Two Martyred Deaths and a Crossing

Posted on December 3, 2021 by maryannadair
Jacques Louis David | Death of Marat
Jacques Louis David | Napoleon Bonaparte
Jacques Louis David | Death of Bara
Jacques-Louis David – Laure-Emilie-Felicite David, Baronne Meunier (1812)

French painter Jacques-Louis David, was born into a prosperous French family in Paris on 30 August, 1748. When he was nine, his father was killed in a duel and his mother left him with his well-off architect uncles. They saw to it that David received an excellent education at the Collège des Quatre-Nations, University of Paris; but he was never a good student. David had a facial tumour that impeded his speech, and he was always preoccupied with drawing. Despite the family wanting him to study architecture, David chose to study art from François Boucher (1703–1770), who was also a distant relative. He later studied with Joseph-Marie Vien. There, David attended the Royal Academy, based in what is now the Louvre.

  • After winning the Prix de Rome, David went to Italy, where he studied the works of 17th Century masters such as Caravaggio. During the trip, David also studied the High Renaissance painters, such as Raphael, making a profound and lasting impression on the young French artist.

David became an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794), and was effectively a dictator of the arts under the French Republic. Imprisoned after Robespierre’s fall from power, David aligned himself with yet another political regime upon his release: that of Napoleon, the First Consul of France. David developed his Empire style, notable for its use of warm Venetian colours. After Napoleon’s fall from Imperial power and the Bourbon revival, David exiled himself to Brussels. He later moved to the Netherlands, where he remained until his death on 29 December, 1825. Featured here are three of his works:

  • The Death of Marat (1793) features the murdered French revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat (24 May 1743 – 13 July 1793). It is one of the most famous images of the French Revolution. The painting shows the radical journalist lying dead in his bath, after his murder, by Charlotte Corday. Marat was one of the leaders of the Montagnards, the radical faction ascendant in French politics during the Reign of Terror, until the Thermidorian Reaction. Corday was a Girondin, from a minor aristocratic family and a political enemy of Marat; who blamed him for the September Massacre. She gained entrance to Marat’s rooms, with a note promising details of a counter-revolutionary ring in Caen, and then fatally stabbed Marat. She was later tried and executed for the murder. Painted in the months after Marat’s murder, the painting is displayed in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium. A replica created by the artist’s studio, is on display at the Louvre.
  • Napoleon Crossing the Saint-Bernard Pass. After Napoleon Bonaparte’s successful coup d’état in 1799, as First Consul he commissioned David to commemorate his daring crossing of the Alps. The crossing of the St. Bernard Pass had allowed the French to surprise the Austrian army, and win victory at the Battle of Marengo, on 14 June, 1800. Although Napoleon had crossed the Alps on a mule, he requested that he be portrayed “calm upon a fiery steed”. After the proclamation of the Empire in 1804, David became the official court painter of the regime.
  • The Death of Bara (1794) is an incomplete painting now in the Musée Calvet in Avignon. Joseph Bara, was a young drummer in the army of the French First Republic, who was killed by the Vendéens. He became a hero and martyr of the French Revolution. Along with The Death of Marat, and The Last Moments of Michel Lepeletier, the painting formed part of a series by David, showing such martyrs. There is also an anonymous contemporary copy dating to 1794, now in the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, and exhibited at the Musée de la Révolution française.

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BMD Was Your Friend | BMD Is No More

Posted on November 27, 2021 by maryannadair

New Zealand legendary street art collective BMD is no more. Known for their distinctive wall markings, the two Taranaki artists behind BMD parted ways back in 2015. Throughout their partnership they chose to conceal their individual identities. They once cited the reason for their anonymity was an effort to have their work judged for what it was and not for who the artists were. As part of the separation process, they revealed their identities as Damin Radford-Scott aka ‘Milarky’ and Andrew J. Steel.

The Auckland-based contemporary art duo worked together from 2005. They spent ten years building their brand into an internationally recognised mark often featuring ‘Keith Haring -esque‘ collages of body parts, both human and animalistic and often including warped animals and cartoon objects.

Friends since the two attended Devon Intermediate School in New Plymouth, they worked across New Zealand, Australia and Bali, getting aboard scaffolding and creating sky-high murals. Since their split, they have moved in different creative directions and agreed the split had been on the cards for quite some time.

  • Radford-Scott, (born 1987), works independently under the artistic moniker of “Milarky”. He said that BMD was the perfect platform to grow themselves creatively. As part of their success, they amasssed a throng of contracts, a healthy public following and received second place at the New Zealand Interior Awards for an installation entitled Surface.

For Radford-Scott, drawing is something he has always done, whether it be street art or gallery work. After High School, Radford-Scott moved to Wellington, but he didn’t immediately pursue his passion for art. He originally studied Physics and German before studying Fine Arts at University. Radford-Scott is now located back in New Plymouth. He is selling his work in galleries and working towards solo exhibitions, based on the ideas he has been researching, whether it be environmental issues; or the impact humans are having, along with his most recent idea, Nomadism. This concept became his Master’s Degree thesis.

  • Steel (born 1987) is also a New Zealand contemporary artist who focuses on the art of story telling. Over his career he has worked with and gained recognition from leading art collectors, interior designers, architects and publishers. Steel produces from his studio in Auckland, and has created work in Los Angeles, Hawaii, across Australia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Iceland.

Steel works across the mediums of public art, private interiors, fine artwork, letterpress, land, body and digital works. As an artist with a post-graduate diploma in Science, he has fun experimenting with various Resene specialist products. He claims and recommends Resene, is the perfect paint for his art. For outside mural work, it stands the test of time. If it’s interior work, the finish is always perfect. It simply is the best product.”With Resene Write-on Wall Paint, he sees potential for a colouring-in wall that allows the public to collaborate and bring colour to his painted outlines – time and time again. A simple wipe and the canvas is clean and ready to go again. He has also experimented with Resene Waterborne Aquapel, a water-repellent coating, which protects concrete from the natural effects of water. Painting the pavements with art, that stays invisible until the rain falls.

