Towards the End: Jules-Alexandre Grün's Last Crowd Scene

Jules-Alexandre Grün (1868-1938) spent much of his career as a poster illustrator. But when the occasion arose, he had a good eye for portraiture and composing believable crowd scenes, as can be seen in some large paintings he made. I last wrote about him here, and here is his French Wikipedia entry (the one in English is skimpy, so have your browser translate this, if it can).

Below are two of his best paintings of that kind followed by his final crowd scene, made as he was coming down with Parkinson's disease. Click on images to enlarge.

Un vendredi au Salon des artistes français - A Friday at the French Artists' Salon - 1911Star of the painting (near the center, in white behind the woman in the mauve dress) is Geneviève Lanthelme (1883-1911), who died the same year the painting was completed under suspicious circumstances. Grün included himself and his wife. His wife Juliette is in front of the largest sculpture, wearing a violet dress. Grün is the bald, bearded man right behind her.

Fin de souper - After Supper - 1913This is perhaps his painting that I like the best. I think it has to do with the lively young lady at the left.

Sortie de la messe au Breuil-en-Auge (Calvados) - Leaving Mass - 1934This is the only image of this painting that I could locate on the Web, and it's marred because of the lighting where it's mounted, Église Saint-Michel - Pont-l'Évêque (near the junction of autoroutes A13 and A132 in Normandy).

Grün manages his crowd composition well, as usual, but the people are painted more thinly and sketchily than in the earlier works when he was in his prime.

Some Albert Herter Murals

Albert Herter (1871-1950) was an artist who is best remembered (for those few who are even aware of him) as a painter of portraits and murals. His mature style was traditional, with just the slightest whiff of the cautious modernist-inspired simplification fashionable amongst conservative painters during the first four decades of the 20th century.

Herter's Wikipedia entry is here. If you read it carefully, you will find that his son Christian became governor of Massachusetts and later Secretary of State of the United States. The latter position was reached under Eisenhower shortly before the death of the previous Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles.

I plan to post more about Herter's work, but begin here with two of his murals (click on the images to enlarge).

Le départ des poilus, aout 1914 - 1926This large mural is in Paris' gare de l'Est railroad terminal, and due to ignorance of it, I've never seen it. That's because I normally use the nearby gare du Nord when entering or leaving Paris by train.

Background regarding the mural, which Herter donated to France in memory of his son Everit who died fighting in the Great War, can be found here, here and here.

The scene depicts French army reservists called to the colors during mobilization at the start of the war. Under Joseph Joffre's Plan XVII, the main German offensive was expected along France's eastern borders, and that was where most of the mobilizing troops were sent during the first few weeks of August 1914. The soldiers are being seen off by family and friends.

The third link above mentions that the man in the white shirt raising his arms is Everit Herter. His mother is the women at the far left with her hands clutched. The bearded man at the right holding flowers is Herter himself.

Signing of the Magna Carta - 1915This is one of four murals by Herter completed in 1915 for the Wisconsin State Capitol Building. Background on these murals is here. Due to their setting, these murals are composed is a formal, essentially symmetrical fashion.

René Vincent: Illustrating the Belle Époque Through the Années folles

René Vincent (1879-1936) was trained as an architect, but had a successful career as an illustrator during the first third of the 20th century in France. He contributed editorial art to the likes of La Vie parisienne and L'Illustration and did a considerable amount of advertising illustration, especially for automobile companies.

The best source of information regarding Vincent that I found on the Web is here. It's in French, but perhaps your browser will allow translation.

Vencent's style was clean and usually poster-like, even for much of his editorial work. It also could be witty. I find his work enjoyable.

Gallery

Berliet automobile illustration - 1906

Le retour de l"Ambrusqué - 1915

In La Vie parisienne - ca. 1916

A series in La Vie parisienne - 1917, 1918
Click to enlarge, though the text is still hard to read.

