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Molti Ritratti: Lady Mary, Baroness Curzon of Kedleston
Mary Victoria Leiter (1870-1906), later Vicereine of India (1898-1905) and holding the title Baroness Curzon of Kedleston, was from Chicago, born about the time of my paternal grandmother, also in...
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1930s Speed Lines
As the fields of industrial design and automobile styling were ramping up in the 1930s, streamlining became something of a fad. Later observers giggled at streamlining of non-mobile objects such as...
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Alfred Stevens: Combining Hard-Edge and Brushy Styles
Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens (1823-1906) was a Belgian whose family was heavily involved in the arts, as this Wikipedia entry explains. Paris being a far more important art center than Brussels,...
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Edward Durell Stone: In and Out and Maybe In Favor Again
Edward Durell Stone (1902-1978) had a successful career in terms of the number of projects with which he and his firm were associated. Scroll down this Wikipedia entry for a list of some of them. More...
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Illustrations by Fish
Anne Harriet Fish Sifton (1890-1964), is best known as "Fish" -- that's her maiden name and how she usually signed her cartoons and illustrations. She was English, but well known in the United States...
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Adolph Menzel: Tiny Works from a Tiny Man
Adolph Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel (1815-1905) -- the "von" bestowed late in his career -- was very popular in his day and honored by the Kaiser upon his death. These accolades were deserved, because...
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Architects' Homes: The "Harvard Five"
I find the houses architects design for themselves interesting. Presumably, the constraint of catering to the desires of a client are swept away so that the architect can express his own design...
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Coping With the Great Depression: John Newton Howitt
Note: I drafted this on 13 June for later posting. Now it turns out Illustration Magazine's just-released Issue No. 49 has a large article on John Newton Howitt. Below is what I wrote in June regarding...
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Mr. Munch and Mrs. Schwarz
In July I was working my way through the Edvard Munch (1863-1944) portion of the Rasmus Meyer collection at the Bergen, Norway Kunstmuseet when I noticed the painting that I then immediately...
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Gustav Klimt's Houses at Unterach on the Attersee
The painting shown above is Häuser in Unterach am Attersee (Houses at Unterach on the Attersee) painted around 1916 by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918). He often summered in the Austrian lake district even...
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Piet van der Hem, Dutch Illustrator and Painter
Pieter van der Hem (1885-1961), called "Piet," came to my attention thanks to this Sept. 21, 2015 post on David Apatoff's Illustration Art blog. Apatoff was contrasting van der Hem's painting and...
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Maurice Utrillo, Not-Quite-Forgotten Modernist
Back around 1960, Maurice Utrillo (1883-1955) was still being featured as an example of modernism in an art history class I took in college. But his reputation was probably on the wane by then, and he...
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Jugendstil in Ålesund
Yes, that's a large photo of Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II in the window of a building in Ålesund, Norway. And nearby is Keiser Wilhelms gate (Emperor William's Lane), a street named after the man. Why...
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Joan Mitchell, Lousy Artist
I noticed that a Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) painting was auctioned for nearly twelve million dollars. Perhaps the buyer was simply speculating that Mitchell's works would appreciate in value in the...
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"Buck" Dunton's Evolving Style
W. Herbert Dunton (1878-1936), known as "Buck" Dunton, was an outdoors guy who happened to become a reasonably successful illustrator, then moved to arty Taos, New Mexico to take up Fine Arts painting....
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Pierre Bonnard's Big Show
On average, my timing regarding want-to-see art exhibits in places I'm visiting is usually bad. That should be expected, because the majority of art museum exhibitions don't interest me, which means...
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William Penhallow Henderson's New Mexico Paintings
William Penhallow Henderson (1877-1943) was one of a number of artists who moved to the Taos - Santa Fe part of New Mexico around one hundred years ago. In Henderson's case, this was in part because...
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Frank Brangwyn's Mural-Style Art
Sir Frank William Brangwyn (1867-1956) was largely self-taught, as this Wikipedia entry mentions. That supposed lack was no obstacle, because Brangwyn had a long, successful career. I wrote about his...
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Luigi Bonazza: Not Quite Traditional
Besides a major exhibition of Pierre Bonnard's paintings, the Musée d'Orsay was holding another exhibit when I dropped by 19 July, titled Dolce vita ? Du Liberty au design italien (1900-1940)"Dolce...
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In the Beginning: Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) -- biography here -- did not quite make it to his 37th birthday, joining a surprisingly long list of artists who died before reaching 40. Had he lived a normal...
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