In the Beginning: Mark Rothko

The image above has neither subject-matter nor title. It's a "Color Field" abstract painting by Mark Rothko (1903-1970) who made his artistic mark by creating it and similar works. His Wikipedia entry is here.

Before Rothko entered the Color Field genre, he drifted along with other artists of the interwar period in a search for creative results when the real modernist creative spadework had already been completed. I discuss this problem in my e-book "Art Adrift." Rothko eventually succeed to a degree, in that his Color Field paintings featured geometrical shapes (usually rectangles) that had lost part of their geometrical character because edges were blurred, indistinct. (Earlier artists such as Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich painted their geometry in the old, tried-and-true hard-edged fashion.)

Here are examples of Rothko's pre-Color Field work.

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View of Portland (Oregon) - c.1928
This is the most naturalistic painting that I could find. He situated himself on the hill to the west of downtown Portland and faced east. That's the Willamette River in the middle ground and Mt. Hood on the horizon to the left of center.

Untitled (three nudes) - c.1926-35
Highly uncertain date for this. As best I know, Rothko never followed the Cubist route, but instead relied on distorting subject's shapes to a considerable degree and colors to a lesser extent while observing the modernist diktat of "honoring the picture plane" (avoiding the appearance of depth). These remarks apply to most of the paintings below.

Woman Reading - 1933

Self-Portrait - 1936

Contemplation - 1937-38

Entrance to Subway (Subway Scene) - 1938
Here Rothko edges away from the flatness requirement. Nearer objects overlap more distant objects and nearer objects are larger than distant objects (I'm referring to people in this case). However, flatness is retained to a large degree because Rothko paints his subjects as if they were flat, cardboard cut-outs, no doubt preserving his modernist credentials.

Norah Neilson Gray: Solid Scot

I was wandering through the galleries in Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum a few months ago and came across the painting shown above (click to enlarge). The reproduction does not do justice to the original. For a lower-quality impression, below is an aide-memoir photo I hurriedly shot. Note the differences in color, possibly related to local lighting conditions.

The painting stood out from the others arranged near it, perhaps partly due to its size, but more because of how decisive was the application of paint. Its title is "Little Brother" (1920-22) and the artist was Norah Neilson Gray (1882-1931); her Wikipedia entry is here.

Gray is been grouped under the "Glasgow Girls" label (an analog to the better-known "Glasgow Boys" active in the 1880s and 1890s). I posted on the "Girls" here and about Bessie MacNicol, another outstanding member of the group, here.

MacNicol's paintings are more Impressionist-influenced and seem fussy compared to Gray's typical use of crisply defined color areas to portray her subjects. Here are more examples of her work.

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The Belgian Refugee - c1915

Scottish Women's Hospital

Salopian Cup and Chinese Vase

Self-Portrait - 1918

Self-Portrait
This self-portrait reminds me of the work of Romaine Brooks.

Marine Art by Marin-Marie

Above is a slightly cropped image of the cover of a book about holders of the somewhat informal Blue Riband for fastest ocean liner speed when crossing the North Atlantic westbound. It's a nice book, but I'm really fond of the cover illustration of the famed liner Normandie by a French painter who called himself Marin-Marie. (The French word marin is analogous the the English word "marine" in the sense of referring to traveling on or dealing with oceans and seas. In his case, the "Marie" apparently has to do with his mother, who died young.) The artist's actual name was Paul Emmanuel Durand Couppel de Saint-Front (1901-1987), and his French Wikipedia entry is here.

Marin-Marie came from a family interested in things nautical. He obtained a doctorate in law, but also took evening classes at the École des beaux-arts in Paris. He did his share of voyaging while making a career in nautical art and serving as a consultant for what was known as the French Line.

Back to the cover image above. I liked the color treatment. But it seems that, thanks to the magic of digital manipulation, those probably aren't the colors of the original art. Consider some evidence:

This is a poster that was also based on the original painting. It's old, so the colors might have been affected by the paper yellowing; this could transform blues into greens.

This might be the original (one can't always be certain for images grabbed off the Web; it's best to have seen the original in person). Much brighter. No green in the sky, though there are areas of orange on the ship.

Here is what seems to be a study for the painting. Again, no sign of that interesting green.

As background on Marin-Marie, here are a few more of his works.

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Another painting of Normandie in New York harbor. Here we see greens and oranges (assuming the reproduction is true to the original).

A thonier (tuna-boat).

This seems to be of a HAPAG-Lloyd liner, but I'm not sure which one. I'd guess either the Bremen or the Europa, but the white-black paint division on the hull doesn't jibe with what I find in photos of either ship.

The battleship Strasbourg. Marin-Marie was associated with it when it and other French warships were attacked by the British at Mers-el-Kébir.

Norman Rockwell and Chiaroscuro

I should have noted the source at the time, and didn't. But I did read someplace that Norman Rockwell (1894-1978, Wikipedia entry here) lighted his subjects from the direction of the viewer, this minimizing use of shadows. I hadn't thought of that before.

And that's true. Though not entirely.

Many of Rockwell's cover illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post were indeed front-lighted, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps he explained somewhere, but I don't recall having seen an explanation. (Let us know in Comments if there is one.)

Perhaps it had to do with the tastes of the editor and art director, though this is unlikely because Rockwell used this lighting scheme before and following major changes in senior editorial positions at the Post in the years around 1940.

Another possibility is that Rockwell thought he could complete his work faster if he didn't have to spend time working out shadow patterns and their coloring. Or maybe he figured that even a little chiaroscuro (light-shade treatment) would detract from the story he was trying to tell in his illustration.

That said, he was willing and able to use lighting from other angles. Below are examples of both cases.