Private commissions have come thick and fast from residents who appreciate Steel’s work. His signature creatures and objects now decorate the walls of design studios, cafes and restaurants alike, including the stylish headquarters of fashion label I Love Ugly.

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I Don’t Work, I Don’t Do Anything, But I Am Indispensable

Posted on November 22, 2021 by maryannadair
Valentin Serov | Unfinished Portrait of Diaghilev (1900)
Alexandre Benois | Portrait of Serge Diaghelev over Petrushka reveals a scene from Le Pavillon d’Amide 1934
Leon Bakst Portrait of Sergei Diaghilev with his Nanny (1904-1906)

“I Don’t Work, I Don’t Do Anything, But I am Indispensable“, is how Russian art critic, patron, and ballet impresario, Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev, described himself. Sergei Diaghilev was born on 19 March, 1872, in Selishchi. His mother died soon after his birth. Diaghilev entered the St Petersburg Imperial University, and took private music lessons from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Diaghilev was introduced to a circle of art-loving friends who called themselves The Nevsky Pickwickians. They included Alexandre Benois, Walter Nouvel, Konstantin Somov, and Léon Bakst.

Seven months after graduation Diaghilev opened his first art exhibition. By 1897, he had run several art exhibitions introducing Russian and Finnish contemporary artists to the local public at the Stieglitz Academy with works of Mikhail Vrubel, Valentin Serov, and Isaac Levitan. He then ran an exhibition of young Russian painters in Germany. Though he had no private fortune, Diaghilev managed to gain support from Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich and later, Nicholas II.

  • The ‘Mir iskusstva’ (World of Art) magazine was established in 1898, by Diaghilev with some of his Nevsky Pickwickian friends including Benois, Somov, Dmitry Filosofov, Bakst, and Eugene Lansere. As art-director, Diaghilev created its style and design, and wrote critical essays for the magazine.
  • In 1899, Prince Serge Wolkonsky received directorship of all Imperial theatres. As editor-in-chief of the Annual of the Imperial Theatres, Diaghilev invited many of his fellow members of ‘Mir iskusstva’ (Benois, Bakst, Serov, and Lansere) to work on the magazine.

Diaghilev began to frequent the Imperial Ballet, which staged productions at various Imperial theatres. The ballerinas were amazed by ‘this dandy with a grey lock’ and soon nicknamed him ‘Chinchilla’. Once again, Diaghilev brought the members of ‘Mir iskusstva’ with him to the Imperial theatres, working on decorations and costumes. By 1900, Wolkonsky entrusted Diaghilev with the staging of Léo Delibes’ ballet Sylvia, a favourite of Benois. Diaghilev’s success saw him to the top of the art and society elite.

A 1906 exhibition inspired by Diaghilev presented Russian music to Paris, the world’s culture capital. The following year, he organised ‘Concerts historiques russes’ starring Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alexander Glazunov, and Feodor Chaliapin. The tour was supported and sponsored by Diaghilev’s royal patrons Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich of Russia and Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

  • In spring 1908 Diaghilev mounted a production of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, starring Feodor Chaliapin, at the Paris Opéra, with sets designed by Bakst and Benois.
  • In 1909, the first ballet Saison Russes took place and its success overwhelmed even the artists themselves. Diaghilev’s innovation was to synthetize dance, music and visual arts with set decorations and costumes into a single performance. The first season included Le Pavillon d’Armide, Polovtsian Dances, Nuit d’Egypte, Les Sylphides, and operas Boris Godunov, The Maid of Pskov and the first part of the Ruslan and Lyudmila. The ballets followed the operas and were performed after the second intermission. Leading dancers Vaslav Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova, immediately became world-known stars.

During these years, Diaghilev’s stagings included several compositions by the late Rimsky-Korsakov, such as the operas, The Maid of Pskov, May Night, and The Golden Cockerel. Diaghilev commissioned ballet music from composers such as Claude Debussy (Jeux, 1913), Maurice Ravel (Daphnis et Chloé, 1912), Erik Satie (Parade, 1917), Ottorino Respighi (La Boutique fantasque, 1919); Francis Poulenc (Les biches, 1923) and played a decisive role in the career of Sergei Prokofiev (Scythian Suite; Chout, and The Prodigal Son);  and others. His choreographer Michel Fokine often adapted the music for ballet, and the artistic director for the Ballets Russes was Léon Bakst.

  • Together they developed a more complicated form of ballet with show-elements intended to appeal to the general public, rather than solely for the aristocracy. The exotic appeal of the Ballets Russes had an effect on Fauvist painters and the nascent Art Deco style. Coco Chanel is said to have stated that “Diaghilev invented Russia for foreigners.”

Perhaps Diaghilev’s most notable composer-collaborator, however, was Igor Stravinsky. Diaghilev heard Stravinsky’s early orchestral works Fireworks and Scherzo fantastique, and was impressed. In 1910, he commissioned his first score from Stravinsky, The Firebird. Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913) followed shortly afterwards, and the two also worked together on Les noces (1923) and Pulcinella (1920) together with Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, who designed the costumes and the set.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Diaghilev stayed abroad. The new Soviet regime,  condemned him in perpetuity as an especially insidious example of “bourgeois decadence”. Soviet art historians wrote him out of the picture for more than 60 years.

  • The later years of the Ballets Russes were often considered too “intellectual”, too “stylish” and seldom had the unconditional success of the first few seasons, although younger choreographers like George Balanchine hit their stride with the Ballets Russes.
  • Diaghilev’s life and the Ballets Russes were inextricably intertwined. His most famous lover was Nijinsky. However, out of all Diaghilev’s lovers, only Léonide Massine, who replaced Nijinsky, provided him with “so many moments of happiness or anguish”.
  • Diaghilev dismissed Nijinsky summarily from the Ballets Russes after the dancer’s marriage in 1913. Nijinsky appeared again with the company, but the old relationship between the men was never re-established; moreover, Nijinsky’s magic as a dancer was much diminished by incipient mental illness. Their last meeting was after Nijinsky’s mind had given way, and he appeared not to recognise his former lover.

Throughout his life, Diaghilev was severely afraid of dying in water, and avoided traveling by boat. He died of diabetes, in Venice, on 19 August, 1929, and his tomb is on the nearby island of San Michele, in the Orthodox section, near to the grave of Igor Stravinsky.

