Édouard Detaille: War Artist of the Third Republic

Even though France was humiliated in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War, paintings featuring military subjects were popular in France during the early decades of the Third Republic. Perhaps the most prolific artist of that genre was Jean-Baptiste Édouard Detaille (1848-1912), who had a reputation for thorough research on details of uniforms, weapons and battles of both the Napoleonic era and 1870 and its aftermath. His Wikipedia entry is here.

Perhaps because he churned out so many drawings and paintings, a few being huge dioramas, I find them not usually satisfying as works of art. I mostly prefer the work of his contemporary, Alphonse de Neuville, who I wrote about here.

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Photo of Detaille at work
Here he is, dabbing away on a huge canvas. Many human figures, horses and other items to depict, and he probably didn't have the time to paint them with thought and care. Yet this sort of painting was what he was known for, so he kept making them.

Le rêve - 1888
This immense painting was on display at the Musée d'Orsay when I visited last September. It shows bivouacing contemporary (or 1870) French soldiers dreaming of the gloire of their Napoleonic forebears. Despite its size, it doesn't seem to have been as rushed as some of his other works, which is perhaps why the Orsay displayed it.

Charge de Mosbronn - 1870 war

The Charge at Friedland - 1894

La salu aux blessés - 1877
Saluting the wounded.

Mounted First Empire Dragoons

Hussar
I don't know if this was an elaborate sketch or a finished work. Regardless, as best I can tell from this digital image, it's nicely done. Apparently when he wasn't painting vast action scenes, Detaille was able to focus and show us what he was capable of.

Un officier des cuirassiers, fin 19eme
Another portrait of sorts, but a crowd of soldiers and horses manage to intrude as background.

Roy Doty, Charming Cartoonist

As of the time I'm drafting this post, Roy Doty (1922 - ) is still alive and presumably making cartoons and illustrations, something he has been doing at a top professional level since the late 1940s. Information about him can be found here, here, here and here.

The classic Doty style involves clean, thin lines punctuated by solid areas of black and/or other colors. Sometimes compositions are simple, yet others can be complicated crowd scenes.

I find it interesting that illustrators who cartoon seem to have career staying-power, especially if they have a distinctive style popular with viewers. This is compared to illustrators in general, who can become victims of their signature style when it goes out of fashion or else are forced to change styles to keep commissions coming.

Here is a Doty sampling.

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Promotional ad for Life Magazine - 1953

Autobiography - click to enlarge

Wordless Workshop - a comics series

In House Beautiful - 1949

Apparently from an Art Directors Club of New York annual

Frank Wootton's Poster Art

Frank Wootton (1911-1998) is best known for his aircraft and automobile paintings and illustrations, but he also painted landscapes and illustrated travel posters, among other projects. The main biographical information I found on the Web was this obituary from the Independent that incorrectly has his birth year as 1914.

Wootton's poster work was done in a nice, clear style that nevertheless included plenty of detail to add visual interest.  His posters for air travel tend to have compositions where the main subject matter is curiously peripheral. Well, maybe not so curious after all, because a tiny image of an airliner can be found in those big, otherwise blank skies.

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Wootton did a few posters for Britain's nationalized railway system after World War 2.

This is his painting for a poster titled "By Rail to Wales."

Below are some posters illustrated for BOAC, Britain's main international airline of the 1950s.

The poster immediately above is a personal favorite because I've always liked the way Wootton handled highlights on his automobile illustrations. The scene itself seems to be imaginary, an evocation of New York-ness from a foreign perspective. The cars are also imaginary, but suggestive of General Motors styling from around 1950. Wootton chose to portray American cars as being lower than they actually were in those days.

"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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.