Paul Delvaux

Paul Delvaux (1897-1994) was a Belgian painter who settled on a 1920-vintage style by the 1930s and kept at it for the rest of his long career with few changes in subject matter. Biographical information is here.

His strongest influence seems to have been Giorgio de Chirico, and therefore his works have been variously classed as Magic Realism, Metaphysical Art or Surrealism ... the terms can overlap.

As can be seen below, Delvaux usually included women, often unclothed, in his paintings. Men, if they appeared, were normally fully dressed. Settings were often at dusk or night, usually in towns or cities. Generally his subjects are static, no action shown and little implied. People and other subjects are slightly simplified and distorted. In sum, what the viewer sees is clearly not quite real.

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La joie de vivre - Joy of Life - 1937

La rue du tramway - Street of Trams - 1938-39

Phases of the Moon - 1939

Loneliness - 1956

Toutes les lumieres - All the Lights - 1962

Petitie place de gare - Small Square Train Station - 1963

Les ombres - Shadows - 1965

The Retreat - 1973

Robe de mariées - Wedding Dress - 1976

Molti Ritratti: Queen Victoria

Victoria (1819-1901) became Queen of the United Kingdom in 1837, about the time photography emerged.

In theory, that makes it possible to compare photos of her with painted portraits. However, based on some Googling on my part, it seems likely that most photographs of her were taken during the last half of her reign. I was able to find a few that provide comparisons with most of the paintings I selected.

As for the paintings, because they are of a monarch, they tend to be cautiously done, perhaps even a bit more so than commissioned portraits of others.

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Photo by Bryan Edward Duppe and Gustav William Mullins - 1854 - image copyright HM Queen Elizabeth II
Victoria was about 35 years old when this was taken.

By Thomas Sully - 1838
Painted around the time of her coronation.

By Franz Xaver Winterhalter - 1842
Winterhalter was a go-to portrait artist for royalty and nobility.

Photo by John Mayall on a Carte de visite - 1861 - copyright Victoria & Albert Museum
This shows Victoria with Prince Albert who died 14 December of that year.

By Franz Xaver Winterhalter - 1859
Winterhalter seems to have firmed up her chin for this official portrait.

By Carl Rudolph Sohn (from a photograph) - 1883

Photo by Alexander Bassano - 1882

By Heinrich von Angeli - 1899
Victoria was about 80 when this was painted.

In the Beginning: Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud (1922-2011), grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, is considered by the Art Establishment to be a leading British 20th century modernist. His Wikipedia entry is here.

Alas, I fail to see much merit in Freud's work aside from that he painted subjects in a largely representational manner. After due consideration, if I had to characterize his works using one word, it would be: Icky.

As for his early works, they too were essentially representational, though shapes were simplified and distorted to one degree or another. The following images were found on a BBC web page.

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Welsh Landscape - ca. 1939-40
Painted about the time Freud was an art student.

Man with a Thistle (Self-Portrait) - 1946

Girl with a Kitten - 1947

Kitty - his first wife - 1948-49
For some reason all three of the above portraits feature heads where the part above the eyes is compressed.

Still Life with Squid and Sea Urchin - 1949

Girl in a Green Dress - 1954

The Painter's Brother, Stephen - 1985-86
This is an example of Freud's mature style.

Early Boeing 747s: March 1970 Photos

The Boeing 747, the original "jumbo jet," had its maiden flight 9 February 1969 and first flew commercially 22 January 1970. These facts and much more are detailed here in a Wikipedia entry.

Below are some photos I took in March 1970 of 747s at Paine Field, Everett, where they were built, and at Boeing Field, Seattle, where test facilities were located. A number of 747s at Paine lacked engines and paint, part of initial teething problems for Boeing and the engine maker.

Nothing special about these photos, though they might be of interest to any airplane buffs reading this blog.

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Paine Field photos

Boeing Field photos

Egon Schiele's Nicer Paintings

Egon Schiele (1890-1918) died young -- not from dissipation, but from the great influenza epidemic of 1918 that also snuffed out his wife who was carrying his child. Biographical information can be found here.