  •  The film The Red Shoes is reported to be a thinly disguised dramatization of the Ballets Russes.

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Source: Melville, Joy. Diaghilev and Friends. Haus: London, 2009

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The Riot of Stravinsky’s Spring

Posted on November 17, 2021 by maryannadair
Igor Stravinsky (1949) by his wife Vera
Jacques-Emile Blanche | Igor Stravinsky (1915)
Joan Miro | 80th birthday card for Igor Stravinsky
Joan Miro | 80th birthday card for Igor Stravinsky
Roddy McDowall | Igor Stravinsky in the library 1218 North Wetherly Drive, (March 1967)

Russian composer, pianist and conductor, Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was born on 17 June, 1882, in Oranienbaum, on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland, 25 miles west of St. Petersburg.  The Stravinsky family was of Polish and Russian heritage, descended from a long line of Polish grandees, senators and landowners.

Igor Stravinsky showed an interest in music from an early age and began piano lessons at the age nine, followed by tuition in music theory and composition. Despite Stravinsky’s enthusiasm and ability, his parents wanted him to study law.  In 1901, he enrolled at the University of St Petersburg, to study criminal law and legal philosophy. However, his interest waned and he did not complete it. Stravinsky met fellow student Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov, the youngest son of renowned Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and professor at the St Petersburg Conservatory of Music. Stravinsky spent the summer of 1902 with the Rimsky-Korsakovs in Heidelberg, Germany after the untimely death of his father from cancer. By 1905, two significant events occurred for the 23 year old Stravinsky. In August, 1905, announced his engagement to his first cousin, Katherine Gavrylivna Nosenko. He also began studying with Rimsky-Korsakov and came to regard him as a second father. In spite of the Orthodox Church’s opposition to marriage between first cousins, the couple married on 23 January 1906. Stravinsky and Nosenko’s first two children, Fyodor (1907) and Ludmila (1908) were born. He continued his music lessons until Rimsky-Korsakov’s death in 1908.

While his wife was expecting their third child, Stravinsky spent the summer in La Baule in western France. In September, 1910, they moved to Clarens, Switzerland where their second son, Sviatoslav (Soulima), was born. Their fourth child Marie Milène was born on 15 January, 1914. After her delivery, Nosenko contracted tuberculosis (TB) and was confined to a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps.

  • Over the next five years, Stravinsky composed many successful compositions and opus works including Scherzo fantastique, Op. 3 and Feu d’artifice (Fireworks), Op. 4.
  • Russian impresario and owner of the Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev, was so impressed with Stravinsky’s compositions, he commissioned Stravinsky to compose a score for Diaghilev’s forthcoming 1910 opera and ballet season in Paris. This was for a new ballet production based on the Russian fairytale of the Firebird. At 50 minutes in length, The Firebird premiered at the Opera de Paris on 25 June, 1910, to widespread critical acclaim and Stravinsky became an overnight sensation.
  • Stravinsky’s compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky for two more ballets which were first performed in Paris by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The ballet Petrushka, based on a Russian folk tale about two puppets premiered at Théâtre du Châtelet, in June, 1911; and The Rite of Spring in 1913.
  • The Rite of Spring, caused a sensation among critics, fellow composers, and concertgoers. Based on an original idea offered to Stravinsky by Nicholas Roerich, the production featured a series of primitive rituals celebrating the advent of Spring, after which a young girl is chosen as a sacrificial victim to the sun god Yarilo, and dances herself to death. The radical nature of the music and choreography caused a near-riot at its premiere at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May, 1913.

Shortly after the premiere, Stravinsky contracted typhoid from eating bad oysters and he was confined to a Paris nursing home. He left in July 1913. For the rest of the summer he focused on his first opera, The Nightingale (Le Rossignol), based on the same-titled story by Hans Christian Andersen, which he had started in 1908. Diaghilev agreed for the Ballets Russes to stage it.

  • In December 1915, Stravinsky made his conducting debut at two concerts in aid of the Red Cross with The Firebird. World War I (WWI) and the Russian Revolution evolved in 1917, preventing Stravinsky from returning to his homeland.
  • 15 May, 1920, saw the premiere of the Ballets Russes, production of Pulcinella in Paris. Stravinsky and his family left Switzerland for France, and sought a permanent home in Paris. The famous Parisian couturière Coco Chanel invited the family to live in her Paris mansion until they found their own residence. They accepted and arrived in September. In December 1920, Chanel secured a guarantee for a revival production of The Rite of Spring by the Ballets Russes, donating an anonymous gift of 300,000 francs, to Diaghilev.

Shortly after, in February 1921, Stravinsky met Vera de Bosset in Paris, while she was married to painter and stage designer Serge Sudeikin, and they began an affair that led to de Bosset leaving her husband. From then, until his wife’s death in 1939, Stravinsky led a double life, dividing his time between his family in Switzerland, and Vera in Paris and on tour.

The following years saw Stravinsky tour Europe and the United States (US). His first US commission was Apollo, a 30 minute ballet score for a festival at the Library of Congress which premiered in 1928. During his later years in Paris, Stravinsky developed many professional relationships with key people in the US. He finally left Paris for Annemasse, near the Swiss border, to be near his family, after his wife and daughters Ludmila and Milena contracted TB and were in a sanatorium. Ludmila died in late 1938, followed by his wife of 33 years.

Stravinsky arrived in New York City on 30 September, 1939. His long-term lover, Vera, arrived in January, 1940 and the couple married on 9 March, in Bedford, Massachusetts. The two moved into a home in Beverly Hills, California before they settled in Hollywood from 1941. On 28 December 1945, Stravinsky and Vera became naturalized US citizens.

  • On 18 March, 1971, Stravinsky was taken to Lennox Hill Hospital where he stayed for ten days, with pulmonary oedema. After a period of well being, the oedema returned, and Stravinsky soon stopped eating and drinking, and died at 5:20 a.m. on 6 April, at the age of 88.
  • A funeral service was held three days later. As per his wishes, Stravinsky was buried in the Russian corner of the cemetery island of San Michele in Venice, Italy; several yards from the tomb of Sergei Diaghilev; having been brought there by gondola after a service at Santi Giovanni e Paolo.

