in black.

James Watt - 1815
Not a good reproduction here. The skin colors in the actual painting appear normal (not so yellowish). But the face does have a slightly blurred appearance whereas the area around the collar is more tightly painted. Americans can see this portrait at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California (near Pasadena).

Major General Charles Reynolds - c.1818
Here the balance is closer, though most of the crisp detailing is on the uniform; only the eyes are sharp facial features.

Sir Walter Scott - 1820
Again, the eyes are crisply painted. Yet the sharpest detailing is otherwise reserved for the chain on Scott's chest and the white collar.

Nieuport Aircraft: From Elegant to Ugly

During the 1930s the aesthetics of French military equipment improved markedly. I wrote about the appearance of battleships here, and in this post I consider aircraft, featuring an exception to the general trend.

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Amiot 143 - first flight of Amiot 140, 1931
The Amiot 143 was part of the 140 series of 1931. It and other bombers and "multiplace combat aircraft" (a French theoretical concept of multi-rôle aircraft that proved impractical in practice) of the late 1920s and early 30s were stunningly ugly.

Amiot 351 prototype - 1938
But by the later 1930s French bombers were much more sleek, including the Amiot 350 series. It's hard to believe that the Amiot firm could be responsible for such different designs over such a small interval.

Nieuport-Delage Ni-D 62 - from 1928
Now for the counter-example. Nieuport was one of the major builders of fighter planes on the Allied side during the Great War, and it continued that tradition through the 1920s with its 29 and 42 series. The Ni-D 62 was a major refinement of the early 1920s 42, though its performance was not much better. If you look closely at the sleek (in its day) 62, you will notice that it isn't a biplane. Rather, it is a sesquiplane with one full wing mounted high and a half-wing mounted at the lower part of the fuselage. A tertiary airfoil of sorts can be seen between the landing gear wheels.

SNCAC NC 1070 - 1947
Another triumph of the French tendency to value theory over practice was the nationalization of much of its aircraft industry in 1936. The Nieuport firm, already a part of another company, completely disappeared, becoming part of the SNCAO (Société Nationale des Constructions Aéronautiques de l'Ouest) which itself was later merged into the SNCAC (Société Nationale de Constructions Aéronautiques du Centre). The NC 1070 was a clandestine World War 2 project for a carrier-based attack aircraft.

SNCAC NC 1070 - three-view drawing
These plan drawings illustrate the odd, ugly appearance of the NC 1070 better than most photos can. Its wings folded just outboard of the engine nacelles and its length was stumpy indeed. These features were intended to make it compatible with elevators transferring aircraft between the hangar deck and the flight deck. Also, the short length would allow more of these aircraft to be spotted on the flight deck, an important consideration in carrier operations. The 1070 was flight tested, but never entered production even though an order had been contemplated at one time.

SNCAC NC 1071 - 1948
The NC 1071 was a jet propelled version of the NC 1070, and it was equally ugly. It too was test flown, but again there were no production versions.

In the Beginning: John Twachtman

Among my myriad character flaws is that I've never much liked hardcore Impressionism of the mature Monet variety. It surely has to do with the fact that such images are too vague for my taste. I really appreciate a hard edge here and there, and a value (light-dark) design is welcome indeed.

So it is that I've never been much of a fan of the American Impressionist John Twachtman (1853-1902) aside from his Arques-le-Battaille currently residing the Met in New York (also see image below). His Wikipedia entry is here, a website devoted to him here, and a chronological presentation of his paintings is here.

But then there is the early Twachtman, before the Impressionist bug bit him, and there is more to him than Arques-le-Battaille. Take the painting shown at the top of this post, for example. It was buried in the storage area of Seattle's Fry Art Museum and only recently reappeared in conjunction with the museum's reopening following reconfiguration of gallery layouts.

The painting is titled "Windmills, Dordrecht" and was created in 1881 or 1882 while Twachtman was vising Europe with his new bride. It might be a bit hard to tell from the small image, but the painting (which in fact isn't very large) was painted with crispness and economy. Very pleasing to me, at least. Makes me wonder how things would have turned out had he never taken up Impressionism.

Below are two paintings from the first part of his career and three from the later part when he regarded himself as an Impressonist.

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"Dunes Back of Coney Island" - c.1880
This painting was also on display at the Frye reopening.

Arques-le-Battaille - 1885
This might be Twachtman's very best.

"Figure in a Landscape" - c.1895
He seldom painted people. This is an Impressionist portrait of sorts.

"Gloucester Harbor" - 1900
There are plenty of details in this scene, but they get smudged away thanks to the Impressionist style.

"Waterfront Scene, Gloucester" - c.1901
Structures with clean edges dominate this scene, so Twachtman was forced to tighten things up compared to what he might have done if he were painting a countryside scene.

Molti Ritratti: Winston Churchill

I assume all those reading this post know who Winston Churchill was, but that assumption might be resting on thin ice, given the quality of educational systems in the USA and some other countries.

He is surely best known to posterity via photography and film, rather than from painted portraits. Nevertheless, portraits of him were painted. Some are presented below in approximate reverse-chronological order.

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By Yousuf Karsh - 1941
So I changed my mind. Let's start with Karsh's iconic photographic portrait to set the scene.

By Andy Thomas
This is posthumous, but I don't have a date. I doubt that Churchill would ever have posed with cigar and whisky. Nor could he have held a smile very long while posing.

By Bernard Hailstone - 1955
A site showing this image states that it was his last official portrait.

By Graham Sutherland - 1954
This is the portrait that his wife Clementine famously had destroyed after he died. I can't blame her, though one can find defenders of Sutherland's work if you Google a little.

