Stuck (Franz von) in Seattle

Franz von Stuck (1863-1928), Symbolist and Secessionist, is Munich's version of Vienna's Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), an almost exact contemporary. Biographical information about Stuck on Wikipedia is here.

Even though Stuck is far from unknown, he has never had an exhibition devoted to him here in the United States. Until now. Seattle's Frye Art Museum, which has extensive holdings of late 19th and early 20th century Bavarian art, is holding, in cooperation with Munich's Villa Stuck, a Stuck exhibit November 2, 2013 - February 2, 2014.

Even though I don't find most of Stuck's works likeable, they do fascinate me. Consider the image at the top of this page: "Lucifer" (1890) which normally resides in Sofia, Bulgaria. It, the paintings below, and other examples of Stuck's art are on display.

Gallery

Pallas Athene - 1898

Wilde Jagd (Wild Hunt) - 1899

Pieta - 1891

Wounded Amazon - 1905

Susanna im Bade (Susanna and the Elders) - 1904

Brussels' Comic Strip Museum

For some reason, Belgians are very fond of comic strips. So of course Brussels has a museum, the Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinée dedicated to that field. The Web site for the museum is here.

I had a few spare hours on a recent visit to Brussels, so hiked over to it. It's on a nondescript side street, but the building itself, the former Magasins Waucquez store, is an Art Nouveau design by architect Victor Horta.

The displays were nicely done but, as would be expected, featured comics and artists familiar to Belgians and unfamiliar to Americans. One plus was that I learned how to pronounce the name of the most famous Belgian strip -- Tintin. It's not tin-tin as in the metal tin. Nor is it tin-tan, where the final "n" is nasal, French. It is tan-tan with the nasal "n." So there.

First, some views of the building.

Gallery

Shown here is the first floor (the second floor, if you're American). Note that Horta's Art Nouveau décor is comparatively restrained here.

The street level floor, with a comics display that includes a Citroën 2CV.

Looking up towards the first floor and the skylight ceiling.

The ground floor again, the entrance at the left and the museum shop taking up most of the view.

You might have noticed that the first two photos included promotional material for a current exhibit dealing with Will Eisner, a major player in the American comics scene and widely considered the inventor of the "graphic novel" comic book genre.

I enjoyed very much seeing workups and finished art for some of Eisner's graphic novels and pages from his comic strip, The Spirit. Below are a few snapshots of the displays, the first three of graphic novels, the last of a 1950 Spirit strip. You'll see some reflections because the material was in display cases or otherwise behind glass.

C.C. Beall, Watercolor Illustrator

C.C. (Cecil Calvert) Beall (1892-1967) was an illustrator who has become so little-known these days that a quick Web search came up nearly dry where biographical information is concerned. I did find this small site devoted to him. As this is written, it was "under construction," but contains a short sketch about him.

Beall was technically skilled. He almost had to be, considering that he was usually working in what I consider the most difficult medium of all: watercolor. And he did better than many illustrators, being featured in advertising campaigns for Maxwell House Coffee (a leading brand for many years), doing cover art for Collier's magazine (a leading general-interest publication) and illustrating government posters supporting the World War 2 effort. Nevertheless, so far as his career can be evaluated, fairly or not, he probably should be rated as a second-rank illustrator.

Below are examples of his work, some of which I consider really nice.

Gallery

Maxwell House Coffee billboard or poster design - 1922

Maxwell House Coffee ad - 1923

Collier's Cover - 30 January 1932
I really like this illustration.  Interesting composition and content -- very 1931-32.  But Beall's treatment of the gal with the top hat is smashing.  Well, the hat is way too large for her head -- but look at that face!

Collier's cover - 11 March 1933
A poor quality image, but it is significant.  For one thing, Beall uses the old trick of creating an overarching image made up of smaller ones.  Another example is directly below.  The main subject here is Franklin Roosevelt, whose first inauguration took place around the time this Collier's issue was on the news stands.  The featured author is George Creel.  He was Woodrow Wilson's propaganda / public relations supremo during the Great War.  His son, also a George Creel, was in charge of Public Information for 8th U.S. Army when I was stationed in Korea.  Though I did PIO work for another command, I met him a time or two.

Defense-related poster - 1941, pre-Pearl Harbor

Army Air Forces poster - 1944

Sketch portrait of John F. Kennedy - 1962

Reginald Marsh, Yalie Gone Slumming

Reginald Marsh (1898-1954) was never a starving artist. His grandfather was wealthy, so Marsh happened to be born in Paris while his parents were there; the family moved to New Jersey when he was two years old. Later on, he attended the Lawrenceville School, but for some reason didn't move on to nearby Princeton, opting instead for Yale.

Marsh didn't serve in the Great War, unlike many other of his classmates, and graduated "on time" in 1920. Even though both his parents were artists, it was only after leaving college that he began to study and practice art seriously.

Somewhere along the line, he focused on what have been called "working class" or "blue collar" subjects, something that became fashionable in intellectual and artistic circles after the Great Depression of the 1930s hit. Rather than featuring a single person as a subject (though he did this to some extent), Marsh tended to feature large groups of people in his more ambitious paintings, placing them in settings befitting their tastes: the beach, Coney Island, burlesque theaters and such. Although it would have been tempting to do so, he avoided strong political statements in most of his Depression-era works (though early in his career he provided illustrations to the leftist New Masses publication). Visual commentary was present in many cases, but Marsh usually downplayed it by casting part of the scene as happy or energetic.

