William John Chamberlayne (1821-1910)
I usually find art of the period rather ho-hum, but I came across these water-colors of Chamberlayne’s today and I really like them. I paint with water-color but I use it more like guache (thick) and mix it with inks, acrylics, markers and color pencils, but I do wish I had the finesse to do it like this:
Water Sprites in a Stream, via Frank T. Zumbach’s Mysterious World
via all-drawings.livejournal.net
Chamberlayne was such a 19th Century gent - a soldier, painter, poet and traveler. Son of the wealthy Chamberlayne family of Cranbury Park, near Winchester in England, he served in the First West India Regiment in the British West Indies and later in West Africa. Later he married a daughter of the Bishop of Barbados. In 1881, he retired the following year, settling with his wife and daughter at Torquay, in Cornwall, where he died in 1910. I can just picture him in his white linen suit with his traveling paint case, easel and fold-up stool, wiping the tropical sweat off his brow with his flowing silk cravat.
Maria Primachenko (1908-1997)
Young Magpie Catches a Grub, 1978
Maria Primochenko inspires me. Although often described as a folk or decorative artist, I find her art transcends those definitions. I love her fluid yet symmetrical patterns, colors, imaginitive renderings and her wonderful titles. Born and living her entire life in the village of Bolotnya, near Chernobyl, she began painting when she was young.
“Once, as a young girl, I was tending a gaggle of geese. When I got with them to a sandy beach, on the bank of the river, after crossing a field dotted with wild flowers, I began to draw real and imaginary flowers with a stick on the sand… Later, I decided to paint the walls of my house using natural pigments. After that I’ve never stopped drawing and painting.”
Her images often арреаred to her in dreams or are rooted in Ukrainian folk legends and fairy tales.
All paintings were found at wikipaintings.org unless otherwise noted.
Monkey and the Glasses, 1937, via Eery Elegance
Seagulls in the Boat, 1965
Seagull in Its Nest, 1965, via The Animalarium
The Little Elephant Who Wanted to be a Sailor, 1973
Four Drunkards Riding a Bird, 1976
An Outer Space Memory, 1977
Savage Hump Shaker, 1977
While This Beast Drinks Poison, A Snake Drinks his Blood, 1982
Dear Cosmonauts, I Give You These Red Poppies, 1983
Wild Bull and Ravens are Friends, 1983
This Beast is Making Magic, 1983
The Threat of War, 1986, via Eery Elegance
Jared French (1905-1988)
The Double, via artodyssey.blogspot.com
A magnificent painter and leading figure in early 20th century American gay culture. Born in New Jersey, French left being a clerk at a Wall Street brokerage firm back in the late 1920s when he met Paul Cadmus, who at the time was a commercial artist. The two became lovers and both began painting (along with friend George Tooker) with egg tempura. At the time, their styles were similar — male bodies in more or less classical forms. But beginning the 1940s, French’s work took on a more symbolic style heavily focused on the unconscious and sexuality — and his work, though forgotten for awhile after the 1960s, still resonates today.
Most of the images for this post are from Elisa’s Reviews and Ramblings, a great site to see many of his works and photos.
Crew (1941), via Reviews and Ramblings
Homesickness (1942)
Strange Man (1943)
Women and Boys (1944)
Three Women and a Lifeguard
State Park (1946), via artodyssey.blogspot.com
Elemental Play
The Sea (1946)
Evasion (1947), via History of Art
Coup de Pied (1953-1959), via reviews and ramblings
Business (1959)
Offended Gods (1960)
Self Portrait, via askart.com
Jerry by Paul Cadmus (1931)
My work has long been concerned with the representation of diverse aspects of man and his universe. At first it was mainly concerned with his physical aspect and his physical universe. Gradually I began to represent aspects of his psyche, until in The Sea (1946) and Evasion (1947), I showed quite clearly my interest in man’s inner reality.
Gjon Mili (1904-1984) - A Worthy Detour
Picasso Draws A Centaur (1949)
I came across these stroboscopic photos of Gjon Mili at Life Magazine, for whom Mili was a photographer for over 50 years. In 1949, Mili met with Picasso to show him his stroboscopic (light) images of ice skaters and Picasso was inspired. Using a flashlight as brush and a dark room as canvas, Picasso went to work as you’ll see. I’ve also included some of Mili’s other famous stroboscopic and multiple exposure images.
(note: Picasso sure knew how to rock a pair of linen shorts!!)
