More on Raeburn's Blurred faces

A while ago I wrote about how Henry Raeburn (1756-1823), one of my favorite portrait artists, tended to emphasize his subjects' crisp, white collars while usually leaving faces (normally the focus area) somewhat blurred.

And it's true that men's dress shirt collars of the early nineteenth century were white and very crisp, creating a sharp line at their edges that was sharper than adjoining facial features. Coat and jacket collars also yielded sharp edges. So Raeburn had some reason for his practice. Yet I think he often took the facial blurring a bit far from reality. No doubt he was striving for an effect that pleased him -- and perhaps his sitters, who often were older gentlemen with the usual wrinkles and complexion defects that age brings on.

A fairly extreme example of this is his portrait of James Watt from 1815. I included it in the post linked above. No long ago I revisited the Huntington Library in Marina, California (near Pasadena and the Caltech campus) and took more photos of the painting that I present below to further illustrate my point regarding Raeburn.

Here is a general view of the painting as it appeared when I visited the Huntington in November. The crisp collar area and contrasting facial details are obvious.

This is a close-up of the face. I included a bit of the frame when I snapped it to ensure that the camera's automatic focus would not get confused by the lack of sharp details on Watt's face. Note that Raeburn did include some sharp detailing for the eyes, leaving the rest of the face blurred.  So while he blurred the face, he did take care have the center of interest in sharp focus.

John Held, Jr: Flapper Art ... and More

A confession is in order. Back when I was in high school, I became fascinated with the 1920s along with cartoons by John Held, Jr. (1889-1958) that exemplified the Flaming Youth aspect of those times. I even used a variation of his style to decorate the high school yearbook for my Junior year. Now that I'm spilling the beans, I'll further confess that I am still fascinated with the Twenties (Thirties, too!) and Held's work.

Held's Wikipedia entry is here, and another link that focuses more on his art is here.

As best I can tell from casual observation, Held continues to be thought of as the master flapper era cartoonist, though I now consider his rival Russell Patterson (see link here and my post about him here) better in that vein. That said, let's view some of Held's work.

Gallery

The three images above indicate the range of Held's versatility. The New York cityscape watercolor is dated 1936, after his cartooning heyday. The engraving is one of a series of 1890s scenes published in the New Yorker magazine edited by Harold Ross, Held's high school classmate. I never liked these, but they were popular with Ross, at least. The Life cover at the bottom is atypical, but shows that Held could mimic (or satirize?) movie star magazine covers by the likes of Rolf Armstrong.

Now to Held's cartooning that brought him fame. This is from a Life magazine cover depicting a young woman getting her tresses trimmed, completing her transition to Roaring Twenties flapperdom.

Many of Held's cartoons were done using thin lines mixed with areas of black and (occasionally) patterns. Women were invariably slender and usually had the same sort of face. Men were usually depicted with large, rounded heads.

Readers familiar with American or Canadian football should be able to grasp Held's joke here. For the rest of you, the best I can say is that "Hold 'em!" is what football fans sometimes call out when the opposing team is advancing towards the goal line.

More examples of Held's spare, somewhat Art Deco-like cartoon style.

Bastien-Lepage's Three Bernhardts

In a comment (by Hels) on the previous post (3 February 2014), it was asked if Bastien-Lepage painted the portrait of Sarah Bernhardt from life.

Good question, because photography was in full flower by the end of the 1870s, and it might have been possible for him locate some reference photos and go from there.

Fortunately, I happen to have this book by the Musée d'Orsay in my collection. On page 110, it is reported:

Jules Bastien-Lapage éprova, durant ses séjours parisiens et londoniens, une réelle passion pour le théâtre. ....

