Diego Rivera's Cubist Period

Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez (1886-1957) usually known as Diego Rivera, remains Mexico's best-known artist nearly 60 years after his death. Much of Rivera's art from around 1920 onwards featured political subjects. Since I happen to believe that politicized art distracts viewers from aesthetic content (paintings become elaborate political cartoons), I have never been a Rivera fan.

His earliest works tended to be non-political because he seems to have been sharpening and evolving his artistic skills until he reached his early 30s. He spent about a dozen years in Europe -- Paris, mostly -- starting in 1907, and knew many of the modernist artists who created the onslaught of stylistic "isms" in the early 1900s. This included Cubism, a practice he adopted for about three years, and the subject of this post.

Wikipedia's Rivera biography is here. A discussion of his Cubist phase can be found here. Rivera's Cubist paintings was the subject of a museum exhibit in Dallas a few years ago.

Here are some of Rivera's works from that period.

Gallery

The Flower Carrier - 1935
An example of Rivera's mature style. There are political implications here, but they are less overt than usual.

Girl with Artichokes - 1913

The Adoration of the Virgin - 1913
This image and the one above it have hints of Cubism, but are largely representational with other modernist elements thrown in. I like them better than his more purely Cubist works.

Oscar Miestchaninoff - 1913
Cubist faceting is more prominent here, but use of "multiple perspectives" is still absent.

Portrait of Zinoviev - 1913
Now we find face-on and profile views, here for a portrait of a Russian artist.  A muted Braque-Picasso color scheme also intrudes.

Two Women - Angelina Beloff and Maria Dolores Bastian - 1914
Many facets, but not much in the way of varying viewpoints.  Apparently Rivera could do Cubism superficially, but had a hard time going all the way.  Perhaps he realized that Cubism's central premise was silly in reality.

Young Man with Stylograph - 1914
Another derivative experiment by Rivera.  No worse than many Cubism-inspired painting of that time.

Ramon Gomez de la Serna - 1915
The subject is shattered Cubist-style, but the woman in the upper-left corner is garden-variety modernist.

Zapatista Landscape - 1915
The rifle is not cubified: Rivera's homage to revolutionary times back home in Mexico.

Maternity - Angelina Beloff and their son who died in 1918 - 1916
Plenty of facets and even some Fauvist coloring.  Rivera abandoned Cubism not long after this painting was made.

Molti Ritratti: Violet, Duchess of Rutland

Marion Margaret Violet (née Lindsay) Manners, Duchess of Rutland (1856-1937) was a famous Victorian beauty who was also an able amateur artist. A biographical sketch is here.

Given her social position and the fact that she was in her prime during a golden age of British portraiture, I find it surprising that Violet was little depicted. And those major portraits of her, as best I could locate via Google, were by only two artists, George Frederic Watts and James Jebusa Shannon.

Gallery

Photo of Violet Lindsay Manners

Self-Portrait

By George Frederic Watts - 1879

By George Frederic Watts - 1881

By James Jebusa Shannon - c. 1890

By James Jebusa Shannon - c. 1900
Other images on the Web have a blue cast to this image. I don't know which color scheme is correct, but am posting this one because it is larger.

By James Jebusa Shannon - 1918
Similar to the previous portrait, but Violet was now about 62 years old.

Raeburn van Buren: Second-Echelon Cartoonist

Raeburn van Buren (1891-1987) was an illustrator / cartoonist active as a freelancer in the 1920s and 30s until he found steady work drawing the "Abbie an' Slats" comic strip in 1937. As an illustrator, he lacked the skills of the likes of Henry Patrick Raleigh or Frederic Rodrigo (F.R.) Gruger. Nevertheless, his work appeared in major publications such as the Saturday Evening Post as well as elsewhere.

His Wikipedia entry is here and another biography is here. Van Buren was actively cartooning until 1971 and lived to be 96.

I include posts about lesser artists here because, in part, their work helps to put in context that of the best artists. A feeling for their times is also enhanced by being exposed to their interpretations. Van Buren might best be characterized as a journeyman, given the large number of highly talented illustrators active in the 1920s and into the 1950s.

Gallery

Football stadium scene - 1920s

Story illustration - 1928

Artist and model

"A blind date about to happen" - 1933

"Deep sea fishing"

"Idols"
For non- English-speaking readers, here we have a religious idol and a movie "idol."

"Is there anything else you wish?" - 1933

"Planning Their Summer"

János Vaszary: Traditionalist Gone Modern

János Vaszary (1867–1938) was a Hungarian painter who was contemporaneous with Gustav Klimt, a fellow Imperial who also could paint convincingly in many styles. That is, both began painting in an academic manner, yet switched to forms of modernism by the mid-to-late 1890s.

A brief Wikipedia entry on Vaszary in English is here. The Hungarian language entry is here, and has more detail though the computer translation to English can be hard to follow. This site includes many tiny images of Vaszary's works that can be enlarged somewhat.