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Source: Craft, Robert. A Stravinsky Scrapbook 1940-1971. Thames & Hudson: London, 1983

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So Tell me, Did she read the name I carved with many vows?

Posted on November 12, 2021 by maryannadair
William Maw Egley | The Talking Oak
William Maw Egley | Omnibus Life in London (1859)

Victorian English artist William Maw Egley was born in London, in 1826. He was the son of miniaturist artist William Egley, who was young Egley’s first tutor. Egley’s early works were illustrations of literary subjects typical of the period, which were similar to the work of ‘The Clique‘, a group of English artists formed by Richard Dadd in the late 1830s.

‘The Clique‘ was the first group to reject the Royal Academy’s high art, stating, ‘it’s backward-looking tradition was not relevant to genre painting and the requirements of contemporary art’. The group’s view was that art should be ‘judged by the public, not by the conformity of academic ideals’.

Members of The Clique included Augustus Egg, Henry Nelson O’Neil, John Phillip, Edward Matthew Ward, Alfred Elmore, and William Powell Frith. Frith hired Egley to add background effects to his own work. Soon after, Egley developed a style influenced by Frith, including domestic and childhood subjects.

  • Most of Egley’s paintings were genre scenes of urban and rural life, depicting subjects of harvest festivals and contemporary fashions. His best-known painting, Omnibus Life in London (1859)  [featured above], is a comic scene of people squashed together in the busy, cramped public transport of the Victorian era.

In the 1850s, most members of The Clique became inveterate enemies of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, believing their art to be willfully eccentric and primitivist. Frith and O’Neil wrote many attacks on Pre-Raphaelite principles. However, Egg became a friend and supporter of William Holman Hunt.

  • Although Egley flirted only briefly with Pre-Raphaelite subjects and ideas, the intense detail of The Talking Oak, (1857) [featured above], with its meticulously high finish, reflects the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite technique. This painting was exhibited at the British Institution in 1857, with the following quotation from Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

But tell me, did she read the name
I carved with many vows?

By the 1860s, Egley adopted the fashion for romanticised 18th-century subjects. Though he produced a very large number of reliably salable paintings, his work was never critically admired. William Maw Egley died on 20 February, 1916.

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Rayonism + Designs for the Ballets Russes | The Work of Mikhail Larionov

Posted on November 7, 2021 by maryannadair
Mikhail Larionov | Curtain design for Midnight Sun (1915)
Mikhail Larionov | Costume design for a Young Peasant Girl in Midnight Sun (1915)
Mikhail Larionov | Setting for Contes Russes (1917)
Mikhail Larionov | Costume for La Femme du Vieux Bouiton in ballet ‘Chout’

Avant-garde Russian painter Mikhail Fyodorovich Larionov was born at Tiraspol, near Odessa, in the Russian Empire on June 3, 1881. In 1898, Larionov entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under Isaac Levitan and Valentin Serov. However, he was suspended three times for his radical outlook. Two years later,  Larionov met Natalia Goncharova in 1900, and formed a lifelong relationship with her.

From 1902, Larionov’s art style followed that of Impressionism. But, after a visit to Paris in 1906, Larionov moved into Post-Impressionism and then a Neo-primitive style which derived partly from Russian sign painting. In 1908, he staged the Golden Fleece exhibition in Moscow, which included paintings by international avant-garde artists such as Henri Matisse, Andre Derain, Georges Braque, Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh.

  • Larionov was a founding member of two important Russian artistic groups, Jack of Diamonds, (1909–1911) and; the more radical Donkey’s Tail, (1912–1913). In 1913, Larionov created Rayonism, which was the first creation of near-abstract art in Russia.

In 1915, Larionov left Russia and worked with the ballet owner Sergei Diaghilev in Paris on the productions of the Ballets Russes. Featured here are a theatrical curtain and a costume design for Ballets Russes ‘Midnight Sun‘ (1915); a backdrop setting for Contes Russes (1917); and a watercolour and charcoal sketch for a character’s costume for La Femme du Vieux Bouffon for the ballet ‘Chout’.

Larionov spent the rest of his life in France and obtained French citizenship. He died, aged 82, in the Paris suburb of Fontenay-aux-Roses, on May 10, 1964.

  • In 2001, the Central Bank of Transnistria minted a silver coin honouring Larionov as part of a series of memorable coins called The Outstanding People of Pridnestrovie.

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Source: Garafola, Lynn and Van Norman Baer, Nancy. The Ballets Russes and Its World. Yale University Press, 1999.
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Yasemeen, “I Wontner Now”

Posted on November 2, 2021 by maryannadair

William Clarke Wontner | Yasemeen from The Arabian Nights 1919 126x75cmYasemeen from Arabian Nights (1919)

English portrait painter William Clarke Wontner was born in Stockwell, Surrey, on 17 January 1857. Wontner received his earliest art education from his father, William Hoff Wontner, an architect, designer and renderer. Under his father’s tuition, he worked with a family friend, John William Godward, who was a notable painter in the Greco-Roman style. Godward was only five years older than Wontner, so the pair became good friends.

  • In around 1885, Wontner began teaching at the St John’s Wood Art School, after he had moved to Hamilton Garden Square. As an artist steeped in Academic Classicism and Romanticism, he was a minor painter, who became part of the Neo-classical art movement in England. This was led by Alma-Tadema, whose style favoured seductively languorous women against classical or oriental marbled backdrops.

Developing a similar style to Alma-Tadema, Wontner, faithfully rendered fabrics and draped them over Anglo-European models which created an air of Orientalism. Wontner’s paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1879, and also at the Society of British Artists; and at the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours. When the Grosvenor Gallery closed in 1890, Wontner exhibited at the New Gallery.

  • On 7 June, 1894, at St. Dominic’s Priory Church, Naverstock Hill, Hampstead, Wontner married Jessie Marguerite Keene (1872–1950), a daughter of Charles Joseph Keene. The couple had no children. They moved to Ripple, Worcestershire, and remained there until Wontner died on 23 September 1930 at the Worcester Infirmary. He was buried at Ripple three days later.