Cover art for Automobilia - July 1922
The car is a Peugeot 15 HP.

In La Vie parisienne - 1922

Peugeot 18 HP advertising - 1924

Golf, in L'Illustration - October 1927

"Bathing Time" in L'Illustration - October 1927
The car is an Hispano-Suiza.

Changing Tires - 1930

Skaters - ca. 1933

Unfinished Renault advertising illustration - ca. 1929

Towards the End: J.C. Leyendecker

Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874-1951) was a leading American illustrator for much of his long career. He produced more than 300 covers for the Saturday Evening Post, America's leading general-interest magazine during the first half of the 20th century. He also was famed for his advertisement illustrations for Kuppenheimer, a man's clothing maker and for Arrow collars and shirts. More background on Leyendecker can be found here and here.

His distinctive style featured strong, crisp lines and form definition along with hatched and sometimes crosshatched color overlays. A sense of his stylistic evolution can be glimpsed via this chronological gallery of Post covers.

Illustration fashions change, so Leyendecker's highly distinctive style became increasingly passé as the 1930s rolled along. Apparently his personality was changing during this time, which might have been a further career hinderance. A major blow was changes in the Post's editorial staff during the years around 1940. New editors and art directors eventually cast Leyendecker aside.

Gallery

Detail from art in the Kelly Collection
I photographed this at an exhibit of Kelly items at Pepperdine University a few years ago. Note Leyendecker's distinctive brush style where there are regular brushstroke-related gaps between overpainting and an underlying color. Also, the background is created using a broad brush that blocks in the color while leaving visible strokes and gaps in coverage -- another of his stylistic characteristics.

Saturday Evening Post cover art - 24 November 1928
Another example of his style during his time of peak fame. Contrasted are a Pilgrim Father from the 1600s with a 1928 college football player.

Illustration for Arrow collars - 1932
The models are Phyllis Frederic and actor Brian Donlevy. Here the brush hatching is less prevalent. Leyendecker would use it or downplay it according to his feeling for the subject matter. Apparently, he opted for sleekness in this illustration.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 15 September 1934
Hatching returns for this Post cover. For some younger or overseas readers I need to mention that the overburdened fellow is a railroad porter doing his duty for the fancy lady.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 21 December 1940
Exhausted mailman during Christmas rush: the last Post cover not dealing with New Year babies.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 2 January 1943
This was his final Post cover, a continuation of his New Year's baby series. Leyendecker hatching is almost gone.

American Weekly cover art for 25 May 1947 issue
Crisp lines and fabric fold definition are still in the Leyendecker spirit. But I cannot be sure if the simplified style was an attempt to adjust to changing illustration fashion or else that he was simply dashing this work off to meet a deadline.

American Weekly cover - 19 December 1948
If it weren't for the signature, there is little here to indicate Leyendecker did this.

American Weekly cover - 20 November 1949
A very late illustration, again somewhat distant from his signature style. The orange circle is an echo of a Post cover theme from the 1920s and 30s.

In the Beginning: Joaquin Sorolla

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923) has regained a measure of the fame he enjoyed in his lifetime. For a summary of his life and career, click here.

Sorolla incorporated little of mainstream modernism in his paintings. On the other hand, his mature style was freer than what Academy graduates were trained in. As best I can tell, his training was Academic in sprit, if not in every respect. Regardless, his early major works dealt with themes and styles that could meet with Academic approval.

Gallery

Bathing Hour - 1904
This painting made when he was about 40 contains many elements of Sorolla's signature style and subject matter. The Valencia (probably) seashore, a boat, oxen in the water, naked children bathing, and an older girl or young woman in damp clothing.

Father Jofré Protecting a Madman - 1887
A number of his early paintings were either historical scenes or social commentary, themes he largely abandoned in his 30s as he found his true artistic vocation.