Stroboscopic Study of Nude Descending a Staircase (1942)
Strobe Shot of Nora Kaye Dancing on Pointe (1947)
Stroboscopic of the hands of Russian Conductor Efram Kurtz
Gene Krupka (1941
Martha Graham
Julio de Diego (1900-1979)
via Caldwell Galleries
Thanks to the newly-released (and great!) Time-Life Magazine photo-spread on Gypsy Rose Lee did I learn about this painter. Unfortunately for him, his short-lived marriage to The Burlesque Queen in the late 1940s/early 1950s is what he is remembered for instead of for his art and his rather adventurous life.
Born in Madrid, Diego left home at 15 to apprentice as a scene painter for theaters. He then served in the Spanish Army, including combat in North Africa. After this, he traveled to Paris and Rome to study art and even appeared as an extra in Diaghalev’s Ballet Russes. In 1924, he emigrated to the States, first to New York, and then to Chicago in 1926, where he remained for the next 20 years or so, working as an illustrator and decorative painter. It was in Chicago that he began exhibiting his work at The Art Institute. In the late 1930s, he went to Mexico where he became close friends with Carlos Merida. It was at this time and all throughout the 1940s that his work becomes poignant. He was strongly affected by the Spanish Civil War, World War II and the then nascent nuclear threat.
In addition to all this, Diego was also in two films: the 1925 Portuguese film Flor de España o La historia de un torero and the 1958 American film The Buccaneer. After his divorce from Gypsy Rose Lee, he lived for a short time in New York at the Chelsea Hotel, and then in the mid-1960s moved to Sarasota Florida to join old Chicago friends. It was in Sarasota where he died at the age of 79.
Untitled etching (1940), via Annex Galleries
Victorian Hotel (1941), via Wright Galleries
Race Questions (1943), via Aaron Galleries
They Will Cross the Sea (1943), via Hirschhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden
St. Atomic / from Evils of Atomic Energy series (1948), via Caldwell Gallery
Ceremonial Dancers (1948), via Caldwell Gallery
The Magician / from Evils of Atomic Energy series (1948), via Caldwell Gallery
Blue Print of the Future (1943), Caldwell Gallery, via artnet.com
Untitled lithograph (1947), via Josef Lebovic Callery
Gypsy Rose Lee, her son Erik and Julio de Diego, via life.time.com
via life.time.com
Richard Gerstl (1883-1908)
Self Portrait in Front of a Blue Background, 1905, via wikipaintings.org
This Austrian artist, in my opinion, would have been one of the world’s great painters of the early 20th Century had he not committed suicide at the age of 25 after a failed affair with the wife of his close friend, composer Arnold Schonberg.
When I look at his work I see someone who had he lived to fulfill his potential would have surpassed the works of contemporary neo-impressionists such as Bonnard and Vuillard. His paintings are raw and bold, and extremely revolutionary for the time in Vienna. Christian Griepenkerl, his professor at the Academy of Fine Art Vienna, known for his painterly mythological works of giant scale, slammed Gerstl’s work by proclaiming “the way you paint - I piss in the snow!”
As for the sad, grisly details of his death — after Matilda Schonberg ended the affair and returned to her husband, Gerstl went to his studio one night and set fire to his paintings and papers (some of which fortunately survived) and then hung himself in front of a full-length mirror while somehow also managing to stab himself. After his death, his family put his works into storage; and fortunately for us, his brother Alois, took them out of storage and showed them to a gallery in the 1930s.
Side note: His professor Grienpenkerl is also known not only for having instructed Egon Schiele, but also for having rejected Hitler’s application to study at The Academy. His remarks on Hitler’s submitted artwork was “Sample drawing unsatisfactory. Too few heads.”
All the images here are from wikipaintings.org unless otherwise noted.
The Fey Sisters (1905)
Mother and Daughter (1906)
Smaragda Berg (1906)
Woman with Feathered Hat (1906)
Emile Gerstl / Father (1907)
Matilda Schonberg (1907) - Note: this is the woman with whom he had the unfortunate affair.
Arnold Schonberg (1907) — note: The husband
Sitting Nude in Studio (1907/8), via terminartors.com
Self Portrait (1908)
Self Portrait Laughing (1908) — I get the strange awful feeling that he painted this shortly before hanging himself.