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A Trail Through Antiquity With Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Posted on October 29, 2021 by maryannadair
Lawrence Alma-Tadema | The Way to the Temple
Lawrence Alma-Tadema | Roses of Heliogabalus
Lawrence Alma-Tadema | Portrait of Miss MacWhirter
Lawrence Alma-Tadema | Love’s Jewelled Fetter
Lawrence Alma Tadema – Vintage Festival (1871)

Dutch-born painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, was born Lourens Alma Tadema, on 8 January, 1836, in Dronryp, in the northern province of Friesland, in the Netherlands. At the age of two, the Tadema family moved to the nearby city of Leeuwarden, where two years later, his father died; leaving his mother with five children: Lourens, his sister, and three boys from his father’s first marriage. It was intended that Alma-Tadema would become a lawyer; but in 1851 at the age of 15, he suffered a physical and mental breakdown through consumption and given only a short time to live. However, he recovered and decided to pursue a career as an artist.

In 1852, Alma-Tadema entered the Royal Academy of Antwerp in Belgium where he studied early Dutch and Flemish art and won several awards. Through his tutors, he was encouraged to depict historical accuracy in his paintings; a trait for which Alma-Tadema became known for, especially his portrayal of marble and variegated granite in his paintings.

After his arrival in England, where he was to spend the rest of his life, Alma-Tadema’s career was one of continued success, becoming one of the most famous and acknowledged, highly paid and rewarded artists of his time. By 1871, he had met and befriended most of the major Pre-Raphaelite painters. Their influence helped brighten his palette; with varied hues and lightened brushwork.

  • In 1872, Alma-Tadema and his wife travelled for five and a half months through Brussels, Germany and Italy. He visited ancient ruins and purchased several photographs, to use as material for the completion of his paintings.
  • Back in England, in 1873, Queen Victoria made Alma-Tadema and his wife the last British Denizens (akin to becoming British citizens).
  • Further trips to Italy occurred in January 1876, where he rented a studio in Rome. The family returned to London in April, visiting the Parisian Salon on their way back.
  • On 19 June, 1879, Alma-Tadema was made a Royal Academician.
  • Three years later, a major retrospective of his 185 artworks was organised at the Grosvenor Gallery in London.
  • The following year, in 1883, Alma-Tadema returned to Rome and Pompeii, where further excavations had taken place since his last visit. These excursions gave him an ample source of subject matter as he began to further his knowledge of daily Roman life. At times, however, he integrated so many objects into his paintings that some critics said they resembled museum catalogues.

Alma-Tadema is considered one of the most popular classical-subject Victorian painters. He is famous for his depictions of the luxury and decadence of the Roman Empire, with languorous figures, set in fabulous marbled interiors, or against a backdrop of dazzling blue Mediterranean Sea and sky. Although Alma-Tadema’s fame rests on his paintings set in antiquity, he also painted portraits, landscapes and watercolours, and produced some etchings. The images included here are:

  • The Way to the Temple (1882) [Oil on canvas, Diploma Work accepted 1882]. A priestess of ancient Greece sits before a Doric temple selling votive statuettes while a Dionysian procession of the female followers dance and play music in the temple beyond.
  •  The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888) is one of his most famous paintings, based on an episode from the life of the debauched Roman Emperor Elagabalus (Heliogabalus). It depicts the Emperor suffocating his guests at an orgy, under a cascade of rose petals. (The blossoms depicted were sent weekly to Alma-Tadema’s London studio from the French Riviera for four months during the winter of 1887–1888).
  • Also painted that year, Portrait of Miss MacWhirter (1888). The sitter later married the painter Charles Sims. The small full-length artwork was shown in the London Coronation Exhibition in 1911.
  • Lastly, Love’s Jewelled Fetter also known as The Betrothal Ring [panel completed in 1895].

Alma-Tadema was a robust, fun-loving extrovert and a rather portly gentleman. There was not a hint of the delicate artist about him; he was a cheerful lover of wine, women, and parties. Alma-Tadema’s demeanor varied from a consummate professional to the characteristics of a child, with a youthful sense of mischief for practical jokes and sudden bursts of bad temper, coupled with an engaging smile. He was also referred to as being a diligent, perfectionist; and a somewhat obsessive and pedantic worker. Alma-Tadema was an excellent businessman; and one of the wealthiest artists of the 19th century. However, his output decreased with time, partly due to his health; and his obsession with decorating his new home, to which he moved into in 1883. Nevertheless, he continued to exhibit and received many accolades, including the Medal of Honour at the Paris Exposition Universelle (1889), honorary membership of the Oxford University Dramatic Society (1890), and the Great Gold Medal at the International Exposition in Brussels (1897). In 1899, he was knighted in England, (only the 8th artist from Europe to receive this honour). He assisted with the organisation of the British section at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris; and exhibited two works which earned him the Grand Prix Diploma. He also assisted with the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.

  • Alma-Tadema was very active with theatre design and production, designing many costumes. He also designed furniture in a Pompeian or Egyptian style. As a grief-stricken widower, Alma-Tadema outlived his second wife by less than three years. In the summer of 1912, his daughter Anna took him to Kaiserhof Spa, Wiesbaden, Germany, to undergo treatment for a stomach ulcer. Alma-Tadema died there on 28 June, 1912, at the age of 76. He is buried in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

Though admired for his draftsmanship and depictions of Classical antiquity, Alma-Tadema’s work fell into disrepute after his death, and only since the 1960s has it been re-evaluated for its importance within 19th Century Victorian British art.

Long may the rose petals fall on the way to the temple.

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Source: Swanson, V. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. London, 1977
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The Pictures of Dorien Leigh

Posted on October 24, 2021 by maryannadair

This has been a tough challenge, but I have not been able find any information about the photographer Dorien Leigh, whose photographs appear in the 1939 edition of The Modern Pictorial World Atlas, published by the Sun News-Pictorial, Melbourne, Australia. The atlas contains 64 pages of maps in full colour, and 120 pp. gazetteer, text and index. It also contains 69 photographs in gravure of the ‘People of the Earth’ attributed to photographic contributors, E.N.A., Blue Star, and Dorien Leigh.

