Boris Chaliapin: Time Magazine Cover Artist

Boris Chaliapin (1904–1979) was a son of famed Russian opera singer Fyodor Chaliapin. But being a post-revolution emigré, he had to forge his own career and did it very well. Over 1942-1970 he painted 414 covers for Time, America's leading weekly news magazine in those days.

Chaliapin seems to have been a fast worker -- hard to believe, given the amount of detail he normally placed on portraits and backgrounds. But over his 28-year grind with Time, he produced at the rate of slightly more than one cover illustration per month. And some were done on short notice such as the one of Queen Elizabeth, below, that appeared shortly after the death of her father, King George VI.

For a reason I find hard to understand, there is little in the way of biographical information on the Internet regarding Chaliapin. So allow me to offer as a link this post by David Apatoff who, like me, appreciates Chaliapin's wok.

Gallery

Olga Spessivtseva - 1932

Olga Spessivtseva - 1934
Two portraits of the Russian ballet dancer who was living in Paris in the early 1930s, as apparently was Chaliapin. They are included to show what he was capable of in his pre-Time days.

Queen Elizabeth - Time, 18 February 1952

John Wayne - Time, 3 March 1952
Magazine editors chose the subjects he painted. The cover subject was the basis for a long "cover story" inside that issue.

Rosalind Russell - Time, 30 March 1953
She was a Broadway and Hollywood star.

Walt Disney - Time, 27 December 1954
Disneyland was to open the following summer.

Marilyn Monroe - 14 May 1956
Still famous.

Le Corbusier - Time, 5 May 1961
The controversial modernist architect.

Charles de Gaulle - Time, 8 February 1963
France, personified.

Frederick Varley and Norma

Frederick (Fred) Horsman Varley (1881-1969) was a member of Canada's famed Group of Seven artists. A wikipedia entry about him is here, and I wrote a general post about him here.

More recently I wrote about him and his most famous portrait subject, Vera Weatherbie, here. The present post touches on another important subject that I briefly treated in my original Varley post. Her first name is Norma. Her last name seems to be either Park or Parks -- I've seen both versions in various tiny snippets of information on the Internet, but nothing conclusive.

The Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts (now the Emily Carr University of Art and Design) was established in 1925 and not long after that Varley moved to Vancouver, British Columbia to teach there. Around 1929 his students included Weatherbie and Norma.

Below are three or four of his versions of Norma. If anyone could supply more information regarding Norma, I would greatly appreciate it if that could be included in a comment to this post.

Gallery

I am not sure that this painting is of Norma. The subject has a bobbed hairdo like those seen on known portraits of Norma, but such hairdos were common during the 1920s.

This is either a study for a painting of Norma or an abandoned attempt. It is on the reverse side of the painting below.

Norma as seen in an unusual composition with her at the upper-left corner of the painting and looking out beyond the frame.

I wish I could have found a larger version of this portrait of Norma. The neck appears exaggerated (compare to the previous painting), and I quibble with the lighting down towards the tip of her nose. Nevertheless, a striking portrait of a striking young woman.

Celebrity Artists: Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill (1874-1965) accomplished a thing or two during his long life. Among those things were some 500 or so paintings. This was a serious hobby that served to help him ride through bouts of depression as well as to relieve stresses from his various day jobs.

Some background can be found here and here.

Churchill never went to art school. Beginning his painting career at age 40, he lacked the spare time to go through academic or any other art school hoops. But he did get a bit of coaching by the likes of Sir John Lavery, Walter Sickert and Sir William Nicholson.

He submitted paintings to exhibitions on a few occasions, using a pseudonym, and had some of his work accepted. These days some of his paintings have been auctioned at more than half a million pounds.

Churchill mostly painted outdoors scenes. He did a few interiors, but I am unaware of still lifes or portraits, so these latter are either few or non-existent. He clearly put a lot of work into a number of his paintings, as noted in the final link above. Apparently his work was respected by a number of contemporary artists. As for me, I find too much of the understandably amateurish in Churchill's paintings. For instance, he includes too much sky in a number of his compositions and his depiction of architecture is too superficial for my taste. Even so, I appreciate that Churchill was a man of such well-rounded accomplishment.

The paintings below are probably copyrighted, and I include the images to so that readers might better understand what is under discussion here.

Gallery

Churchill at his easel

A Study of Boats - 1933

Scene on the River Meuse

A View from Chartwell - 1938
Chartwell was Churchill's country home in Kent.

