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Unfinished Le Nain
Unfinished paintings interest me because they reveal to some degree how an artist went about his business.In December I encountered an interesting example at San Francisco's Legion of Honor museum in...
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John Singer Sargent Portrait Drawings
I concentrate on paintings here because they interest me more than the other Fine Arts. Drawings are also interesting, and for some reason have tended to be regarded as less important than paintings....
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A Portrait by Henry Brown Fuller
Henry Brown Fuller (1867-1934) was a capable painter who left few works of note, if the number of his paintings found via Google is any criterion. Plus, he had personal problems that might well have...
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The Moody World of Henri Le Sidaner
Henri Eugène Augustin Le Sidaner (1862-1939) was a prolific painter despite the fact that he usually painted in a small-stroke divisionist fashion. Even though he is not well known these days, the...
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Saul Tepper in Illustration Magazine
Saul Tepper (1899-1987) is one of my favorite illustrators active in the 1920s and 1930s. So I was very pleased to see that Illustration Magazine featured him in this, the issue current when this post...
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Many Artists, Similar Styles, Techniques
Not long ago I drove to the other side of Lake Washington to visit the Howard/Mandville Gallery. It was having the opening reception for Wanderlust: Invitational Landscape Exhibition 2017.I though most...
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An Especially Wild Boldini
Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931) was a representational painter, yet he painted so freely that many of his images are exaggerated, if not flat-out distorted. His Wikipedia entry is here and includes a...
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Motli Ritratti: Tilla Durieux
Tilla Durieux (née Ottilie Godeffroy - 1880-1971) born in Vienna to a chemist (Richard Godeffroy) and a Hungarian pianist (Adelheid Ottilie Augustine Hrdlicka), was an actress who spent most of her...
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Up Close: "Sonata" by Irving Ramsey Wiles
Irving Ramsey Wiles (1861-1948) ... or it it Irving Ramsay Wiles? Go to Google and you will find both spellings.In December I came across his painting "The Sonata" (1889) at San Francisco's De Young....
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Did Franz Stuck Ever Settle on a Style?
Franz von Stuck (1863-1928) was an important Munich artist during the decades surrounding the turn of the 20th century. He was both a rebel of sorts, helping found the Munich Secession, and an...
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A Bouguereau at the Meat Packers
The photo above was taken at the Frye meatpacking facility in Seattle's Georgetown neighborhood perhaps sometime around 1940. The reason why all those paintings are there is because they were overflow...
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Friedrich von Kaulbach Paints Geraldine Farrar
Beautiful, famous women attracted well-known portrait painters. In some cases, the painters would create multiple versions of their subject. Such was the case of opera star Geraldine Farrar (1882-1967)...
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Edward A. Wilson's Automobile Advertising Illustrations
Edward Arthur Wilson (1886-1970) was a successful illustrator who eventually specialized in illustrating books. But in 1927 and 1928 he illustrated a series of advertisements for General Motors' new...
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Théo van Rysselberghe's Pointellist Portraits
Théo van Rysselberghe (1862-1926) was a Post-Impressionist who often painted in a Pointillist style. His Wikipedia entry is here. I wrote about him here, briefly touching on his portrait work.It seems...
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Sergei Bongart Paints Walser Greathouse
Sergei Bongart (1918-1985), emigré Ukrainian painter, had a successful career in America as an artist and teacher. His early training included a sound grounding in traditional painting, but he also was...
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Victor Arnautoff, 1930s California Muralist
Victor Mikhail Arnautoff (1896-1979) had a career featuring several interesting real or apparent contradictions, as his Wikipedia entry indicates.He was born in Russia, fought in the Great War for the...
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Bernie Fuchs vs. Post Magazine's Fake Cars
I just got my copy of David Apatoff's long-awaited book about Bernie Fuchs, who many of us consider the greatest illustrator active in the waning days of large-circulation, general-interest magazines....
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Friedrich von Kaulbach Paints Hanna Ralph
Friedrich August von Kaulbach (1850-1920), an important Munich artist in his day, occasionally painted several portraits of one subject. I previously wrote about his multiple portraits of opera singer...
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Rinaldo Cuneo: Terence's California Artist Uncle
Rinaldo Cuneo (1877-1939) was part of a generation of artistic siblings who were born and grew up in San Francisco. His Wikipedia entry states that his paintings were quite popular and that he was...
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John Spencer Stanhope: Little-Recognized Pre-Raphaelite
John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope (1829-1908) painted (in oil and tempera) scenes that were distinctly Pre-Raphaelite, though the Wikipedia entry just linked does not, as of 18 January 2017, include him in...
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