The death of a young artist (under age 40, say, and Schiele died at 28) often gives thought as to how he might have evolved his work had he lived a full life. No certain answers, obviously, and I'm not about to speculate much about Schiele.

Simply by looking at the large number of works he created during his short career, it is clear that Schiele was obsessed with sex and the grotesque. A large proportion of his paintings and drawings are flat-out pornographic. How much of this was due to immaturity rather than a mental condition is hard to say a century after his time, but it's possible that he might have later moved in the direction of more socially acceptable subjects.

As for me, I think he had talent, though I find much of his work of little interest, unlike that of Gustav Klimt who kept serious porn to his sketchbooks while creating intriguing paintings.

Below are examples of Schiele's art that stray from his obsessions.

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Gerti Schiele in Orange Hat - (his sister) - 1910

The Daydreamer - Gerti Schiele - 1911

The Dancer Moa - 1911

Three Rowboats - 1912

Trieste Fish Boat - 1912

Elisabeth Lederer - 1913

The Bridge - 1913

Houses With Laundry (Suburb II) - 1914

The Artist's Sister-in-Law - 1917

Dr. Hugo Kroller - 1918

Al Parker's Mother-Daughter Ladies' Home Journal Covers

Al Parker (1906–1985) was the top dog in "slick" (smooth, good quality paper) magazines during the 1940s and 50s according to many fellow-illustrators, men who themselves were at the top of their game.

Biographical information on Parker can be found here and here. David Apatoff deals with a recent book about Parker here.

Today, he is not nearly as well known to the general public as Norman Rockwell. But that could be said as well for successful contemporaries such as Coby Whitmore, Jon Whitcomb and Edwin Georgi whose work appeared in many of the same slick magazines as Parker's. Beside being very good at what he did, Rockwell's fame is based on the fact that he painted cover illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post, America's leading general-interest magazine in its day, and those illustrations were self-contained stories. On the other hand, Whitmore, Whitcomb, Georgi and Parker mostly illustrated fiction pieces in magazines, the illustrations themselves often evoking the story subject, but not in themselves being self-contained visual narratives.

Worse for Parker from an historical standpoint was his strongest professional attribute, an ability to change his style, sometimes in the form of creating new illustration style fashions. This is in contrast to some other illustrators who had strong, easily-recognized styles that provided fame and fortune ... until fashions changed and they wound up having trouble getting work. Parker's career was long and successful, but it can be difficult to immediately identify many of his illustrations without looking for his signature.

There is one major exception to the previous statement. Below are examples from his long-running series of mother-daughter matching outfit covers for Ladies' Home Journal, the leading women's magazine in American for many years.

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October, 1940

February, 1949
These images are the largest I could find for those covers. They are included because they clearly demonstrate Parker's ability to alter his style.

February, 1939

December, 1939

October, 1939

March, 1942

September, 1947

March, 1948

June, 1948

September, 1950

February, 1951

Towards the End: Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) -- Wikipedia entry here -- was a modernist painter generally classified as a Symbolist. Although he often engaged in modernist desiderata such as distortion and color alteration, he never practiced Cubism or pure abstraction, so far as I know. Aside from some landscapes, his subject matter was people.

I wrote about his early work here, and dealt with his 1906 take on Mrs. Schwarz here.

The present post deals with paintings Munch made during the last decade or so of this life, during which he was experiencing vision problems of varying severity.

Munch tended to paint thinly over much of his career, especially so during his later years. In part this might be because, stylistically, his paintings were often little more than sketches. Another possible factor would have been that by painting thinly, his expenses for paint were minimized for his generally fairly large canvasses.

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Uninvited Guests - ca. 1934

Annie Stenersen - 1934

The Lonely Ones - 1935

Henrik Bull - 1939

By the Window - self-portrait - 1940

Self-Portrait: Between Clock and Bed - ca. 1941