Ce fut le cas en juin 1879, lorsqu'il se trouva à Londres en même temps que la troupe de la Comédie Français, venue pour donner six semains de représentations. Bastien-Lepage recontra et fréquenta alors plusiers des membres de la troupe: Sophie Croizette, Jeanne Samary, ou Mounet-Sully, mais ce sont surtout ses liens avec Sarah Bernhardt, dont c'était la primiere tournée outre-Manche, qu'a retenu la postérité. Instalée à part du rest de la troupe, Sarah Berhardt logeait dans une maison au 77 Chester Square où elle reçut Bastien-Lepage. Nul doute qu'aparavant il avait visité l'exposition des oeuvres -- peintures et sculptures -- de l'actrice qui se tenait au même moment dans une galerie du 33 Piccadilly, et que tous deux évoquèrent à loisir leur untérêt commun pour le peinture et la sculpture.

[As for the portrait of Bernhardt...] Cet hommage du peintre à la femme, actrice et sculpteur, a été peint durant les derniers mois de l’anée 1878 et au début de 1879. Ce fut d’alleurs un hommage à double sens puisque le modèle accepta de ne pas poser en costume du scène ni avec une de ses propres oeuvres, mais en tenue de ville et avec une statuette modelée par Bastien-Lepage … vers 1876. La tradition veut que les quarante-cinq séances de pose eurent lieu dans l’hôtel particulier de Sarah Berhardt, rue Fortuny, mais peut-être eurent-elles lieu aussi, quelquefois dans l’atelier de l’artiste, au 7 bis, impasse du Maine, où se trouvait le fragile modelage d'Orphée.

Après quelques recherches graphiques et une esquisse très enlevée du seul portrait conservé à Stockholm, ... Bastien-Lepage opte pour une réresentation de profil, de type quattrocentesque "en medaille" (de "camée" diront certains commentateurs) sur un fond neutre, et vêt son modè d'une robe de soie à motifs. ....

La réception du portrait à l'exposition [Salon des Champs-Élysées] fut presque unaniment favorable.


It seems that Bastien-Lepage was a theater enthusiast, and Bernhardt liked painting and sculpture, so they hit it off well, the example referring to a time in June, 1879 when they both happened to be in London. But they must have become acquainted before that, because he began work on the portrait in 1878, the work continuing into 1879 with numerous sittings at her place and perhaps some at his. The article on the Bernhardt portrait also notes that copies were made by Bastien-Lepage.

The book had images of three versions of the portrait. They are as follows:

This is a study from 1878 now at the National Museum in Stockholm.

The subject of this post.

This extant copy/version (at a slightly smaller scale) by Bastien-Lepage is held by the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, France.

Up Close: Bastien-Lapage's Sarah Bernhardt

Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884) was short-lived, yet influential in his day and for a few years thereafter. Along with many other talented and inventive painters of the late nineteenth century, he was doomed to decades of obscurity because his style did not fit the revealed historical narrative of Modernism's march to the end-state of painting: abstraction as practiced in New York City in the 1950s.

Bastien-Lepage's Wikipedia entry is here and examples of his work can be found via "Images" on Google or other search sites.

Although he usually featured people as subject matter, he seems to have painted only a few formal portraits. The best-known of these is his Sarah Berhardt of 1879 (for more information on the actress click here). I stumbled across the painting not long ago while at San Francisco's Palace of the Legion of Honor to view an Anders Zorn exhibit that I posted about here. The Bernhardt is not in the museum's permanent collection, being on loan from the Anne and Gordon Getty collection.

Guilty confession: I wrote a Molti Ritratti post on Sarah Berhardt portriats, but somehow failed to include Bastien-Lagage's version of her. I humbly attenpt to atone for this omission below.

This is an image of the full painting that I found on the Internet. Below is a section of it it photographed at the museum.

This isn't much of a close-up because the original painting is fairly small. But it offers better detail than the image of the entire painting. Click on this image to enlarge.

