Month: June 2015

Ernest Meissonier

Ernest Meissonier, “The Hired Assassins”, 1852, Oil on Mahogany Panel, Wallace Collection, National Art Museum, London

Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier was a French painter and illustrator of military and historical subjects, especially of Napoleonic battles.

Meissonier studied first under Jules Potier, then in the studio of Léon Cogniet. In his early years Meissonier spent most of his time making illustrations for the publishers Curmer and Hetzel. However, beginning in 1834 at the age of nineteen, he exhibited regularly at the French Salon, receiving the highest official honours from the middle of the 1840s onward.

Most of Meissonier’s paintings are on a small scale and are concerned with military subjects or with the genre of historical settings. Meissonier’s minute and scrupulous technique was largely derived from the study of Dutch painters of the 17th century. However, the documentary approach of his preparatory study of costume and armour along with his detailed observation of nature (such as his systematic analysis of the movements of horses) links him with the 19th century.

Among Meissonier’s major works are “Napoleon III at Solferino” executed in 1863 and the 1864 painting entitled “1814”, both of which celebrate heroic military campaigns. He also captured the horrors of conflict in works such as “Remembrance of Civil War” painted between 1848 to 1849, which depicts the moment when the Parisian insurgents of 1848 were slaughtered on barracades by the Republican Guard.

“The Hired Assassins” is one of Meissonier’s rare paintings of a dramatic scene where there is an emotional tension between the figures and viewer is invited to be emotionally engaged. In it, the assassins are shown wearing detailed sixteenth-century costume. This painting was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1852.

Pavel Tchelitchew

Pavel Tchelitchew, “The Rose Necklace”, 1931, Oil on Board, Signed in Latin and Dated ’31 t.l.’, 29 x 21 Inches, Collection of Seymour Stein

Pavel Tchelitchew was a Russian-born artist known for his Surrealist portraits and anatomical studies. Often camouflaging human bodies and faces into geometric lines or landscape forms, the artist used both abstraction and symbolism to convey both the outer and inner appearance of an object.

Born on September 21, 1898 in Moscow, Russia, Tchelitchew and his family were forced to flee Russia during the 1917 Revolution. Tchelitchew went on to study under Alexandra Exter at the Kiev Academy. After graduating from school, the artist worked designing and constructing stage sets for theaters in Odessa and later Berlin. Moving to Paris in 1923, he fell into the intellectual circles of Gertrude Stein, leading him to incorporate Cubist and Surrealist elements into his work.

Tchelitchew went on to form a small group of artists known as the Néo Humanists, which included André Lanskoy, Christian Bérard, and Eugene Berman. By the 1930s, his work had begun employing multiple perspectives, a brighter color palette, and extremely foreshortened figures.

While still working on stage designs for ballets by Igor Stravinsky, he began to receive international recognition, and in 1942 one of his most celebrated works, “Hide and Seek”, was acquired by The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Tchelitchew died on July 31, 1957 in Grottaferrata, Italy. Today, Tchelitchew’s works can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

“The Rose Necklace” is a portrait of Charles Levinson, known as ‘Le Vincent’, who was ‘a handsome ex-soldier with a superb necklace of tattooed flowers’ (Tchelitchew). With his nonchalant beauty and easy physicality, Levinson inspired Tchelitchew to produce a full series of tattooed circus figures. This portrait provides an earthy, sexual counterpoint to Picasso’s 1904  “Garçon à la Pipe” which inspired Tchelitchew to paint portraits of his partner Charles Henri Ford and others surrounded by flowers; only here the garland of roses is transposed to the sitter’s chest. 

Vito Tomasello

Vito Tomasello, Untitled, 1940s, Pastel Drawing, 22 x 30 Incehs, Private Collection

A lifetime NYC resident and gay artist, Vito Tomasello is best known for his male nude drawings and paintings, as well as documenting the Ballet Trocadero dancers of the 1970s. In the 1950s and 1960s he was asssociated with the avantgarde in New York City. Works by his hand hang in the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York

Andrew Montgomery

Andrew Montgomery, (Tin of Chalk)

Born in 1969, Andrew Montgomery’s career in photography began at 14 with a darkroom in the garden; progressed to a five year degree course in Fine Art and then on to a three year apprenticeship in photography. Since 1995 his work has appeared in a diverse range of top publications with clients in the UK and Europe.

Commissions have included artisan workshops in Paris, Coracle makers in Wales, Costume dramas in Prague, portraits of designers, single mothers, fishermen, gypsies and Cistercian monks.

The artist’s site: https://www.andrewmontgomery.co.uk

 

Impending Winter

Photographer Unknown, (Impending Winter)

He walked more and more slowly, listening, hearing nothing; looking, seeing nothing. Soon he stopped, for he was not going any farther. Standing in the deep leaves beneath trees bare and practically dead in the catalepsy of impending winter, he knew that he did not want to be here. A great evil – no more to be named than, met, to be escaped – waited fairly close.

-James Gould Cozzens

Roberto Matta

 

Paintings and Pastels by Roberto Matta

Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren (November 11, 1911 – November 23, 2002), better known as Roberto Matta, was one of Chile’s best-known painters and a seminal figure in 20th century abstract expressionist and surrealist art.

Matta’s travels in Europe and the USA led him to meet artists such as Arshile Gorky, René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, André Breton, and Le Corbusier. It was Breton who provided the major spur to the Chilean’s direction in art, encouraging his work and introducing him to the leading members of the Paris Surrealist movement. Matta produced illustrations and articles for Surrealist journals such as Minotaure. During this period he was introduced to the work of many prominent contemporary European artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp.

Francis Luis Mora

Francis Luis Mora, “American Gladiators”, 1908, Oil on Canvas, 177.8 x 133.4 cm, Private Collection

Francis Luis Mora was an Hispanic American figural painter. Mora worked in watercolor, oils and tempera. He produced drawings in pen and ink, and graphite; and etchings and monotypes. Mora is known for his paintings and drawings depicting American life in the early 20th century