The ‘gravure’ mentioned is a photographic process short for photogravure, which is an intaglio print-making or photo-mechanical process where a copper plate is grained and then coated with a light-sensitive gelatin tissue which had been exposed to a film positive, and then etched.

  • The eight images featured above are attributed to Leigh and include a young Sudanese woman, an Australian indigenous man; and an old man from Morocco. Some have accompanying text, describing the scene. These include:

The Storywriter: An author at work in the East Indies. A small child of Bali, the island in the Dutch East Indies, (now Indonesaia) watches absorbed; while an elder writes a story on a palm leaf, pricking out the characters with a curiously-shaped knife for a “pen” and reciting his tale as he works.

A West Madi hunter from the source of the Nile. The man from Albert Nyanza is shown hunting with bow and arrow; and carrying a long hunting horn, which plays only two notes – one an octave above the other. Albert Nyanza is now known as Lake Albert, or Lake Mobutu Sese Seko, northernmost of the lakes in the Western Rift Valley, in east-central Africa, on the border between Congo (Kinshasa) and Uganda.

Bathing in the Holy River at the City of Temples and Shrines. Benares is a mecca of the Hindus and thousands of pilgrims visit it every year to bathe in the Holy River Ganges. The Hindus worship the gods Shiva, the destroyer; and Vishnu, the preserver; and observe a very rigid caste system. Benares is now known as Varanasi, a city in Northern India. The city is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and is not only the spiritual capital of India, but also the holiest of seven sacred cities in Hinduism, and it played a significant role in the development of Buddhism.

An indigenous North American Moqui Indian. The Moqui, or Pueblo Indians lived in Apache county, northeastern Arizona. They were located on what is known as the Moqui reservation, their old lands were set aside to them out of the Navajo reservation by proclamation on December 16, 1882. The name, which they call themselves is Ho-pi or Ho-pi-tuh-le-nyu-muh meaning “peaceful people”. The Zuñi knew them in 1540 and prior as the A-mo-kwi. The Spaniards changed this to Moqui or Moki. However, in Moqui language, moki means “dead”.

A Hukul man of Ruthenia. Following the partitions of Poland-Lithuania in the late 18th century, Rusyn-inhabited lands were divided between the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus and much of Ukraine); and the Austrian, later Austro-Hungarian, Empire (present-day western Ukraine, southeastern Poland, and northeastern Slovakia). In the course of the “long” 19th century (1780s–1914), the name Ruthenian fell out of use in the Russian Empire and was replaced by either White Russian or Little Russian. The term Ruthenian continued to be used in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as the official designation for the East Slavic inhabitants living in that state’s provinces of Galicia and Bukovina; and the northeastern counties of Hungary. A large-scale immigration from Austria-Hungary to North America during the half century before World War I saw the introduction of the term Ruthenian, to describe those newcomers in American and Canadian census reports.

How the world has changed in 82 years!

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Source: The Modern Pictorial World Atlas. The Sun News-Pictorial Melbourne (1939)
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Young Advice for Young Illustrators

Posted on October 18, 2021 by maryannadair

Sea-landscape and figure illustrator Cliff Young was born in New Waterford, Ohio in 1905 and died in 1985. He studied at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Grand Central School of Art with Harvey Dunn; the Art Institute of Chicago with Charles Schroder and J Wellington Reynolds; the National Academy of Design, New York with Leon Kroll, the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; and the Art Students League, New York.

  • Young was a former lecturer on anatomy at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Central Park School of Art, New York and at the Grand Central School of Art, New York. He was also a member of the Society of Illustrators, New York.
  • Young was a mural assistant to Ezra Winter, N.A., William A Mackay, Dean Cornwall, N.A., Barry Faulkner, N.A., and Frank Schwarz A.N.A. and he was a story and advertising illustrator who mostly worked from his New York studio.
  • His paintings and watercolours have been exhibited in galleries and exhibitions throughout the United States (U.S.).

All images featured above are from his instruction guide: Figure Drawing Without a Model (1946) which features over 150 drawings; illustrating proportion, construction, light and shade, action and drapery.

Young says, “In order to become a versatile artist, one must learn to draw figures without a model. It is possible to reduce a seemingly complicated figure to its simplest form by using geometric solids. That way, one can understand what to look at, when one draws from a model or photograph”.  By following his instructions, Young claims, “That one should be able to ‘read’ a photograph, as an engineer does a ‘blue-print’; and know the position of all the parts, which make up the whole figure”.

Go figure!

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Source: Figure Drawing Without a Model by Cliff Young. House of Little Books: New York, 1946.
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Flame Leaper is a Surefire Keeper

Posted on October 11, 2021 by maryannadair

after Johann Philipp Fernand Preiss | Flame Leaper bronze and ivory figure of acrobat ca 1930A bronze and ivory figure of an acrobat entitled Flame Leaper after Johann Philipp Ferdinand (Fritz) Preiss ca 1930 height 35cm

  • Even if ‘Flame Leaper‘ is not necessarily by ‘Fritz Preiss’ it is interesting to know his story. However, ‘Fritz Preiss’ is a name often incorrectly referred to leading German art Deco sculptor, Ferdinand Preiss. His works are regarded as the pinnacle of Art Deco sculpture and are greatly valued by modern collectors.

Johann Philipp Ferdinand Preiss was born on 13 February 1882 in Erbach im Odenwald, as one of six children. He attended schools in Michelstadt and had aspirations of becoming an engineer, until the age of 15, when both of his parents died within a short time span. Not long afterwards, Preiss was apprenticed to the ivory carver Philipp Willmann and lived with his family.

In 1901, at the age of 19, Preiss traveled to Rome and Paris. He became a friend of Arthur Kassler in Baden-Baden, which led to the founding of the company Preiss & Kassler, operating from Berlin. Kassler became the business-minded partner and Preiss controlled artistic production.

