Clik here to view.
Prudence Heward: Canadian Semi-Modernist
Prudence Heward (1896-1947) suffered from ill health for much of her life and died aged 50. Biographical links are here and here. The first mentions that she came from a wealthy family and received art...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roy Crane's Two Shades of Gray
Aside from Lyonel Feininger, I find it hard to come up with the name of an important fine artist who drew comic strips. After all, comic strips are highly constrained in terms of technology, spatial...
View ArticleClik here to view.
François Flameng: Seriously Versatile
François Flameng (1856-1923) is probably best remembered -- if he's remembered at all outside France -- as a portrait artist. Maybe that is the problem. You see, Flameng was an almost exact...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Albert Whitlock, Matte Master
Nowadays, computer-generated images are used. But up into the 1980s, movie sets and settings were expanded to fill up the screen via paintings that sometimes were supplemented by scale models.The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In the Beginning: Andy Warhol
I consider Andy Warhol (1928-1987) as something of a joke so far as being a Fine Arts practitioner is concerned. Like Picasso, his main talents were in sniffing out incipient changes in cultural trends...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fortunino Matania and His Coup d'œil
Fortunino Matania (1881-1963) was an illustrator whose technical prowess has recently gained some attention in the illustration corner of the Internet. His Wikipedia entry is here, and he is mentioned...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Yoshihiro Inomoto: Putting Emotion into Tech Illustration
What's going on here?I really wanted to feature a couple automotive cutaway illustrations by the great Yoshihiro Inomoto (b. 1932), but most of the best are under extremely heavy copyright protection...
View ArticleClik here to view.
John Stanton Ward, Almost-Traditionalist
It seems like I've recently been stumbling across quite a few works by artists who might be known in their home countries, yet were unknown to me (and probably many others) here in the States.So it is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Carl Moll: Secessionist of Sorts
Vienna artist Carl Moll (1861-1945) committed suicide 13 April, along with members of his family, ten days before his 84th birthday, when the city was surrendered to Soviet forces in the waning days of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Mysterious Manuel Orazi
Manuel Orazi (1860-1934) was an Italian with a Spanish first name whose career was spent mostly in Paris doing Art Nouveau style illustration when he wasn't involved in depicting the occult. And that's...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Up Close: Curry's "State Fair"
John Steuart Curry (1897-1946) is best known as a Regionalist or American Scene painter who, like fellow American Scene artist Thomas Hart Benton, enjoyed making turgid scenes featuring people in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Up Close: Bastien-Lapage's Sarah Bernhardt
Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884) was short-lived, yet influential in his day and for a few years thereafter. Along with many other talented and inventive painters of the late nineteenth century, he was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bastien-Lepage's Three Bernhardts
In a comment (by Hels) on the previous post (3 February 2014), it was asked if Bastien-Lepage painted the portrait of Sarah Bernhardt from life.Good question, because photography was in full flower by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
John Held, Jr: Flapper Art ... and More
A confession is in order. Back when I was in high school, I became fascinated with the 1920s along with cartoons by John Held, Jr. (1889-1958) that exemplified the Flaming Youth aspect of those times....
View ArticleClik here to view.
More on Raeburn's Blurred faces
A while ago I wrote about how Henry Raeburn (1756-1823), one of my favorite portrait artists, tended to emphasize his subjects' crisp, white collars while usually leaving faces (normally the focus...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rico Tomaso: Edge-of-the-Radar Illustrator
Rico Tomaso (1898-1985) was active when mass-circulation "glossy" (referring to printing stock) magazines were riding high and illustration was still king. Maybe that has to do with why he is nearly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Simon Elwes: "Downton Abbey" Portrait and Others
Downton Abbey has been the hot television show for several seasons now, an addiction for many people, including my wife. I have never watched it, and lack motivation to do so.But I keep my eyes peeled,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
"The Cornish Wonder": John Opie
Joshua Reynolds dominated the English portrait painting scene in the 18th century, with Thomas Gainsborough as his most serious rival. That's my 21st century impression, anyhow.But in those...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Frank Wootton's Poster Art
Frank Wootton (1911-1998) is best known for his aircraft and automobile paintings and illustrations, but he also painted landscapes and illustrated travel posters, among other projects. The main...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roy Doty, Charming Cartoonist
As of the time I'm drafting this post, Roy Doty (1922 - ) is still alive and presumably making cartoons and illustrations, something he has been doing at a top professional level since the late 1940s....
View Article