Harry Willson Watrous, Who Profiled Women

Harry Willson Watrous (1857-1940) was president of the National Academy of Design, 1933-34, but there is not much information about him on the Internet. One might consult this Dutch Wikipedia entry, or perhaps a short National Academy biography here. And there's this anecdote at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art site.

Watrous, was born in San Francisco, raised in New York City, studied art in Paris at (where else?) the Académie Julian. While in Paris, he became influence by the small, carefully crafted paintings of the vastly popular (at the time) Jean Meissonier. Watrous painted in the Meissonier manner until the early 1900s, when he developed vision problems -- his "eyesight began to fail" noted the National Academy link. Thereafter, he painted larger, more simplified works, especially paintings featuring profile views of elegant young women. This was about 1905-15. After that, he shifted to landscape and still life painting.

Gallery

The Concert - 1903
This is the closest example to his earlier style that I could locate. But it's probably not quite what he usually did before 1905.

Solitaire
From the hairdo, this looks like it might have been made about 1900-1905.

A Cup of Tea, a Cigarette, and She - c. 1908
Cigarette smoking for women was controversial in America as late as the early 1930s.

Girl With the Mirror

Libelulas: The Passing of Summer - 1915
The NY Met anecdote linked above deals with this painting.

Just a Couple of Girls - 1915

The Chatterboxes - 1913
Très élégant.

The Composers
More ravens.

Fallen Pine at Hague, Lake George
Hague is near the north end of the lake, on the west bank. Watrous and his wife had a house on Lake George in Upstate New York.

The Blue Goats - 1929
An example of his still life painting.

So Watrous had impaired vision. What kind of impairment is not stated in the few sources about him that I could find. I am puzzled, because all the post-1905 painting images displayed above suggest that Watrous could see pretty well: note the fine lines and details on even the landscape and still life. That is, he was painting quite well with sub-optimal vision for at least 25 or as many as 35 years.

It happens that Yr. Faithful Blogger has had cataracts in both eyes as well as macular pucker (also called an epiretinal membrane) in one eye. These are fairly common vision-impairment ailments. In my judgment, if Watrous had either of these problems, they must have been mild if he were to have painted what is shown above. Otherwise, perhaps his wife, also an artist, might have assisted painting the finely detailed bits.

Bill Cumming, Last of the Northwest School

William Lee "Bill" Cumming (1917-2010) was not one of the "mystic" school of Pacific Northwest painting. The best-known of that crew were Mark Tobey, Morris Graves and Guy Anderson. As a young man in the late 1930s, Cumming got to know them and other Northwest artists who were not quite so mystic, such as Kenneth Callahan. He also became considered as part of that larger group.

Cumming was a colorful character, undertaking seven marriages, tuberculosis, Stalinist Communism (until he got sick of it) and teaching, -- while doing his art when not hospitalized or following Party orders regarding this or that.

As for his art, Cumming was a prolific sketchbook artist whose main interest was the movements and postures of the clothed human body. His later tempera and oil painting usually eliminated facial details so the viewers might focus on the rest of his subjects.

His Wikipedia entry is here. Not-so-favorable commentary by a former Seattle Post-Intelligencer art critic is here, and his Seattle Times obituary is here.

Cumming wrote a book titled "Sketchbook" that was published by the University of Washington Press. Here are two excerpts.

Page 60: "My dream of Paris didn't vanish. It simply melted into life in 1937 Seattle. I was never again able to summon up one scrap of the kind of restless and unsatisfied dreams on which young provincials have traditionally motivated their treks.... To my small-town sensibilities Seattle was a reasonable facsimile which had fattened my imagination....a soggy seaport town wedged into the furthest northwest corner of our United States...."

Page 238: "For the most part my teaching has been in what is shallowly called commercial art.... The invidious distinction of commercial art and fine art is poppycock. There is only art."

My interest in Cumming is not his art, to which I am indifferent. Rather, I found his book interesting because it was a gossipy account dealing with local artistic personalities whose names I am familiar with and a few of whom I met many years ago when I myself was young.

Gallery

Untitled - 1940
A standard-issue Depression-era depiction of proletarians.

