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Edwin Davenport: An Illustrator Whose Career Seemed to Peak Around 1927
Biographical information for the illustrator Edmund Davenport must be someplace, but I can't seem to find it by Googling. Nor can I find it in my personal collection of books about illustration.All I...
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New Book About Haddon Sundblom
Haddon Sundblom (1899-1976) was a leading illustrator for many years and influential in the careers of other illustrators.Now Dan Zimmer of Illustration Magazine has written a lavishly illustrated book...
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Louis Denis-Valvérane the Painter Who Also Was Vald'Es the Cartoonist
Louis Denis-Valvérane (1870-1943) was a Provençal painter and illustrator/cartoonist who is perhaps best known for his racy (at the time) cartoons in the magazine La vie Parisienne that he signed as...
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Brangwyn in San Francisco
Frank Brangwyn (1867-1956), Wikipedia entry here, was British artist whose paintings and murals have always fascinated me. My post on those aspects of his work is here.Aside from his unfortunate set of...
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Superferry Supergraphics
Large ferryboats carrying cars and passengers on comparatively long overnight runs are common in the Mediterranean and Baltic sea areas in Europe and in parts of Asia, though not in North America where...
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Georges van Zevenberghen, Belgian Inspired by Chardin
As the title of this post mentions, Georges Antoine Van Zevenberghen (1877-1968), was presumably inspired by Chardin's paintings. Well, that's what this nearly-worthless French Wikipedia entry...
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Floyd Davis: Successful Illustrator with No Training, Few Models
In those olden times when American illustration was in flower, there was no clear path for continued success for artists who had attained a certain degree of fame.Essentially, this was the matter of...
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Fascist-Era Roman Hotel
One of my pet peeves regarding the naming of architectural styles is the category "Fascist Architecture" (fragment of a Wikipedia entry on the subject here).My contention is that so-called Fascist...
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Brangwyn, Cornwell and Murals
Reader Paul Sullivan's comment to this post about San Francisco murals by Frank Brangwyn (1867-1956) inspired the present post. The concept is to compare Brangwyn's style with that of Dean Cornwell...
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Elegance Depicted in Soviet Socialist Realism
I'm pretty sure that even knowledgable art fans rarely give the Socialist Realism paintings of the Soviet Union much thought, if any. And that thought probably echoes the Art Establishment dogma that...
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Millions for an early N.C. Wyeth Illustration
The image above is an illustration titled "Hands Up," alternatively "Holdup in the Canyon" painted for C.P. Connolly’s “The Story of Montana,” published in McClure’s Magazine, August 1906. In 2016 it...
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Examples of Soviet Brigade Art
Aside from perhaps a few religious icons and early modernists such as Kandinsky and Malevich, my college art history class ignored Russian art. I don't know what current art history classes deal with,...
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Honoring the Picture Plane: Sophistry in Action
"Honoring the picture plane" was a big deal when I was in art school, though the idea has lost some of its punch in Postmodern times. The gist of it was, since a canvas is normally a flat,...
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Axel Törneman, Early Swedish Modernist Painter
Johan Axel Gustaf Törneman (1880-1925) is credited in his Wikipedia entry as being "one of Sweden's earliest modernist painters."Not knowing much about Swedish painters other than Anders Zorn, I can't...
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Up Close: Frank Wootton's "Harts Over the Himalayas"
Frank Anthony Albert Wootton (1914-1998) painted landscapes and horses, but for me he's noted for his illustrations of automobiles and airplanes. In particular, he was highly skilled at depicting the...
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Konstantin Korovin: Sketchy Paintings
Konstantin Alekseyevich Korovin (1861-1939) was a Russian painter with a free, sketchy technique influenced by Impressionism, though his style apparently was always somewhat loose before he first...
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Hugh Goldwin Rivière, Mid-Lever British Portraitist
Hugh Goldwin Riviere (1869–1956) lived a long life and made a living as a portrait painter in the United Kingdom. The most detail I could find about him during a short Google search is here -- almost...
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Painting Shiny Metal: Rembrandt and Wootton
I recently wrote here about British artist/illustrator Frank Wootton (1914-1998) who was skilled at depicting light, shade and reflections on shiny metallic surfaces. Doing this convincingly requires...
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Stanhope Forbes, Revisited
Ever since I viewed the painting "A Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach" by Stanhope Forbes (1857-1947) at an exhibit in San Francisco a dozen or more years ago, I've wanted to see it again. (I posted twice...
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A Posthumous Tribute to Sergei Kirov
Sergei Kirov (1886-1934) met a curious end, as explained in this Wikipedia entry. He was a prominent Bolshevik, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijani Communist Party and at the...
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