A corner of the drawing room, Chartwell - c. 1938

The Tower of Katubia Mosque - 1943
Painted in conjunction with his trip to Morocco for the Casablanca Conference. The scene here is in Marrakesh.

József Rippl-Rónai, Hungarian Modernist, of Sorts

József Rippl-Rónai (1861-1927) or Rippl-Rónai József in Hungarian name-order, was an early proponent of modernism, according to this Wikipedia entry.

He began his career as a pharmacologist, but took up art training in Munich and Paris during his mid-20s. He then returned to Hungary and plied his new trade there.

Rippl-Rónai was a modernist of a tepid variety, not straying far into the realms of distorted proportions and colors, let alone Cubism or abstraction. Interestingly, his portraits of women tended to be in pastel, whereas many of this other works were oil on cardboard or other supports.

Many of his portrayals were of Zorka Bányai, but I have no details regarding her.

Gallery

Manor-house at Körtvélyes - c. 1907

Geszti kastély - 1912

Lajos & Odon - 1918

Lady with Black Veil - 1896

Woman with Red Hair - 1891

Young Woman - 1916

Zdenka Ticharich - 1921

Zorka - 1918

Zorka ? - 1924

Portrait - 1920s

Hubert Rogers: Sci-Fi Pulps and Much More

Hubert Rogers (1898-1982) was a Canadian illustrator/painter perhaps best known today for cover paintings for Astounding Science Fiction, generally considered the cream of the pulp Sci-Fi crop, thanks to its (1937-1971) editor John W. Campbell.

Regarding Rogers, this source mentions:

"In 1925 he moved to New York City to study with Dean Cornwell at the Art Students League."

"In 1931 the financial hardship of the Great Depression lead him to abandon city life. He drove an Indian motorcycle to Taos, New Mexico, where he worked within a community of artists that were as passionate about modern landscape painting as the Canadian 'Group of Seven.'"

But he returned to New York in 1936 after he got an increasing number of assignments. Rogers moved back to Canada in 1942 where he did illustrations to help the war effort. He moved to Vermont in 1947.

More on Rogers is here, and a source presenting letters to Rogers from leading science-fiction writers Robert Heinlein and L. Sprague de Camp is here.

Rogers was a competent illustrator who has to drop into working for "pulp" (cheap, low-quality paper) magazines to help get through the Great Depression. This is a slightly different career path than that for some slightly younger illustrators who had to start their career in pulps and then tried to claw their way to more respectable and better paying clients.

As can be seen below, Rogers' covers for Astounding were decently done, a cut well above the common 1940-vintage bug-eyed-monster-clutching-scantily-clad-blonde genre found on covers of some other sci-fi mags.

Gallery

Astounding Science Fiction cover - October 1939
One of Rogers' best-known Astounding covers.

Astounding Science Fiction cover - February 1940
The tank is a futuristic version of the Great War British Mark IV tank.

Astounding Science Fiction cover - August 1940
Streamlined space ship, though its tiny wings don't seem very functional.

Astounding Science Fiction cover - August 1941

Astounding Science Fiction cover - May 1947
Some sources consider this to be Rogers' best Astounding cover.

Preliminary sketch, Astounding Science Fiction cover - May 1947

Canadian World War 2 poster

Canadian World War 2 poster "Men of Valor" - final

Canadian World War 2 poster "Men of Valor" - preliminary

Canadian World War 2 poster "Men of Valor" - image for printer

The 1943 Quebec Conference - image copyright Canadian War Museum
Rogers was fully capable of doing paintings as well as illustrations.

Jeremy Mann: Free and Tight on a Single Painting

Jeremy Mann (b. 1979) is a young (mid-30s) artist whose work disproves the modernist conceit of the 1950s that there was no point to realist or naturalist painting in the age of photography, and that abstraction was the viable Fine Arts alternative.

The link to a Fine Arts Connoisseur magazine piece featuring Mann is here, and a gallery web page regarding Mann is here. They contain snippets of biographical information.

Mann's style is a combination of sketchy, impressionistic backgrounds delivered using a variety of means for attacking a wood panel with paint along with tightly-painted details, especially in his depictions of beautiful women. He is also hugely prolific, as his own web site reveals. Click on the images below to enlarge.

Gallery

Bay Evening

Raised freeway

Hell's Kitchen

Rooftops in the Snow

Soho

The Muse

Undressing

Untitled (Grace)

The White Vanity

The Forgotten (Version Two - Neglect)