Up Close: Curry's "State Fair"

John Steuart Curry (1897-1946) is best known as a Regionalist or American Scene painter who, like fellow American Scene artist Thomas Hart Benton, enjoyed making turgid scenes featuring people in exaggerated poses.  Perhaps a bit more than Benton, Curry often placed lots of people on his canvasses and murals.  Both artists were most active during the 1920s and 30s when, as my e-book (shameless plug!) explains, the painting world was adrift, not really knowing how to deal with modernism.

The Wikipedia entry for Curry is here, and a longer biographical sketch can be found here.

Living on the West Coast, I don't get to see much of Curry's work which is mostly found in the Midwest or East Coast. Fortunately, the Huntington Library (links here and here) in San Marino, California (near Pasadena) has a nice 1929 Curry in its collection called "State Fair." Click on the images below to enlarge.

Gallery

Here is an image of the entire painting that I found on the Web. As you can see, it contains a cast of hundreds, if not thousands. The dominant colors are red and a complimentary blue-green; more on this below.

I took this close-up photo and the one below when I visited the Huntington in November. Here you can see how Curry simplified most of the faces of his subjects. He also gave some a blue-green complexion while others have more normal pinkish skin. The most obvious examples here of the former are the boy just below the barker's hand and the gold-haired lady at the left with her back to us.

The image of the entire painting reveals that the woman featured here was given a rather large (excessive?) pelvis area and legs. But the segment I photographed seems anatomically satisfactory. Note Curry's use of both reddish and greenish hues on the unclothed areas. I suspect that Curry found her the most interesting part of the painting to deal with because he seems to have spent the most thought and care here.

The Mysterious Manuel Orazi

Manuel Orazi (1860-1934) was an Italian with a Spanish first name whose career was spent mostly in Paris doing Art Nouveau style illustration when he wasn't involved in depicting the occult. And that's pretty much all that is known about him.

Actually, there is more. But as often seems to be the case, it is in bits and pieces scattered across the Internet. If, having seen the images below and you are curious about Orazi, link here, here, here, here and here.

Gallery

Sarah Bernhardt - c.1895

Theatre de Loïe Fuller

Job cigarette papers poster

Poster for Boulevard de Clichy Hippodrome

La Belle sans nom (The Pretty Girl Without a Name) - Le Figaro Illustré - January 1900

Poster for La Maison Moderne (Modern Home) - 1902

L'Atlantide poster - c.1920-21

La reine Antinéa - L'Atlantide (Queen Antinéa) - 1920

Le lieutenant de Saint-Avit et la mort - L'Alantide (Lieutenant Saint-Avit with Death) - c.1920-21
These are related to the film L'Atlantide, which Orazi had a hand in besides poster work.

Paris by Night - Dance Club in Montmartre
A late work with no trace of Art Nouveau or the occult.

Carl Moll: Secessionist of Sorts

Vienna artist Carl Moll (1861-1945) committed suicide 13 April, along with members of his family, ten days before his 84th birthday, when the city was surrendered to Soviet forces in the waning days of World War 2.

I could find no extensive biographical information on Moll on the first few pages of a Google search. But you can glimpse his career by linking here, here and here.

As this Wikipedia entry indicates, the Vienna Secession was essentially a rejection of, or rebellion against, the academic traditions and organizations of the city. But it did not promulgate any particular replacement style: Secession artists were basically free to do what they wished.

In Moll's case, this was to paint slightly simplified landscapes and townscapes, though his earlier paintings (and a fair number of Secession-era works) were traditional in style. He also seems to have followed his almost exact contemporary and fellow-Secessionist Gustav Klimt's landscape preference for square canvasses. Not having seen it in person, I'm not sure if I can call Moll's art great, but most of what I've found on the Web seems competently done and pleasing.

Gallery

Der Naschmarkt in Wien - 1894

Mein Wohnzimmer (My Living Room) - 1903

At the Sideboard - 1903

View of Nussdorf and Heiligenstadt in Twillight - c.1905

Winter Scene in Heiligenstadt - 1906

View of Heiligenstadt

Rain in Rapallo

Tuscany Near Volterra - c.1931