William Margetson's Domestic Life Art

I can't tell you much about William Henry Margetson (1861-1940), an English painter, because I could not find any halfway detailed biographical information on the top few pages of a couple of Google searches of the Internet. Perhaps I didn't drill deeply enough, but what can I say? -- I'm both lazy and non-obsessive.

What I did find were a couple of squibs such as this. Plus, there was one Wikipedia entry (here), but it's in Dutch, which is near enough to English for some readers to follow.

The sources mention that while he painted some religious and allegorical works, he mostly did scenes featuring pretty women. I'll add that many such scenes were domestic -- around a household. Moreover, they tend to be nicely done.

Gallery

Water Sprite
This sprite or siren falls into the allegorical category.

On the Sands - 1900
This lady is so perfect that she doesn't leave footprints.

The Amulet

Two Young Women Seated
I'm guessing from the hair styles that this was painted during the late 1920s or early 30s. Other works done in a looser style probably were made after around 1910, but that too is a guess. Beside lacking biographical information, dates of paintings also seem to be in short supply.

Maid

The Lady of the House

At the Cottage Door

Afternoon Tea

A New Day - 1930
This is both signed and dated. The strong colors of the garment and the outdoors are complemented by the much larger areas of drab colors.

Richard Eurich: Artist Without a Style

It seems like I've been writing a number of posts recently that deal with painters who never managed to attain a fairly consistent and clearly identifiable style. And so it goes with the present post, which is about Richard Eurich (1903-1992), an English artist who seems doomed to semi-obscurity for that reason.

His Wikipedia entry is here, and other biographical links are here and here.

Eurich was skilled enough to be able to paint well in almost any style. His earliest paintings are in the distorted, simplified representational mode of the interwar period. By the mid-1930s he was making some correctly proportioned representational works. He continued in this vein during World War 2, when he was a war artist specializing in naval subjects, and for several years beyond. In his later years, Eurich mostly painted rather flat scenes that included sketchy, distorted people. These might have been influenced by postwar abstract art, though he does not seem to have made any or many pure abstractions.

This book contends that Eurich "was one of the greatest British painters of the twentieth century" (back cover). Me? I'd say that he might have been one of the more versatile British painters of his generation, but I fail to detect greatness, especially among his early and late works.

Gallery

Mrs. Green - 1930
Very much of its time stylistically.

Lime Regis - 1930
Again, of its time, but nicely composed.

Portrait of Mavis - 1935
Mavis Pope was Eurich's wife and also an artist. This is a representational portrait featuring a traditially painted face combined with a Manet kind of minimalist setting.

December, Work Suspended - 1940
An early wartime scene where workers were diverted from civilian to war tasks.

Survivors from a Torpedoed Ship - 1943
The toll of civilian-manned cargo ships from attack by submarines was high around the time this was painted.

Capital Ships Bombard Salerno - 1943
Here Eurich connects with his inner Turner.

The Argument - 1983

Low Tide Fun - 1991
Examples of his late work.

Walt Louderback: Painterly Illustrator

Walt Louderback (1887-1941) "mailed it in" during much of the 1920s and 1930s when he was living in France and his publisher customers were in the United States. Very little in the way of biographical information regarding Louderback seems to be on the Internet other than here along with this snippet on the Kelly Collection site.

I find this unfortunate, because Louderback was successful in his day and painted in a thick, direct style that I am fond of: Many of his illustrations from the 1920s and early 30s remind me of those by Dean Cornwell, Saul Tepper and Mead Schaeffer.

Gallery

A magazine illustration of a casino scene, probably from the 1930s.

More of a poster style such as Cornwell began to take up towards 1930.

Shades of John Singer Sargent's El Jaleo!

This reminds me of Schaeffer's Count of Monte Cristo illustration style.

I wish I had more information on this one, because I can't reconcile the long hair and the otherwise circa-1930 painting style.

From the Kelly Collection, a book cover illustration.

The Homecoming.

This last image shows a modernist style Louderback tried near the end of his career.

4711 Eau de Cologne Advertising Art

The original Eau de Cologne (Cologne water) perfume was indeed developed in Cologne, Germany -- in 1709, as is explained here. The company associated with the early years of the product and still in existence is No. 4711 or simply 4711 Kölnisch Wasser (again, Cologne water, but auf deutsch); for more on this, read here.

Advertising 4711 for many years featured scenes of elegance that to me offer some false nostalgia for a departed time. Many of the examples I found on the Web were for pressed metal plaques similar to those found in the USA for old Coca-Cola poster art.

I make no claims for artistic merit, just thinking that you might enjoy viewing the illustrations.

Gallery

The headline proclaims it "The wonder water from Cologne."

"Always Spring fresh" where "spring" is the season, not the source.

Lady posing with the Cologne Cathedral.

An artist's model.

A product variation. This reminds me of the classic Revlon "Fire and Ice" ads of the 1950s.

And another.

"Their realm is the world" is the slogan for this Roaring Twenties scene.

Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret

Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret (1852-1929) trained under Gérôme, painted religious subjects for part of his career, and otherwise painted realist (in terms of subject matter) scenes using Academic techniques. Plus, he was an early user of photographic reference material. No wonder he was a non-person (non-artist?) back when I took a year-long art history class in college.

Wikipedia has a short entry on Dagnan here, but you will find much more about him here and here.

Dagnan is one of those artists whose work can be difficult to find in person. The images below that I found here and there on the Internet suggest that he had a good deal of talent and skill. Better yet, he used his abilities to make some paintings that retain their appeal more than a century after they were painted. That said, these judgments are provisional until I finally encounter some of his works in person.

Gallery

Bouderie (Gustave Courtois in His Studio) - 1880
The year before, Dagnan married Courtois' cousin Anne-Marie. I do not know if she is the woman in the painting or if someone else is depicted.

Hamlet es les fossoyeurs - 1884

The Pardon in Brittany (pilgimage) - 1886
This painting is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, but not currently on view, according to their Web site.

Bretons Praying

Brittany Girl

Woman painting

Drummer

Princess O.V. Paley
Dagnan devoted much of his later career to portraiture.

Marguerite au Sabbat - c.1912
This, and several of the paintings shown above are in private collections.

Léon Bakst's Fine Arts Work

Léon Bakst (1866-1924) is best known for his stage and costume design work. But he also managed to do some Fine Art painting, the subject of this post.

Biographical information on Bakst can be found here and here. An image search on the Internet will turn up mostly the theater related images he created, so take a look if you're not familiar with this.

As can be seen below, Bakst was both talented and versatile. His style tended to have a whiff of Modernism in that some (but not much) simplification and sketchiness are introduced.  But some of his paintings are traditional in both spirit and technique: note the Countess Keller portrait below. The most Modernist work is the Lido scene that was auctioned for around half a million pounds. The auction site considered it either a study or an unfinished painting, so it is possible that Bakst planned to add more detail at some point.

The painting that intrigues me the most is the portrait of Rachel Strong, at the bottom. The composition is unconventional in that she is placed left of center and, furthermore, is gazing off the the left side of the painting. This is balanced by the tree trunks bending to the right which make the composition more or less work.

Gallery

Dmitry Filosof - 1897

Alexander Benois - 1898

Countess M. Keller - 1902

The Luncheon (The Supper) - 1902

Sergei Diaghilev and his Nanny - 1905

Bathers at the Lido - c.1911

Willa Cather - 1923

Rachel Strong (future Comtess Henri de Boisgelin) - 1924