Pierre August Cot: No Longer Icky?

Pierre Auguste Cot (1837-1883) died fairly young.  Worse yet for his reputation according to historians of the Modernist Art Establishment persuasion, he didn't have much of a chance to "evolve" in a direction they would have approved.  So he was an Academic painter of the stripe of his teacher William Bouguereau for his entire career.

As evidence of the degree to which Cot was ignored, I can cite two books from a shelf in my library/studio: both the 2003 edition of the "Oxford Concise Dictionary of Art & Artists" and Penguin's 1997 edition of "Dictionary of Art and Artists" ignore Cot completely.

Even the Internet lacks information regarding Cot, so you'll just have to make do with this and this.

Despite all that, rising tides do what they do, so I suspect Cot's reputation is improving along with those of other non-modernist artists active in the second half of the nineteenth century. Aiding Cot are two paintings (see below) that have retained their popularity among the Great Unwashed in Flyover Country, if not amongst the cognoscenti of the Transgressive. But then, might becoming a Cot fan become the next new Transgressive? That's how things often work out, you know.

Gallery

Portrait of a Young Woman - 1869

Venice - c.1870
No people shown here aside from the small figure at the upper left, so Cot's painting style was comparatively loose.  It might even be more of a sketch than a finished work.

Pisan Girl with Basket of Oranges and Lemons - 1871

Springtime - 1873
This is one of Cot's paintings that retained popularity.

Portrait of a Lady - 1879
A nice portrait suggesting a slight drift from the purely Academic.

The Storm - 1880
This is probably Cot's most famous painting. It is owned by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Cot was a highly skilled artist who was to a large degree a creature of his times.  Whereas I can't say that I love his works, I do respect them, cutting him some slack regarding subject matter popular in an era out of synch from when my tastes were formed.

The Vermeer Museum in Delft

Delft in South Holland was the place where famed painter Jan Vermeer (1634-1675) lived and made his comparatively small number of paintings. It is a pleasant small city that's worth a visit if you are in the Netherlands and would like to see more of the country than Amsterdam.

Besides getting a sense of Vermeer's roots, you can visit the Vermeer Centrum Deft which does its best to inform you about the artist. What you won't see there are original paintings due to their rarity and high market value. (I suspect that strongly attributed Vermeers are virtually "priceless" because they are in important museums, and no such museum would part with a Vermeer under any but the more dire of circumstances.)

What you can see are full-size reproductions of his paintings with explanatory captions that include the work's current location. Many are here in the United States; they can be found at the Met and the Frick in New York and in the National Gallery in Washington. Also pictured is a painting owned by casino owner Steve Wynn of Las Vegas, but its attribution is weak, as a glance at the image will suggest.

On the upper level of the museum are items of interest to artists and people interested in the technology of painting. Included is a camera obscura, but the museum does not commit itself to whether or to what extent the device was used by Vermeer. Below are some photos I took of that part of the museum. Click on them to enlarge.

This chart indicates the colors thought to be most often used by Vermeer.

In Vermeer's day, artists had to mix their own paints. This display explains how it was done.

Here a viewer can compare a reproduction of a Vermeer painting to a rough approximation of his studio setup.

Vermeer was careful in his used of perspective. This exhibit shows how he might have constructed perspective for multiple vanishing points along a horizon line.

Alexander Mann: An Almost - Glasgow Boy

Alexander Mann (1853-1908), as this Wikipedia entry indicates, had an independent income and so could paint pretty much whatever and wherever he pleased.  Because he was born in Glasgow and at times associated with some of the Glasgow Boys, he is considered part of that group even though he really wasn't at the time.

Mann is one of those competent painters active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who were overlooked by art historians until fairly recently.  Actually, Mann is still overlooked, as best I can tell, outside the British Isles.  One reason might be because he never quite painted a "masterpiece" work.  Another might be because he never quite settled into a signature style, making it difficult for viewers to say "Aha! That's by Alexander Mann!" when wandering through galleries.

Matter of fact, even though I've visited some of the most important art museums in England and Scotland, I don't remember seeing a Mann painting.  If I actually did walk past one, his name never caught my eye.  Nevertheless, based on some of the images below, it's hard to deny that he had talent and could do good work.

Gallery

Girl at Dusk
A nice example of use of broad, distinct brush strokes.