By Paul Wyeth
I could find no documentation about this one, but it clearly commemorates Churchill's induction as a Companion of the Order of the Garter.

By Frank Mason - 1952
I have no background on this painting either.

By Douglas Granville Chandor - 1946
This was painted after the war when Churchill was no longer Prime Minister. He is shown in the uniform of the Royal Air Force, in which he held honorary status.

By Walter Sickert - 1927
Apparently Sickert, a friend of Clementine, gave Winston some tips on how to paint and did this portrait sketch.

By William Orpen - 1916
In 1916 Churchill was back in the army following his resignation as Admiralty First Lord, so I'm not clear as to when Orpen actually painted this. I suspect 1916 is the completion date and the bulk of the work was done earlier.

By John Lavery - 1915
This was probably done when Churchill was still First Lord.

French Fighter Competition: Early 1930s

I've probably said it before and will probably say it again: Following the aircraft industry was a lot more interesting before 1960 than since. That's because airplanes became much more complicated, which meant that development times and costs increased considerably. In recent times, airliners and combat aircraft take years to bring to production, but they also stay in production and service much longer than in the old days. For example, Boeing's single-aisle 737 series prototype first flew 45 years ago, and variants will be in production for years to come. So far as the aviation buff is concerned, the amount of interesting new stuff had been reduced to a trickle over the years.

Wars and threats of wars served as spurs for technical progress in aviation. Most striking is a comparison of aircraft entering service at the end of 1918 with those flying mid-1914, just before the Great War started.

A consequence of the war was greatly lessened demand for new military aircraft. Technical progress became relative slow so there was less motivation to rush what new designs there were into production. The main French fighter of the early-mid 1920s was the Nieuport-Delage 29, a design under development in the closing months of the war. The late 20s and early 30s saw production of the Nieuport-Delage 62 series that boasted a top speed only 20 miles per hour (30km/h) faster than the NiD-29.

By the late 1920s the threat of a major new war was still small, but the need to modernize was growing stronger thanks to recent technical innovations. The French initiated a specification in 1930 that was modified in 1931 and 1932, forming the basis for a new generation of C1 category aircraft. (C1 is short for Chasse -- fighter (actually, "pursuit," as the U.S. Army Air Corps also called it) -- single-place.)

It's almost hard to believe from today's perspective, but ten different manufacturers submitted entries. That's because aircraft were pretty simple in those days; the builder basically had to come up with an airframe compatible with "government furnished equipment" such as the motor, weapons, radio, and so forth. Even so, airframes were beginning to require more technology than previously, this largely due to the replacement of wood or metal-tube frameworks covered by canvas with (nearly) all-metal construction.

Here are the planes involved in the concours:

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ANF-Mureaux 170
Although it performed well, this fighter was rejected because the position of the wing interfered with the pilot's forward field of vision.

Bernard 260
The Bernard was unusual in that it had advanced features including slats and trailing-edge flaps on the wings. But it failed to win a production contract.

Gourdou-Leseurre 482
This aircraft suffered from above-average aerodynamic drag, so it fell short of the speed rquirement and was eliminated from contention.

Morane-Saulnier 325
The Morane experienced severe buffeting that was never completely cured.

Wibault-Penhoët 313
Although it offered promising performance, a long development cycle caused the Wibault to lose out.

Blériot-Spad 510
The only biplane in the competition, the Blériot-Spad received a contract for 60 examples. It was the last biplane fighter accepted by the French air arm.

Loire 46
The Loir 46 was an advanced version of models 43 and 45 that, in stages, were in the concours. The 43 and 45 had a wing positioned similar to that of the ANF-Mureaux, but the 46 was an extensive redesign that featured an aile du mouette, or gull-wing. It too saw production. Some 60 were ordered by L'Armée de l'Air while a handful of developmental aircraft were sold to the Republican forces during the Spanish civil war. (These numbers have been disputed, but there is no question that production was less than 100 aircraft.)

Dewoitine 500
This was the winner of the concours and production of variants was in the low-to-mid hundreds.

As noted, the competition dragged on for several years. And then getting the Loire 46 into production took longer than it might have, thanks to the nationalization and consolidation of French airplane builders in 1936; its first-line service life was about two years. By late 1938 this generation of fighters began to be replaced by the Morane-Saulier 406, a monoplane featuring retractable landing gear and an enclosed cockpit, standard features of World War 2 fighter planes.

Emily Carr's Centered Compositions

Emily Carr (1871-1945) is one of Canada's most famous artists. And if you visit Victoria, British Columbia, her home town, and wander the old part of the city near the touristy harbor, it's hard to escape references to her. Wikipedia can still be hit-and-miss when it comes to being comprehensive, but its entry on Carr contains a good deal of useful detail about her and her career as a painter and writer.

The largest trove of Carr's painting seems to be in Vancouver, a city I find unappealing apart from its spectacular setting. So the Carr paintings I tend to encounter are in Victoria, whose art museum devotes a room to her work.

Carr received artistic training, plus she was friends with leading artists such as Lawren Harris (who I wrote about here) and Mark Tobey. Which is why it puzzles me that she often resorted to placing subjects of paintings at or near the center of the horizontal axis of her paintings. I suppose this can be explained through an analogy to a portrait painter placing his subject in a similar way. Still, the result is a little too static for my comfort.

Let's take a look at some examples.

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Painting of a tree; don't have title or date for this

"Red Cedar" - 1933

"Heart of the Forest"

"Crying Totem" - 1938

"Indian Church" - 1929