Richard E. Miller's Models in That Skirt

That Skirt probably was one Richard E. Miller's wife eventually cast off, and he thought it would be suitable for dressing models. Or not. I'm only guessing, and so will have to wait (for a long time, I suspect) for a good biography to appear that might clear up that detail. For now, there's this Wikipedia entry that covers the basics regarding his life and career.

Below is a collection of his images that I found here and there on the Internet where the model is wearing what appears to be the same skirt. Where the images were dated, the range is from around 1912 when Miller was living in the American artist colony in Giverny (near Claude Monet's house) or elsewhere in France, through the 1920s into the 1930s, a time when he lived in Provincetown on Cape Cod. I am not sure dates for paintings that I found on the Web are all accurate, but suspect they are not far off. The models' coiffeurs are usually based on long hair, something not fashionable during much of the 1920s, so most of the undated images are most likely from the previous decade. And the titles of the paintings? I'll use title format in the captions if that is what the source had; otherwise, I'll write a title as a sentence.

Moreover, I don't know who Miller used as models. One might well have been his wife, but I can't seem to find a photo of her, so that can't be confirmed. Perhaps some of the women in the early paintings were Giverny locals or wives of other artists. The same might be the case for Provincetown.

Setting aside that patchy background, let's take a look at some of the many appearances of That Skirt.

Gallery

The Miliner - 1909
The date might be a few years early.

Meditation - c. 1912-13
This was painted in the same room as the first picture.

Reverie - 1913
Ditto. Note the sewing (?) box with the open top is the same as in the previous painting.

Sunlight - 1913
Same window blinds, same table, same box, same chair, same foot rest and, of course, same skirt. I even suspect that both women in the painting were posed by the same person.

The Necklace - c. 1924
I notice that the model for all the paintings shown thus far seems to be the same person. The hair-do matches, as does the shape of the nose, for instance. Probably Miller's wife, because she'd be available to pose and wouldn't likely charge a modeling fee. I question the 1924 date; most like done ten years earlier.

Contemplation
Same model, skirt. Also the same french door framing.

Seated Lady with Red Hair
Big change, other than that persistent skirt. The subject is a different woman, but the room and some of its contents seem the same as before.

Red Haired Woman Seated at Vanity
The usual setting, although this mirror on the table has a square frame. The model might not be the same as the redhead in the last image, because her hair seems a little longer than the other's would have been had it been let down. But I could easily be wrong.

Woman in green chair
The mirror and skirt look the same as in the last image, but somehow the room seems different. Elsewhere in France, perhaps? Or maybe even Provincetown.

Girl reading
This might be Miller's daughter. The hair style suggests the 1920s. The skirt is similar to the others, but has a different hem.

Sunny Morning - c. 1930
Provincetown here, almost certainly. Different model, but the usual skirt.

Young woman holding necklace
This looks like that same model used for the painting above. French doors and venetian blinds return. I suspect these two final paintings were done later than 1930.

Stan Galli; Unobstrusive Illustrator

The image above shows the dirigible Graf Zeppelin over San Francisco Bay while on its 1929 around-the-world flight. Appropriately, the illustrator was Stan Galli (1912-2009), who was born in San Francisco and spent most of his long career there rather than in New York or Chicago where most American illustrators plied their trade in his day.

Some biographical information on Galli can be found here. Reminiscences by his son are here, and extracts from an interview of Galli are here.

Galli was a highly competent, versatile illustrator. On the other hand, his work was not distinctive; shuffling through a stack of illustrations, one doesn't easily cry out "There's a Galli! That's one too!").

Gallery

Illustration for True magazine story "The Poisoner who Couldn't Spell" - March, 1955.

Galli painted the cars as well as the settings (often specialist illustrators for each were hired).

He did a series of illustrations for Weyerhaeuser advertisements that ran in the Saturday Evening Post and other slick magazines for years.

Travel posters for United Airlines - from around 1960.

Galli also did fine-art painting.

Gonzalo Mayo's Intricate Comics Pages

I don't follow the comic book / graphic novel field very closely. But I do have a rough idea regarding how long it can take to draw and ink a page. Simply put, the more detail in the artwork, the longer it takes to complete. Then there's the matter of a project's budget. If plenty of money were available, highly detailed drawing is possible. But a small budget implies that artwork will be pretty simplified -- unless the artist is willing to work for starvation wages (in terms of piecework).

When I sometimes flip open a graphic novel and get beyond the elaborate, carefully done cover, what's inside can be sketchily done digital art. Disappointing, but understandable.

Which is why I marvel when I happen to encounter the detail and quality of drawing by practitioners such as the Peruvian, Gonzolo Mayo (his web site containing a sketchy biography is here). How did that happen? (Comics mavens, feel free to fill us in in Comments.)

Mayo is perhaps best known for his work dealing with a character called Vampirella. She has a body that, as the saying goes, won't quit. And her clothing barely covers what is expected to be covered. I consider her ridiculous, so I don't think I'll post any Vampirella images (you can make the effort to Google on her and feast your eyes, if you must). Below are page images of Mayo's work, at least one of which contains a Vampirella surrogate. Click on the images to enlarge.

Gallery

Okay, so I changed my mind. Here is an image of original art for Vampirella #79, page 10, from 1979. Miss V is depicted in a fairly restrained mode here.