Mid-Century Polish Painters: Wroblewski, Jarema & Caziel
ANDRZEJ WROBLEWSKI (1927-57)
The Blue Chauffeur (1948)
Execution VIII/Rozstrzelanie VIII, National Museum Warsaw
Torn Man 1, Andrzej Wroblewski, 1956, National Museum in Warsaw
MARIA JAREMA (1908-1958)
Dwie Glowy (1950), monotype, via Muzeum Norodowe w Kielcach
Glowy, monotype (1954)
Filtry XV (1957), Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa
Penetracje (1957), monotype, Muzeum Narodowe, Warszawa
Words
Portrait via hunhe.tumblr.com
KAZIMIERZ ZIELENKIEWICZ /aka Caziel (1906-1988)
Composition c. 1951, via Whitford Fine Art
Composition c. 1967, via Whitford Fine Art
Verticality
Green Stripe (Color Painting), Olga Rozanova, 1917 via wikipaintings.org
While looking at art tonight, I came across this painting by Olga Rozanova and was so taken with its elemental vertical thrust. So I looked for other paintings with a similar direct verticality. I couldn’t find many of them but here are a few. If you know of any, let me know and I’ll add them to the post.
Blue Line, Georgia O’Keefe, via wikipaintings.org
Stations of the Cross-First Station, Barnett Newman, 1958, via wikipaintings.org
Drawing of Curves, Frantisek Kupka, 1926
Five White Lines (Vertical) Black Background, Tony Tuckson, 1970-73
Dogs + Art
Cave Painting of a Man and a Dog, Altamira Spain (date unknown)
I love dogs, and I love art; so tonight’s focus will be on dogs in art over the past few millenia or so.
Sketch of a Dog (on limestone), New Kingdom, Ramesside, Dynasty 19-20; ca. 1295-1070 b.c.; via The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Howling Dog, Mexico; Remojadas; 5th-6th Century ceramic, via The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Illustration from Le Livre de Chasse, illuminated manuscript, 14th-15th centuries, via The Blanton Blog
Detail of Jan Van Ecyk’s The Arnolfini Marriage (1434)
A Drawing of the Comparative Anatomy of the Legs of a Man and A Dog,
Leonardo Da Vinci (1500)
Greyhound, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1793)
Hound and Bitch in a Landscape, George Stubbs (1792)
The Dog, Francisco Goya
Greyhounds of Comte de Choiseul, Gustave Courbet (1866)
Still Life with Three Puppies, Paul Gauguin (1888)
Little Dog, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1888)
Among the Lillies, Paul Gauguin (1893)
Dog Lying in the Snow, Franz March (1911)
Lady with a Dog, Portrait of Esther Schwartzmann, Nathan Altman (1911)
Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (1912), Giacomo Balla
Woman with a Greyhound (Edith Schiele), Egon Schiele (1916)
Woman with Dog, Francis Picabia (1924-26)
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Itzcuintli Dog with Me, Frida Kahlo (1938)
Girl with White Dog (1951-52), Lucien Freud
Buffet Henri II avec Chien et Fauteuil (1959), Pablo Picasso
Wolf Dog, Jamie Wyeth (1976)
Dog, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1982)
Albert Houthuesen (1903-1979)
White Face Clown Against Cavernous Backcloth, © 1972
Not a particularly well-known painter here in the States; but thanks to Richard Nathanson, maker of the 1976 BBC documentary on Houtheusen as well as his more recent biography, “Walk to the Moon: The Story of Albert Houthuesen” (2008), Houthuesen’s work is becoming more visible.
Dutch-born and London-bred, Houthuesen studied at the Royal College of Art along with Henry Moore, Edward Burra and Ceri Richards among others, but thereafter, led a very reclusive life devoted to painting. His upbringing was tragic. His father was a painter and often in financial difficulties; at the age of 8, his mother in a rage hit his father in the head with a heeled shoe, the wound of which ultimately led to his father’s death a week later. The crime was never reported, and his mother, who lived a long time, spent the rest of her years blaming Albert for killing his father. Consequently and perhaps also by nature, he was a extremely sensitive man, who isolated himself, but fortunately continued painting.
All of the images in this post as well as a lot of information can be found at Richard Nathanson’s website devoted to the life and works of Houthuesen.
The Miner, © 1938, Albert Houthuesen Trust, via houthuesen.com
Sentinel Rocks, © Late 1950s, Albert Houthuesen Trust
Icarus, © 1962-67, Albert Houthuesen Trust
September Moon, © 1971-72, Albert Houthuesen Trust
Clown Conjurer, © 1967, Albert Houthuesen Trust
Walk to the Moon Childhood Admonishment, © 1975, Albert Houthuesen Trust