Evening Conversation - 1956
Cumming was still including faces at this point.

Sailboat - 1965

Drawing - 1972

Sketchbook page

Good News and Bad Weather - 1985

Street Corner - 1990
This is part of a Seattle Parks series of paintings. As best I can tell, there is no evidence of a street corner. The inclusion of both baseball and football players is a bit puzzling because these sports tend to be played at different times of the year.

Pike Street Figures - 1996

Summer Afternoon in the Park - 2008
A painting made when Cumming was 90 or 91 years old.

"Sketchbook" book cover - 1984

Nikolaos Gyzis, a Greek in Munich

Since emerging from Ottoman rule ca. 1832, Greece has remained economically peripheral to Europe. Which is probably why Greece-born Nikolaos Gyzis (1842-1901) studied art in Munich, returned home, and then left again for Munich where it was easier for him to pursue a career as an artist. That career is outlined in this Wikipedia entry in English. Wikipedia suggests readers link to his Greek entry and translate to get more information. There are Wikipedia entries for Gyzis in many languages, perhaps because he is considered a major 19th century Greek artist.

Unless an artist is largely or entirely bound to the artistic traditions of his ethnic culture, his personal style when painting representationally will not differ hugely from a number of representational artists from other backgrounds. Which is a long-winded way of stating that Gyzis was essential a Munich School painter, his Greek origin notwithstanding.

Gallery

Eros and the Painter - 1868
This is considered his most famous painting, according to some Internet sites. Maybe it was famous, but I don't think it's his best work.

Girl Washing Her Feet - 1871

Artist's Psyche

Oriental Warrior

Dance of the Nymphs

Historia - allegory

Pan C. Papastathis tobacco products advertising, Munich

The Archangel - study for The Grounding of Faith - 1895

The Spider - 1884
I think this is intriguing, and a lot like Belgian Symbolist painting. It might have influenced Franz Stuck who was still a student when this was painted -- though Gyzis did not become a Munich Academy professor until 1886.

Henryk Siemiradzki, Painter of Large Works

Henryk Hektor Siemiradzki (1843-1902) was Polish, but his family was prominent in Imperial Russia, his father being an army general. As this biography mentions, he first trained in physics and mathematics, but then went on to study art in St. Petersburg.

His best known works are very large, dealing in religious and classical subjects. His style was essentially academic, but usually with lively, not stilted, subjects.

Here are some examples of his work. Click to enlarge.

Gallery

Chopin at the Piano - c.1887
A non-classical subject, but important to Poles.

At the Spring

Roman Idyll (Before the Bath) - 1887
Two examples of smaller paintings.

Nero's Torches - 1877

Christ with Martha and Mary - 1886

Dance Amongst the Swords - 1881
Version in Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Judgement of Paris - 1892

Phryne at the Poseidonia in Eleusis - 1889

Anna Zinkeisen, Doris' Sister

Anna Katrina Zinkeisen (1901-1976) wasn't quite as glamorous as her older sister Doris (who I wrote about here), but she seems to have been the better artist.

Anna's Wikipedia entry is here, and a link dealing with both sisters is here.

Anna could vary her style when called for. Some murals done in the 1930s are busy (as most murals should be) and painted in a mannered way. Her portrait work, on the other hand, was usually solidly, strikingly done, making use of smoothed, slightly simplified surfaces on her subjects' faces, hands, etc.

Gallery

Doris Zinkeisen

Self-Portrait - c. 1944

Diana Wynyard, actress - 1930s
This is not Anna's usual style, but a credible website states that this is her work.

Consuelo Kennedy in Evening Dress - 1937

The Dark Lady - 1938

Elizabeth Allan, actress

Laying the Foundation Stone of Southampton Docks, 1838 - 1938

Mediaeval Lincoln

Sir Archibald Hector McIndoe - c.1944
Plastic Surgeon.

Sir Alexander Fleming - 1958
Posthumous portrait of the discoverer of Penicillin.

Night Duty - 1955

St. John Ambulance Brigade Officer and Nurse - 1955

Julia Heseltine (her daughter)

Air Chief Marshal Sir Denis Smallwood - c. 1975