Selling Mellons - 1890
Around this time Sorolla painted several paintings with similar appearance and subject matter to this. He would occasionally return to genre scenes until they became a major theme in his Provinces of Spain series for Archer Huntington.

Another Marguerite - 1892
More social commentary. Dark scene in dark surroundings.

Kissing the Relic - 1893
He sometimes painted religious subjects.

The Boat Builders - 1894
Finally, near Sorolla's beloved seacoast. Still missing is the bright sunshine found in his famous works.

Walk on the Beach - 1909
I'm tossing in this painting to remind viewers of Sorolla at his mature best. This painting shows his wife and a daughter at the shore. It's one of my favorite paintings. To see it in person, all you have to do is go to Madrid and visit the Museo Sorolla housed in his former home/studio.

Walter Everett: Two Works in Progress

Walter H. Everett (1880-1946), a student of the great Howard Pyle, was an exceptionally good illustrator who had a couple of character flaws. One was an inability to meet deadlines, a trait that surely impeded his career. Another problem emerged late in life when he destroyed many of his works. Some assert that he got rid of what he considered lesser stuff, and there might be something to that idea because a number of fine paintings of his still exist.

I wrote about Everett here and here. The Kelly Collection holds an important Everett: a link is here. Armand Cabrera provides some biographical information here.

Cabrera's post is illustrated using examples mostly from an early phase of his career, before he developed his mature style. It is Everett's mature illustrations that astonish me. Fortunately, there are at least two examples of his work that seem to be unfinished because of their appearance and the lack of a signature. They therefore provide interesting clues as to how Everett went about building up his classic images.

Gallery

This is one of Everett's finest works to set the scene. Click on it and the others to enlarge.

For comparison, here is a finished (or nearly so) illustration with similar colors to the unfinished examples below. Some internet sites displaying this image state that the man is a soldier. From what I can tell, the setting is the American Southwest, most likely northern New Mexico. The man is dressed in riding or work clothes, not an army uniform.

Everett blocks in the image using lines and flatly painted areas laid over an undertone wash or scumble. He then works on background detail before tackling the foreground.

Faces and other key details are painted in the round, most of the rest being larger and smaller areas of flat paint.

* * * * *

UPDATE (9 January 2016):
I'm wondering if the three illustrations immediately above were all part of the same project that got canceled. The subjects and color schemes are related. The illustration that seems finished has not been signed (unless a signature got cropped). Does any reader know exactly what we have here?

Guilty Pleasures: Noir Art of Glen Orbik

Glen Orbik (1963-2015) died of cancer all too soon. He was a talented artist who divided his time between teaching and creating superhero images and crime-noir paperback book cover illustrations (also working in some other genres). A short Wikipedia entry is here, and here is a biographical note on his Web site.

Like most of the rest of mankind's efforts, paperback book cover art falls mostly in the "competent" category, with some examples being truly lousy. And of course there are some artists whose work stands out, transcending what many might consider "trashy" subject matter. So I think it was for Orbik. The guy had a solid, painterly style along with the ability to create interesting dramatic settings and artistic compositions. I need to add that his book cover illustrations had to include space for the title, author's name and other elements, so this context needs to be taken into consideration when evaluating composition.

His web site lists the following illustrators as inspiration: "Robert McGinnis, Gil Elvgren, Dean Cornwell, Mead Schaeffer, Andrew Loomis, John Buscema... and a healthy dose of Norman Rockwell." For some reason he didn't note his teacher Fred Fixler, whose commercial work included paperback book cover illustration.

Orbik's style is characterized by strong, well-placed brushwork based on a framework of solid drawing ability -- yes, he did use photo references, as do most illustrators. Take a look.

Gallery

American Century No. 11

Automatic Detective

Azrael Annual No. 3

Batman: Shadow of the Bat - Commissioner Gordon and Poison Ivy

Broadway Nights

Chassis No. 3

Fifty-to-One

Midnight in Paris

Songs of Innocence

Wounded and the Slain