Hop Pickers Return - 1883
Bastien-Lepage influenced the Glasgow Boys and many others around the early 1880s. His subject matter and style had its greatest influence on Mann in this painting.

The Shipwright's Daughter - 1883

Pine Trees by the Coast, Levanto

Mediterranean Village at Sunset

Tangier from the Dunes - 1892
Mann also did landscapes.  Not impressionist, but not traditional either.  Reminds me most of some proto-Impressionist paintings by the Italian Macchiaioli group.

By the Findhorn - 1886

Soubrette - 1883

Helen Gow
Interesting composition and pose.

Up Close: Manchess at the Society of Illustrators

I like Greg Manchess' way with brushwork, having written about him here and here.

Lucky me, I was subjected to a 24-hours layover in New York City when returning to Seattle from Paris last month, and was able to visit the Society of Illustrators' digs on East 63rd Street where they are holding an exhibit of Manchess' works through 26 October.

The paintings were scattered around the walls of the upstairs dining room. Lighting conditions varied, but I tried my best to photograph details in such a way that his brushwork was revealed. Below are some of my photos. I decided not to include images of complete works, because that doesn't concern me in the present case. The small images below approximate a distant view; click to enlarge to observe the brushwork in more detail.

Gallery

As you probably noticed, Manchess likes to work with square-tipped brushes, though he uses other brushes when needed, especially for details. His level of experience has reached the point where his brush strokes are both economical and decisive. I envy that.

Jean Hélion: Apostate Abstractionist

Jean Hélion (1904-1987) gained artistic notoriety during the 1930s as an abstract painter. Then he threw that overboard in the early 1940s when abstract painting was in the process of becoming the dominant avant-garde style. That took intellectual and economic courage, because most of his contemporaries were heading in the opposite direction.

His Wikipedia entry is here and his obituary in The New York Times here, the latter indicating how he managed to escape captivity during World War 2, making it all the way from Stettin on the Baltic Sea to New York City. The two sources agree that one of his wives was Peggy Guggenheim's daughter Pegeen, but disagree as the his total number of wives.

Even though Hélion rejected abstraction, he remained Modernist in his depiction of representational subject matter. That is, he usually considerably simplified shapes, used flat areas of paint and distorted perceived colors. I go into a good detail of such practices in my e-book on art.

Gallery

Photos of Hélion early in his career and later

Untitled No. 19 - 1933-34

Composition abstraite - 1934

Ile de France - 1935

L'homme à la cravate tordue - 1943

Nude with Loaves - 1952

Blue Roofs, Paris - 1958

Luxembourg Gardens, Indian Summer - 1960-61

Triptyque-du-dragon - 1967

George Stavrinos at Society of Illustrators

Fashion illustration, aside from pattern packets and low-end catalogs, has traditionally assumed the form of stylized, often sketchy pictures. So back in the 1970s and 1980s I found it interesting when paging through The New York Times to find fashion illustrations that were tightly drawn. They stood out due to their contrast to the ink wash drawings that populated other advertisements, and were signed "Stavrinos."

That would be George Stavrinos (1948-1990), who died young thanks to his lifestyle choices.

His works and biography can be found in issue number 41 of Illustration magazine. And the Society of Illustrators has an exhibit devoted to him in its New York gallery: it closes 19 October.

I recently visited the Society's digs to view works by Greg Manchess, but took time to take a few photos of the Stavrinos display.

Gallery

A nice touch was a drawing board/work area re-creation.

Here are two detail shots of the above.

Besides finished drawings, the exhibit had some workup examples showing reference photos, an intermediate study, final art, and a clipping of part of a published ad. Note that Stavrinos hewed closely to his reference photos. That was necessitated by his very tight rendering style that left little room for inventing details in garments folds and so forth.

The Night Watch Everywhere!

Perhaps the most famous painting by the prolific Rembrandt is The Night Watch (its popular name) which is given a place of honor in the refurbished Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Here it is in its new setting. I took this photo and the others in this post when visiting Holland in September of this year.

It seems that The Night Watch can be hard to avoid. Near central Amsterdam is the Rembrandtplein, a square renamed in honor of the artist. And in that square I found a sculpted version of the painting:

Having finished the Amsterdam part of our trip, my wife and I picked up a rental car and drove to Delft. While there, we visited the Royal Delft factory, the last of the makers of Delftware. Part of the facility is a small museum featuring creations the firm has made over the year, including ...