My take on him is that he was very talented, but let modernist ideas get the best of him after he turned 40. The later works are both simple and sketchily done, and so aren't very interesting. In a caption below I mention the paintings I liked best.

Gallery

Self Portrait - 1887

Self Portrait
The first self-portrait was made when he was about 20 years old.  I have no date for the second one, but I'll guess that he was in his 40s when this was painted.

Primate Kolos Vaszary (his uncle) - 1895
Basically traditional in style, though the brushwork is fairly free.

Golden Age - 1897-98
Some reproductions of this have a more golden coloring.  This shows that Vaszary was perfectly capable of painting in the academic style.

Woman with Black Hat - 1894
Even before painting Golden Age and his uncle, Vaszary was experimenting with modernist ideas.

Woman in Lilac Dress with Cats - 1900
This seems more like an illustration than a fine-art painting.

Woman in Front of Mirror - 1904

Fancy-dress Ball - 1907
These two paintings exhibit strong brushwork.  I find them the most interesting of the images posted here.

Nude
Kees van Dongen was an influence for a while.

At La Cigale
La Cigale was a Paris night spot that Vaszary must have frequented while in town.

Woman in profile with black hat - c. 1930
Another trace of van Dongen here.

Portrait of a Lady - c. 1925-35
I think the right arm isn't drawn correctly; in any case, it looks odd.  Here Vaszary was drifting in a representational direction.  I don't have a name for the subject, so cannot guess whether or not she wanted to be depicted mostly naturalistically or if the style was Vaszary's choice.

Norman Wilkinson: Sea, Sky and Other Stuff

Norman Wilkinson (1878-1971) was a master poster artist (I wrote about that aspect of his career here). He also carved out noteworthy careers in other fields of art, especially painting marine and naval scenes. His Wikipedia entry is here and another link sketching his work is here.

Below are examples mostly of his marine and naval paintings. Unless he was commissioned to feature a particular ship, his sea paintings featured a lot of water and sky, whereas ships, land and other objects usually occupied small amounts of art canvas real estate. That seems sensible, given the visual vastness of oceans and seas -- something Wilkinson was intimately familiar with, having served in the Royal Navy.

Gallery

Scene with ships
This exhibits a poster style, but I don't know if it was actually used for a poster.

Yachts off the Needles, Isle of Wight
A contrasting, more painterly style.

The 'Revenge' Leaving Plymouth to Meet the Armada - 1912
This is an illustration.

Hawker Harts of 601 Squadron - c. 1936
The sky is vast and the Harts are small.

The Pilot
Nowadays, pilot boats are usually a lot bigger and fancier than this.

Dublin and Holyhead - 1905
This is a poster illustration for the London and North Western Railway. I include it here because the style is closer to his marine paintings than the style he usually used for posters.

HMS 'Lion' Battlecruiser
This has a poster-like style.  Lion was Admiral Beatty's flagship at Dogger Bank and Jutland.  I'm guessing that this painting shows Lion on the way to her 1924 scrapping.

Fitting Out RMS 'Queen Mary' at Clydebank - 1936

HM Troopship 'Queen Mary' at Anchor in the Second World War
Thanks to her high speed, the Queen Mary was in little danger of being torpedoed by a German submarine.  Her companion Queen Elizabeth went straight to troopship duties before ever carrying commercial passengers.

Action off the River Plate, 13 December 1939, Pursuit of the 'Graf Spee'
The commerce-raider Graff Spee was a heavily armed large cruiser (and not really a "pocket battleship," as she was called at the time).  She was finally hunted down by three British cruisers and damaged to the point where her captain had her scuttled.

Japan Signs Her Own Death Warrant, Attack on Pearl Harbour, 7 December 1941

Coronation Review, 15 June 1953
I'm sorry to say that the next coronation review probably won't be as impressive as this one was.

Dan Content: A Dean Cornwell Disciple

Dan Content (1902-1990) was born in New York City and grew up there. His art training took place there too, at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and the Art Students League in Manhattan. Some additional polish was added via studying for a while under Dean Cornwell (links here and here), whose thick brushwork style Content used during the 1920s and into the 1930s.

There are few resources regarding Content on the Internet, perhaps the best of the lot being here. As it notes, he eased out of illustration into art direction, including a stint at Benton & Bowles, a major advertising agency at the time. This was probably a good career move, given the slow decline in high-paying illustration jobs. As an art director, Content got a steady paycheck and didn't have to worry about altering his painting style to keep up with changing illustration fashions.

Content did good, solid work, but remains somewhat obscure perhaps due to his stylistic similarity to much better-known Cornwell.

Gallery

Herders

Burial Detail

McCall's illustration for Sabatini's "An Act of Faith" - September 1928

Illustration for Sabatini's "The Nuptials of Corbigny" - 1927

Illustration for "Robin Hood" - 1928
A complete set of images for this project can be found here.

Story illustration

Story Illustration

Illustration for "The Song Without Words" - Ladies' Home Journal - March 1937