Initially the company created small ivory carvings of children and statuettes of classical form, often carved from old ivory billiard balls. From 1910, the firm grew to specialize in limited edition Art Deco cabinet sculptures that used painted bronze with ivory on plinths of onyx and marble, or as mantelpiece clocks and lampstands. Preiss revolutionized the production of chryselephantine statues with his use of a dental drill for a more precise form of ivory carving. Preiss designed nearly all the firm’s models and many of his most famous works depict modern, naturalistic 20th-century women from the sports and theatrical world.

Casting of the pieces was initially done by the Aktien-Gesellschaft Gladenbeck foundry in Berlin and later by their own Preiss & Kassler foundry. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the company was employing six extremely skilled ivory carvers from Erbach and exporting regularly to England and the United States. A small factory was set up in England to assemble the sculptures from parts manufactured in Germany which also avoided taxes on imports.

  • The firm closed after Preiss’s death from a brain tumour on 29 July, 1943. The old workshop in Ritterstraße, Berlin, which was housing the stock of samples, was gutted by a fire resulting from a bomb attack, shortly before the end of World War II.

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Source: Wikipedia
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Here’s a Foray of Doré | From Greek Mythology to Arthurian Legends

Posted on October 5, 2021 by maryannadair
Gustave Dore | Merlin and Vivien Repose
Gustave Dore | Andromeda
Gustave Dore | Uther discovers the two brothers

French artist, print-maker, illustrator and sculptor Paul Gustave Louis Christophe Doré was born in Strasbourg, France, on 6 January, 1832. At the age of 12, Gustave Doré began carving in cement. Three years later, at the age of 15, Doré began his career working as a caricaturist for the French paper Le Journal pour rire. Although Doré worked primarily with woodcuts and engravings, it is his paintings which have become world-renowned, such as Andromeda (1869) see above.

In 1853, Doré was commissioned to illustrate the works of Lord Byron. This was followed by additional work for British publishers. Three years later, he produced twelve folio-size illustrations of Pierre-Jean de Ranger’s The Legend of The Wandering Jew (1856).

  • Doré won many commissions to depict scenes from books from Rabelais and Dante, to Balzac and Milton. In the 1860s he illustrated a French edition of Cervantes’s Don Quixote. Doré’s work also appeared in the weekly newspaper The Illustrated London News. His illustrations for the English Bible (1866) were a great success; and in 1867 Doré had a major exhibition of his work in London. This exhibition led to the foundation of the Doré Gallery in Bond Street, London.

Doré’s later work included illustrations for John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1866), Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy (1867), new editions of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1875), and Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King (1875)  (The Legend of King Arthur). Two images from this appear above – “Merlin and Vivien repose” and “Uther discovers the two brothers“.

  • Doré also illustrated an oversized edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven“, an endeavor that earned him 30,000 francs from publisher Harper & Brothers in 1883.

Doré never married; and following the death of his father in 1849, he continued to live with his mother, illustrating books until his death in Paris on 23 January 1883, following a short illness. The city’s Père Lachaise Cemetery contains his grave.

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Source: Wikipedia
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From Cherry Trees to Rebellion | These actors look quite Machiavellian

Posted on September 28, 2021 by maryannadair
Okochi Denjiro| as Tange Sazen (1931)
Natori Shunsen Kataoka Ichizo IV | as Benkei
Nakamura Kichiemon I as Takechi Mitsuhide | In the Banner of Rebellion

The Stars of the Tokyo Stage: Natori Shunsen’s Kabuki Actor Prints, was an exhibition held in galleries around Australia during 2012-2014. It celebrated the glamour of the kabuki theatre amid the dynamic atmosphere of Japan in the 1920s and 1930s. Drawn from the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Natori Shunsen’s superb woodblock portraits of the superstar actors of the time, were reproduced and discussed in detail. They were displayed alongside a selection of spectacular costumes from the kabuki stage. The following are three of the woodblock prints which were part of this exhibition. They feature three different kabuki actors from this period.

Okochi Denijiro as Tange Sazen (1931). From the series Supplement to the collection of portraits by Shunsen. [Woodblock print; ink and colour on paper]. It is from Tange Sazen  an original story written by Fubo Hayashi. The first Tange Sazen films were made in 1928.

  • A fictional character, Tange Sazen, is a loyal samurai, who is betrayed and ambushed in an attack; during which he loses his right eye and right arm. With his superb swordsmanship intact, Tange Sazen becomes a ronin (masterclass samurai).

Kataoka Ichizo IV as Benkei in ‘The Cherry Trees of the Imperial Palace‘ (1927), [Woodblock print, ink and colour on paper sheet]. The ‘Cherry Trees‘ was written by Matsuda Bunkodo and Miyoshi Shoraku and its first kabuki performance was in 1755.

  • It is an epic drama set during the 12th Century war between the Minamoto and Taira families. Minamoto leader, Yoritomo, has become shogun but remains under threat from the Taira. His brother Yoshitsune, one of the most revered heroes of Japanese history, is a brilliant Minamoto commander. The play’s most famous scene is ‘Benkei – the envoy which centres on Yoshitsune’s devoted retainer. The print captures the moment after Benkei fatally wounds Shinobu, when he reveals to himself to be her father.

Nakamura Kichieman I as Takechi Mitsuhide in ‘The Banner of Rebellion‘, (1925), from the series Collection of creative portraits by Shunsen [Woodblock print, ink and colour on paper sheet]. ‘The Banner of Rebellion’s‘ first performance was in 1808, by Tsuruya Nanboku IV.

  • The kabuki play examines the complexities of samurai loyalty and dramatizes Mitsuhide’s betrayal of Oda Nobunaga, the powerful 16th Century warlord who laid the foundations for the unification of Japan. To comply with government censorship in the play, the historical Oda Nobunaga is renamed Oda Harunaga and Akechi Mitsuhide, as Takechi Misuhide.

Each of these woodblock prints were created by Shunsen Natori, also known as Natori Shunsen, who was born Natori Yoshinosuke on February 7, 1886. Natori was he fifth son of a silk merchant, in the Yamanashi Prefecture. His family settled in Tokyo shortly after his birth, where he remained until his death in 1960. From the age of eleven, Natori studied with traditional Nihonga (Japanese-style) painter Kubota Beisen; and was given his artist’s name “Shunsen“. He subsequently studied at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts.

