Émile Louis Salomé

Émile Louis Salomé, “The Prodigal Son”, 1863, Oil on Canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France

Born in Lille, France, in December of 1833, Émile Louis Salomé was a painter of genre scenes, portraits and still lifes. He received his initial art training from his father Louis Adolphe Salomé, an engraver and lithographer. Émile Salomé entered the Academic Schools of Lille around 1845 and exhibited his works for the first time at the Paris Salon of 1859.

In 1862 Émile Salomé shared with his fellow painter Carolus-Duran a four-year scholarship grant from the city of Lille to complete their studies at Rome’s Wicar workshop, bequeathed to the city of Lille by painter and art collector Jean Baptiste Wicar. His studies completed, Salomé settled in his hometown of Lille, establishing a strong regional reputation for his works.

Émile Salomé was admitted to the Society of Sciences, Agriculture and the Arts of Lille in 1878. He continued to exhibit his work at the Paris Salon from 1861 until his death in August of 1881 at the age of forty-seven. A retrospective of his works was held in 1881 at the Palais Rameau in Lille.

Émile Salomé’s work can be found at the Museum of Art and History in Neuchâtel, Switzerlnd; the Musée Benoit de Puydt in Bailleul, France; the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, France; and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, which holds Salomé’s 1863 “The Prodigal Son” in its collection.

Victor E. Frankl: “Man’s Search for Meaning”

Photographers Unknown, Reflections on Life

“The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him?

No, thank you,’ he will think. ‘Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, although these are things which cannot inspire envy.”

—-Victor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Thanks to https://isthistoomuchblack.tumblr.com for the selfie image with sombrero.

Kyle McMillin

Kyle McMillin, “Los Primeros Cuatros”, 2020, Four Wet-Collodion Tintypes, Each 10 x 12.7 cm

These four portrait tintypes by Kyle McMillin were taken in Tacoma, Washington on July 27, 2020. They depict, in image order, Aloysious, Jesse, Kreg, and Kyle.

The wet-collodion process is an early photographic technique invented in 1851 by English sculptor and inventor Frederick Scott Archer. The process involved adding a soluble iodide to a solution of cellulose nitrate, known as collodion, and coating a glass plate with the mixture. In the darkroom, the plate was immersed in a solution of silver nitrate to form silver iodide.

This glass plate, still wet, was exposed in the camera and then developed by pouring a solution of pyrogallic acid over it. The image was fixed, originally, with a strong solution of sodium thiosulfate, for which potassium cyanide was later substituted. Immediate developing and fixing were required in this process because, after the collodion film had dried, it became waterproof, preventing the reagent solutions from penetrating the film. This wet-collodion process was valued for the clarity and level of detail it allowed.

A later modification of the process introduced in the 1850s, the ambrotype was a developed and fixed negative on a glass plate, which when viewed by reflected light against a black background, appears as to be a positive image. The clear areas look black, and the exposed, opaque areas appear relatively light. The glass plates were either backed with black velvet, or were coated on one side of the plate with black varnish.

During the 1860s, the ambrotype was superseded by the tintype or ferrotype, a photograph made by by creating a direct positive on a thin sheet of metal coated with a dark lacquer or enamel and used as the support for the for the photographic emulsion. Because the lacquered iron support was resilient and did not need drying, a tintype could be developed, fixed, and handed to the customer only a few minutes after the picture had been taken. The tintype became very popular in the 1860s and 1870s, being less fragile than the ambrotype and “instantly” available.

The artist’s site is located at: https://mcmillin.tumblr.com

Kyle McMillan’s studio, The Red Room Tintype Studio, is located at: https://www.redroomtintype.me

Paul Cadmus

Paul Cadmus, “The Fleet’s In!”, 1934, Tempera on Canvas, 94 x 170 cm, Naval History and Heritage Command, U.S. Navy Art Collection

Paul Cadmus, “The Fleet’s In!”, 1934, Etching, 18.9 x 35.7 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Paul Cadmus’s work is imbued with the compositions of the Renaissance period, the firm and expressive lines of Jean-Auguste Ingres, and the sharp, figurative appearance of Magical Realism. However, Cadmus received his greatest influence from his lover and fellow painter Jared French, with whom he studied and traveled extensively. French instilled within Cadmus the traditions of the Old Masters that became a fundamental part of his work.

Cadmus is best known for his erotic depictions of nude male figures, charged with satire, social criticism, and a strongly idealized sexuality. He first gained recognition for his 1934 Public Works of Art Project (WPA) tempera painting “The Fleet’s In!”, where the controversy of a group of sailors he pictured carousing among prostitutes and homosexuals inspired a public outcry.

The tempera “The Fleet’s In!” was removed in 1934 from the WPA exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC before public viewing by order of the US Secretary of the Navy and transferred to the custody of the US Department of the Navy. it was not seen in a public exhibition until September of 1981, when it was shown, on loan, in a traveling Cadmus retrospective. Upon the retrospective’s end in July of 1982, the painting’s repository remained the US Navy’s Art Collection, which has continued the practice of loaning it to domestic and international museums.

For more extensive information on the censorship of Paul Cadmus’s paintings, please visit Anthony J. Morris’s dissertation entitled “The Censored Paintings of Paul Cadmus, 1934-1940: The Body as the Boundary Between the Decent and Obscene”, 2010, Department of Art History and Art, Case Western Reserve University. The dissertation can be found at:

https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=case1270569282&disposition=inline