"The Cornish Wonder": John Opie

Joshua Reynolds dominated the English portrait painting scene in the 18th century, with Thomas Gainsborough as his most serious rival. That's my 21st century impression, anyhow.

But in those pre-photography days there was plenty of demand for portraits, and Reynolds and Gainsborough could not satisfy it by themselves. There were many other artists at work in that field, some competent, others not so much. One of the fairly competent ones was John Opie (1761-1807) who died young and was buried next to Reynolds in Westminster Abbey, a sign of the esteem he was held in his day.

I sheepishly admit that I was ignorant of Opie until I noticed a portrait by him that was used as the cover illustration for a book published by Barnes & Noble. So I did a little research, turning up biographical information here and here. I also discovered plenty of images of his works on the Internet, a few of which are presented below.

He tended to place his subjects against dark backgrounds, giving his portraits a dramatic quality that probably helped distract from the fact that his drawing was sometimes slightly flawed. That said, Opie was better than most of his competitors.

Gallery

Self-Portrait - 1785

Self-Portrait - 1805

The Murder of Rizzio - 1787

A Country Girl

Mary Wollstonecraft - c.1797

Elizabeth Searle as Miranda

Portrait of a Young Man

Amelia Opie - 1798

Simon Elwes: "Downton Abbey" Portrait and Others

Downton Abbey has been the hot television show for several seasons now, an addiction for many people, including my wife. I have never watched it, and lack motivation to do so.

But I keep my eyes peeled, as a blogger should.

For example, I've been noticing this book (described here in the Daily Mail). Actually, what I really notice is the portrait on the cover. A little Googling revealed that the painter was Lt. Col. Simon Edmund Vincent Paul Elwes (1902-1975). A usefully long Wikipedia entry about him is here.

Elwes is yet another of those born-in-the-twentieth-century British painters I was ignorant of. From the Wikipedia entry, he was well regarded in many of the right circles. Unfortunately, he suffered a stroke that nearly killed him and resulted in permanent inability to use his right hand. But he fought back, eventually learning to paint left-handed. This needs to be kept in mind when assessing his work.

Gallery

Catherine, Lady Carnarvon - 1920s
This is the source painting for the book cover image. As usual, images from the Internet (and in print) are inconsistent as to color; I'm guessing that the book cover colors are true. The painting as a whole doesn't impress me (the background that, combined with the dress, yields a huge, nearly uniform, boring mass). What I like very much is the treatment of the face.

Elizabeth Smiley - c. 1930

Katherine Hariot Kinloch - 1939

Valerie Albu - 1950
Painted using his left hand following the 1945 stroke.

John Munro Kerr - 1954

The Field Marshal, Earl Wavell - 1959

Setting aside the post-1945 paintings, I have to say that Elwes' portraits do not impress me. They tend to be too artificial looking with some not very well drawn details. Except for the one on the book cover: love the face.

Rico Tomaso: Edge-of-the-Radar Illustrator

Rico Tomaso (1898-1985) was active when mass-circulation "glossy" (referring to printing stock) magazines were riding high and illustration was still king. Maybe that has to do with why he is nearly unknown today. There were plenty of illustrators at work then including many of the best ever, and while Tomaso was very good, he wasn't quite top-tier. Or perhaps his luck wasn't quite as good as some more famous illustrators who weren't as talented (I could name names, but leave that as an exercise for you readers for now).

A side-effect is that there is little biographical information available on the Internet regarding Tomaso. His Wikipedia entry relies heavily on a tiny entry in one of Walt Reed's books on illustrators. It mentions that Tomaso was a teacher as well as an active illustrator, and that he also did fine art painting.

Therefore, all I can do for now is present for your evaluation some images of his that I could find on the Internet.

Gallery

An Introduction

Flamenco dancer

Man wearing pith helmet

Men's hat industry advertisement - 1952

Indian Wedding
This was one of a series depicting weddings in different parts of the world.

Star Light, Star Bright
Successful illustrators often had to change their style to keep up with fashions in the field. This 1940s vintage illustration reminds me of Harry Anderson's work at that time.  I like the colors and brushwork.

Center of Attention - 1934
Very nice early-1930s upper-crust atmosphere here. Yes, there was a Depression going on, but Hollywood, Broadway and the slick magazines didn't lose their audience when they ignored it.

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.