Natori was considered by many to be the last master in the art of kabuki yakusha-e (actor woodblock prints), which were popular through the Japanese Edo period (1603-1867).  He developed an interest in kabuki actor portraits while working as an illustrator for the newspaper Asahi Shimbun. Natori’s actor portraits were mainly in the ōkubi-e (large head) format which allowed him to focus on the expression and emotions of the character’s face. His works are held in many museum and gallery collections worldwide.

  • After Natori’s 22 year old daughter died of pneumonia in 1958, his fatal demise, sounds like the final scene from a kabuki tragedy. Natori and his wife, committed suicide through poison, at their daughter’s grave two years later, on March 30, 1960.

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Source: Stars of the Tokyo Stage: Natori Shunsen’s kabuki actor prints. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2012
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Good golly Ms Olley, your art ain’t no folly

Posted on September 22, 2021 by maryannadair
Margaret Olley | Yellow Room, Afternoon (1990)
Margaret Olley | Interior with Girl Reading (c1962)
Margaret Olley | Still Life
Margaret Olley | Odette (1962)
Margaret Olley | Bottles
Margaret Olley | Room
Margaret Olley | Dahlias and Pears

Australian still life artist, Margaret Hannah Olley, was born in Lismore, New South Wales on 24 June 1923. During her high school years, Olley attended Somerville House in Brisbane. After graduation from art school, Olley became an active member of the Sydney art scene. She received the inaugural Mosman Art Prize in 1947; and had her first solo exhibition the following year. By 1949, Olley left for Europe, where she attended art school in France; and traveled throughout much of western Europe. This was followed by her first European exhibition, in 1952.

Olley returned to Brisbane in 1953, where she designed theatre sets and painted murals. She then traveled to north Queensland and on to Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Bali. Olley’s landscapes from this time are full of bright colours. By the early 1960s, her work had become popular with galleries and collectors.

  • The image above entitled Odette (1962), is an example of Olley’s early 1960s art created during a stage where she floated between Sydney, Newcastle and Brisbane. It was whilst in Brisbane, she engaged a number of models from Joyce Wilding’s newly opened One People of Australia League (OPAL) hostel for aboriginal and Torres Strait islander girls, in south Brisbane. Olley’s portraits and nudes of these dispossessed and displaced young indigenous women are amongst her most interesting works.

During her busy career, Olley held more than 90 solo exhibitions. This was recognised on 10 June 1991, in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list, where Olley was made an Officer of the Order of Australia “for service as an artist and to the promotion of art”. Six years later, in 1997, a major retrospective of Olley’s work was organised by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Olley was twice the subject of an Archibald Prize winning painting; the first by William Dobell in 1948 and the other by Ben Quilty in 2011. She was also the subject of paintings by many of her artist friends, including Russell Drysdale.

  • In 2006, Olley was awarded the degree Doctor of Fine Arts honoris causa by the University of Newcastle.
  • In the same year, on 12 June, Olley was awarded Australia’s highest civilian honour, the Companion of the Order, “for service as one of Australia’s most distinguished artists, for support and philanthropy to the visual and performing arts, and for encouragement of young and emerging artists”.
  • The following month, on 13 July 2006, Olley donated a further 130 artworks to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, worth AU$7 million.

Olley died at her home in the inner Sydney suburb of Paddington, on 26 July 2011, aged 88. Of the last paintings that she did before her death; 27 were exhibited at Sotheby’s Australia, in Woollahra, in an exhibition entitled The Inner Sanctum of Margaret Olley.  Olley had put the final touches for the show, on the day before she died; and Philip Bacon, who had exhibited her work for decades; had prepared a catalogue to show her that weekend.

The opening night was attended by about 350 people, among whom were the Governor-General of Australia, Quentin Bryce; who gave an address, in which she said that Olley’s work was often just like the artist, “filled with optimism“. Other attendees at the opening included Penelope Wensley, the Governor of Queensland, Edmund Capon, Ben Quilty and Barry Humphries.

Here lies the still life of the inner sanctum of Margaret Olley

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Source: McCulloch, Alan. Encyclopedia of Australian Art.
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Is Don | Is Good

Posted on September 16, 2021 by maryannadair

Paul ‘Don’ Smith was born in London, but lived in Borneo for about four years, from the age of eight to twelve. In total contrast to life in London, Borneo provided the young ‘Don’ with new horizons, open spaces, the beach, and a whole new world. The return to London provided a reverse shock of a bustling, noisy, city metropolis.

At school, ‘Don’ was interested in graphics and art. This lead him into the world of counter-culture of the New York hip-hop movement, with its music, dance, poetry and art – a sense of creativity for people who needed to do something new, exciting and energetic. From this, the graffiti movement began, with the lure of going ‘into places where you shouldn’t be’.

Graffiti has been a hobby for ‘Don’ for over 30 years. His first tag was in Barnes, in 1985. It was inspired by Beat Street, a sort of hip-hop piece in bubble letters. Citing French stencil pioneer C215 as a major influence, ‘Don’ has developed a process using multiple layers of hand-cut paper stencils that resemble contour lines on a map. Half a dozen separate versions are sprayed through, on an overlapping final image, that has depth and deep shading, with flourishes of sprayed spots.

His work is immediately accessible, often painting portraits of people in the public eye. ‘Don’ takes iconic stencil portrait figures such as Amy Winehouse, or Jack Kerouac (author of the iconic ‘On the Road‘ and pioneer of the ‘Beat Generation’ in the 1950s), wild animals and members of his family including some portraits of his son, or his bowler-hatted tap man; which appears on the exteriors of certain financial corporations in the City of London, providing a comment on the endless flow of public money that has kept them solvent.

Now living in Surrey, Paul Smith (rather than ‘Don’), has been involved in the film industry for 12 years or more, with TV, features, commercials and short films. “That’s why a lot of my work is music and there’s some film poster influence. I’m really wrapped up in that”, he said in an interview for London Art Spot, in 2013.

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Source: London Art Spot’s article on Paul ‘Don’ Smith (2013)
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