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Saturday Evening Post cover illustration - 19 November, 1938

Saturday Evening Post cover illustration - 26 July, 1941

Saturday Evening Post cover illustration - 25 December, 1950
These three illustrations show Rockwell's use of front lighting; all happen to be for Saturday Evening Post covers. The bottom illustration includes images of Rockwell himself (with a pipe in his mouth) along with friends and neighbors.

Alcott's Jo - Woman's Home Companion - December, 1937
This is probably a story illustration. Note that Rockwell chose to have a window with bright, though from overcast, exterior light behind his subject. At the same time, he had to fudge real-world lighting by painting Jo's face as though light was shining directly upon it even though it should have been shaded from the comparatively strong light coming through the window. Perhaps there is also an interior light source, say from an oil lamp, though that is not clear from details in the image.

The Lineman - illustration for AT&T advertisement - 1947
Plenty of shading here.

Saturday Evening Post cover illustration - 29 April, 1950
This illustration has been cited (alas, once again I forget where) as an instance where Rockwell introduced a complicated lighting scheme. And it was for a Post cover, of all things.

In the Beginning: Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) is best known for "action" paintings such as his "Woman" series. Below is the first of that line, done around 1950-52.

But this was not his only style. Unlike some others in the postwar New York School, de Kooning had received a fairly rigorous traditional basic art training, as his Wikipedia entry indicates. At the end of his active career, as his mind was deteriorating, he was painting curved dabs of paint on light-colored canvases. Unlike most other New York modernist painters active 1945-1960, de Kooning did not go totally abstract; his work always a connection (however slight) to the observed world, as is exemplified by "Woman I" above. As shown below, he experimented with abstraction a bit during the 1930s and began producing abstract paintings by the 1980s when he began its descent into dementia.

Between his student training in Rotterdam and the beginning of his fame in the early 1950s, de Kooning was busy experimenting with varieties of modernist stylistic traits, such as I discuss in Art Adrift, seeking to find his artistic "voice." Here are some examples:

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Still Life - 1921

WPA mural study - 1936

In his studio - 1937

Two Standing Men - 1938

Seated Woman - c.1940

Elaine Fried - 1940 or 1941

Standing Man - 1942

Bessie MacNicol: Yet Another Brief Career

Bessie MacNicol (1869-1904) is considered by many as the best painter of the Glasgow Girls group. (For my brief introduction to the Girls, click here.) Unfortunately, there is little biographical information on the Internet, this being representative.

Fortunately, I have a copy of this 1993 book which contains a little more detail, including some of the following, even though information of any kind about MacNicol's life is sparse.

MacNicol studied at the Glasgow School of Art 1887-92 under Fra Newbery. She then went to Paris and attended the Académie Colarossi, but found the instruction there unsatisfactory. She returned to Glasgow where she painted when not at the art colony in Kirkcudbright where she associated with E.A. Hornel and painted his portrait (see below). She married Andrew Frew, a gynecologist, in 1899. Ironically, she died while expecting her first child. The writer of the profile notes, however, that her health was never robust. Frew committed suicide in 1908.

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Self-Portrait - c.1894
She suffered from hay fever during summer, and it has been suggested that it explains the watery-eyed look of this depiction.

A French Girl - 1895

E.A. Hornel - 1896
This is done in a style close to what Hornel might have used had he been doing a self-portrait. He clearly influenced MacNicol, though she never reached his extreme of submerging key subjects into pervasive background clutter.

The Fur Coat
No date for this. It might have been done while in Paris and before Kirkcudbright.

Under the Apple Tree - 1896-98
Some sources date this at 1899.

A Girl of the Sixties - 1899
Perhaps her best-known painting. It and others can be seen in the Kelvingrove museum in Glasgow.

Albert Brenet, Marine Artist ... and More

The scene above shows three French cuirassés (battleships) standing off a coast someplace in the Mediterranean in the 1890s. To the left is the Amiral Duperré, in the center is the Redoutable and to the right is the Formidable.

The artist was Albert Victor Eugène Brenet (1903-1904 or 1905 ... sources vary as to the year of death). His French Wikipedia entry is here. I summarize it as follows:

He was born near Le Havre and as a child drew pictures of ships in port. He studied for a while at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then sailed for seven months to the Antilles on the Bonchamp, one of the very last French commercial sailing vessels, this inspiring him to specialize in marine art. He also painted army and air scenes and was appointed as an official artist for each of the three French military branches. He also did a good deal of commercial illustration, including posters for shipping companies.

Here are more examples of his work.

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Danton class cuirassé
This might be the Condocet, which at one point in its career had a stripe painted around its second smoke stack to distinguish it from its five other classmates.

Apotheose des fetes du couronnement du roi Georges VI en 1937
The coronation naval review included British battleships, of course; two are indicated in the background. Brenet features the newly-commissioned Dunquerque in the foreground. That's the royal yacht in the middle ground trooping the line.

Le Bouvet aux Dardanelles
This 1896-vintage battleship was part of the French contribution of the ill-fated Dardanelles campaign of 1915. Brenet shows it firing, but it was struck by Turkish shells and then hit a mine and sank with only 56 crewmen surviving of 721 total.

Air Algerie poster
It features an early (round-window) Lockheed Constellation.

Cover for L'Illustration magazine 14 November 1936

Sketch done in Japan, c.1952
Brenet was a deft sketcher of people as well as ships, aircraft and other conveyances. He also painted some cityscapes.

Normandie at the terminal, Le Havre

Brenet seems better classed as an illustrator rather than fine-arts painter. Regardless, he had a fine touch that yielded him a successful career. If I were in a picky mood, I'd suggest that his style isn't especially distinctive, but that would be quibbling. I like his work.