Semi-splash page for Merlin.

Two pages from Creepy # 62, May 1974.

From El Cid in Eerie, c. 1975.

Mosè Bianchi: An Almost-Macchiaiolo

Mosè Bianchi (1840-1904) could paint traditionally, but usually worked in a non-academic manner. A short biography is here (it has links to longer biographies in Italian and French).

Bianchi was a contemporary of Il Macchiaioli, a proto-impressionist movement centered around Florence. Bianchi seems to have spent his career in the Milan and Venice areas, so while he was surely aware of the Macchiaioli, he wasn't active in the group. But his style of painting strikes me as being in the same spirit.

I don't consider Bianchi to be a great painter. However, he was very good at times, so I find it a shame that he is not well known outside Italy.

Gallery

Dopo il duello - c. 1867
"After the Duel," an early painting; one source has it 1866, another as 1868.

Paris, Place de Clichy - 1884
Bianchi briefly visited Paris around 1869 and might have returned later, because this rainy scene was done 15 years afterward.

Vecchia Milano - 1890
An old part of Milan.

Flora
A source has this as from around 1890, but the style suggests that it might be earlier.

Laguna sul tramonto - 1893

Chioggia scene?
Note that in both paintings, the horizon line is tilted down towards the right for some reason.

Ritorno dalla pesca a Venezia
But here Bianchi gets the horizon as horizontal.

Sul molo di Chioggia
More Macchiaioli than impressionist. Chioggia, by the way, is an interesting port town at the south end of Venice's lagoon.

Popolana lombarda
A casually impressionist portrait sketch.

Woman before a Mirror - c. 1890
I like this painting. Freely done, yet tighter where it matters.

Maurice Greiffenhagen: Painter and Illustrator

Maurice Greiffenhagen (1862-1931) was a Royal Academician, an instructor at the Glasgow School of Art, and an illustrator. His Wikipedia entry is here, and a link containing some of his illustrations is here.

Greiffenhagen was highly competent as well as versatile. I tend to prefer his illustrations to his portraits (he did many), many of which tend to be rather dark with (as best I can tell from digital images) slightly fussy brushwork.

Gallery

Poster Art for London Midland & Scottish Railway

Carlisle, Gateway to Scotland - 1924

A Visit to Town

Piccadilly - 1926


Classical and Literary Scenes

Laertes and Ophelia - 1885

An Idyl - 1891

Cophetua - 1920-25

The Message - 1923


Portraits

Sir Henry Rider Haggard - 1897
Greiffenhagen was an illustrator of Haggard's books.

Lady with coral necklace - c. 1910

Sons of William Parkinson - 1915

Lady Emma J. Biles - 1917


Nude

Nude with a Wrap - 1924

Book Review: John Harris, Beyond the Horizon

Not long ago I posted on English SciFi illustrator John Harris. A week or so later, I received an email from someone at Titan Books, publisher of a new book about Harris' art (some book links are here and here). If I was interested, they would send me a review copy. I decided the price (free) was right, so I was interested, the book arrived, and the review starts here:

The book is not thick, but the pages are large -- good for looking at some of the images that range in size from near-thumbnails to two-page spreads. My best guess is that its intended audience is science fiction fans who appreciate cover art on the books they buy. Illustration artists and those interested in artist personalities and technical information have little written material to chew on. There is text by Harris explaining some of his inspirations and decisions regarding his cover art, but he almost never mentions how his paintings were done. Not mentioned at all is anything biographical (though in Acknowledgements, he states he is married with children).

I would have liked to know about his art training and how his work evolved before he hit the book cover trade big-time. He is known to have evolved to painting in oils (see my post, link above), and picture captions in the book note that some preliminary color studies used pastel. I would have liked an explanation of how he goes about creating a cover painting from start to finish. But I am not really part of the intended readership, so these complaints of mine are really peripheral, and now I'll now consider the book on its own terms.

As noted, most of the images are related to book cover art. But there is one section dealing with an imaginary world that Harris created and has been illustrating for his own pleasure for something like 30 years in his spare time. Apparently he also has written a narrative relating to this, and some snippets or paraphrases are included so that readers might better understand what that set of images is about.

Harris' cover art mostly lacks hard-edges and sheen that one finds in technical illustration. Straight lines can be present, depending on the subject matter, but his works tend to be of the richly-painted colorist kind. This is where the full-page and two-page images are useful: you can see the color layering he makes good use of.

His subjects, the imaginary space ships and such, that he includes remind be a lot of John Berkey's cover illustrations, but with a more impressionistic touch in their execution. Harris also chooses to depart from scientific accuracy in order to achieve an artistic or emotional effect. That is, his outer space is not starkly black, but often blends of colors and cloudy shapes.

The cover art almost always lacks people as main subjects. Instead, they are present in the form of tiny shapes adding scale to the huge buildings, landscapes or space ships that are the main subjects. However, Harris does include human subjects in the personal set of illustrations mentioned above. So he is quite capable of painting people, but either he, his art directors or the SciFi public prefer scenes where humans are barely opera spear-carriers.

In sum, Since Harris' work is imaginative and painted in interesting ways, this work is worth adding to collections of illustration art fans and those of painters in general. The price is reasonable, which makes it even more easy to justify.