Although he didn't care for modernist art, Marsh incorporated many features of modernism (see my book for details) in his etchings, watercolors and tempera paintings. For example, he distorted the proportions of his subjects somewhat, so they didn't seem quite real. And for some reason, he often liked to depict women as having heavier than average lower legs.

Many of these points and much more can be found in Marsh's Wikipedia entry. What is missing is a discussion of his personal life, though one sentence mentions in passing that he had a wife.

Here are some examples of his work.

Gallery

"The Battery" - c.1926

"Why Not Use the L" - 1930

"Smoko the Human Volcano" - 1933

"Hauptmann Must Die" - 1935

Minsky's Chorus" - 1935

"Twenty Cent Movie" - 1936

Untitled watercolor - 1944

In the Beginning: Helene Schjerfbeck

Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946) was a Finnish painter who is much better known in Scandinavia than here in the United States. Which is too bad, because her artistic journey is interesting in that she went from being a highly competent naturalistic painter to becoming a modernist.

Her Wikipedia entry is here and a blog post containing biographical information and plenty of images is here.

The best place to view Schjerfbeck's paintings is the Ateneum in Helsinki where, if memory serves, a room is devoted to her works.

I have trouble evaluating modernist painting because I care for little of it. I'll simply mention that I think her best modernist paintings are those that don't stray far from realism.  Here are a few to provide a taste of where her style evolved.

Varjo Muurilla - 1928
She painted some landscapes.

Self-Portrait study - 1915
Just enough modernist traits to make this an interesting mostly-representational piece.

Self-Portrait with Red Spot - 1944
One of her last self-portraits.

Girl from Eydtkuhnen - 1927

Below are examples of her early paintings, most or all of which were made during the 1880s when she was in her twenties.

Gallery

Boy Feeding His Younger Sister - 1881

Portrait of a Child - 1883

Mother and Child - 1886

Picking Bluebells

Portrait of a Girl - 1886

The Convalescent - 1888

Molti Ritratti: Favorite Pino Models

Pino Danae, born Giuseppi Dangelico (1939-2010), known professionally as Pino, was a successful book cover illustrator who made an equally successful transition to gallery painting. Some biographical information can be found here.

It should be no surprise that many artists have favorite models, people they use again and again, though this is not obvious unless one can view a collection of the artist's works in a book, museum exhibition or on the Internet as an image search results display. A while ago I wrote a post about the Italian master Tiepolo and the similarity of female faces in his paintings.

Pino tended to use the same model for several of his paintings. And if a different model was used, she often had facial characteristics similar to some of his other models, as can be seen below.

Gallery

These two paintings clearly use the same model, costume and pose, though Pino altered the setting background and tabletop.

The model(s) in these works might be the same as the one above, though the hair is different and the faces are more round.  Modifying hairdos can be chalked up to artistic license, but Pino seems less likely to have changed facial structure.  Nevertheless, the subjects seem quite similar, possibly because he had a preference for a certain appearance and perhaps because he liked to have foreheads unobstructed by hair, heightening potential similarity.

This model seems a bit different from the one(s) above, thanks to the shape of her eyebrows.  Again, I can't rule out the possibility that different (though similar) models were used for this set.

Clayton Knight: Illustrator, Clandestine RCAF Recruiter

Illustrators tend to be a solitary lot unless they happen to share studio space with others. Given that, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that they are mild-mannered sorts who avoid flash, dash and action.

Not all are of that stripe. For example, McClelland Barclay was killed when his ship was destroyed in the South Pacific during World War 2. Dick Calkins, the first Buck Rogers comic strip artist, was an Army Air Corps lieutenant. And some artists for 1930s aviation comic strips were pilots.

One pilot-illustrator was Clayton Knight (1891-1969) who was shot down on the German side of the front lines during the Great War. Before the American entry to World War 2 he, along with Canadian ace Billy Bishop, was involved in recruiting American pilots to fly for the RCAF and RAF.

Biographical information regarding Knight is sparse on the Internet -- here is a brief account. For a detailed report on the World War 2 Clayton Knight Committee, link here or, better yet, here.

Today, if Knight is known for anything, it is that he was the father of Hilary Knight, who illustrated Kay Thompson's "Eloise" books.

Here are some examples of Knight's work.

Gallery

American Boy magazine cover - April 1931
Knight's illustrations were mostly aviation-centered.

"Ace Drummond" comic strip
Rickenbacker got the credit for the strip, but Knight did the drawing.

Comic strip (French version)
Here we see knight's signature.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 4 September 1937
Knight sometimes was able to hit the big-time. He might have gained this Post assignment because he was typed as an aviation specialist.

Douglas DC-2 airliners - 1935
These planes are not skillfully depicted.

Sketch of Army Air Corps P-12
The Townend Ring around the motor is slightly too large.

Another P-12 sketch

Based on the illustrations above, I have to conclude that Knight's work was at the journeyman level, far from top-notch even where aircraft were concerned.