Happy Holidays to All 2025 !

Konstantin Gorbatov, “A Winter Landscape”, 1896-1945, Pencil and Gouache on Paper Laid Down on Board, 36.1 x 48.2 cm, Private Collection

I would like to wish a Happy Holiday and a Great New Year to all my site’s visitors and subscribers, as well as a heart-felt thank-you to those whose donations supported this site’s cost and research. Thank you for all your comments, suggestions and needed article corrections. If you have not already subscribed to this site, please do so. Have a great holiday season and a year of good health, new friendships and exciting adventures! Chas (Ultrawolves)

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Born at the Volga River town of Stavropol (now Tolyatti) in May of 1876, Konstantin Ivanovich Gorbatov was a Russian Post-Impressionist painter known for his vibrant landscapes. Interested in art at an early age, he sketched the churches, houses and river landscapes of his hometown. In the 1890s, Gorbatov trained with the local artists in Samara and later relocated to Riga in 1896.

While studying civil engineering in Riga, Gorbatov continued his art training with evening classes. In 1904, he relocated to St. Petersburg and initially enrolled at the Baron Stieglitz School for Technical Draftsmanship before transferring to the Imperial Academy of Arts where Gorbatov studied under landscape painters Nikolay Dubovskoy and Alexander Kiselev. He began exhibiting his work in 1908 and was acknowledged for his distinctive style, a fusion of realism and the emerging impressionist style.

Critics praised Konstantin Gorbatov’s celebration of everyday Russian life and the harmony found in every detail of his work. The influence of the French Impressionists can be seen in his loose brushwork and plein-air light effects. Gorbatov drew on the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers) realist tradition while embracing modern impressionism. Thus, his landscapes appealed to those who loved the post-impressionist Russian art and those with a sentimental connections to old Russian locales.

Gorbatov left Russian in 1922, unwilling to adapt to the new Soviet regime, and sought refuge in Italy, eventually settling in Venice. He frequently traveled around Italy and painted local scenes, architecture and seascapes as well as Russian landscapes from memory. Gorbatov moved to Berlin in 1926 where there was a thriving community of Russian émigré artists.During the late 1920s, he began selling and exhibiting his work internationally.

The rise of the Nazi regime in the 1930s led to a decline in interest for Konstantin Gorbatov’s work as it did not align with the austere cultural ideology of Nazi art policies. Still a Soviet citizen, he was forbidden to leave German and soon fell into poverty. Despite the hardship of his life, Gorbatov continued to paint for himself.

After enduring the war years in besieged Berlin, Gorbatov died in May of 1945, shortly after the Allied victory in Europe. His final act, one of generosity to his homeland, was the bequest that all his unsold artwork be given to the Academy of Arts in Leningrad. Many of Gorbatov’s paintings are also housed in the collection of the Moscow Regional Art Museum.

Robert Duncan: “It Was the Sound of Fire on the Hearth”

Photographers Unknown, Food for Fire, Food for Thought

      good wood
      that all fiery youth bust forth from winter,
         go to sleep in the poem.
      Who will remember thy green flame,
         thy dream’s amber?

Language obeyd flares tongues in obscure matter.

      We trace faces in clouds: they drift apart.
      Palaces of air. The sun dying down
         sets them on fire.

      Descry shadows on the flood from its dazzling mood,
      or at its shore read runes upon the sand
         from sea-spume.

This is what I wanted for the last poem.
A loosening of conventions and return to open form.

      Leonardo saw figures that were stains upon a wall
      Let the apparitions containd in the ground
         play as they will.

You have carried a branch of tomorrow into the room.
Its frangrance had awakend me. No. .

      It was the sound of a fire on the hearth
      Leapd up where you bankd it
      . . .sparks of delight. Now I return the thought

to the red glow, that might-be-magical blood,
palaces of heat in the fire’s mouth,

If you look you will see the salamander–

to the very elements that attend us,
fairies of the fire, the radiant crawling. .

That was a long time ago.
No. They were never really there,

      though once I saw–did I stare
      into the hear of desire burning
      and see a radiant man? like those
      fancy cities from fire into fire falling.

We are close enough to childhood, so easily purged
of whatever we thought we were to be.

Flamey threads of firstness go out from your touch,

flickers of unlikely heat
at the edge of our belief bud forth.

Robert Duncan, Food for Fire, Food for Thought, October 1959, Poetry, Volume 95, Number 1

Born at Oakland, California in January of 1919, Robert Edward Duncan was an American poet and a follower of Hilda Doolittle, a modernist poet who, with Ezra Pound, co-founded the Imagist group of poets. Duncan featured prominently in the histories of pre-Stonewall gay culture, bohemian communities of the Beat Generation, and cultural movements of the 1960s.

Born the tenth child of Edward Howard Duncan and Marguerite Pearl Wesley, Robert Duncan was adopted after the death of his mother by Edwin and Minnehaha Symmes. The prominent architect and his wife were a Theosophist family who embraced the spiritual teachings of Western esotericism as founded by Russian-American mystic and writer Helena Blavatsky. Robert Duncan grew up in a stable environment with new parents interested in both the occult and social community projects.

Encouraged by an English high school teacher, Duncan chose poetry as a vocation while still in his teens. After the death of Edwin Symmes in 1936, he began his studies at the University of California, Berkeley. While in his sophomore year, Duncan met graduate student Neo Fahs and entered into his first recorded homosexual relationship that lasted until 1940. While living in New York City with Fahs, he met many literary figures including playwright Arthur Miller and French-born essayist and writer Anaïs Nin.

During 1938, Robert Duncan briefly attended North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, an experimental educational project that became known for its artists and post-modernist poets. When he was drafted for military service in 1941, Duncan declared his homosexuality and was discharged. He became a prominent figure in the history of pre-Stonewall gay culture with his 1944 essay “The Homosexual in Society” published in editor and publisher Dwight Macdonald’s “Politics”, an outspoken magazine with articles by such notables as George Orwell, Lionel Trilling, and Mary McCarthy.

Duncan relocated to San Francisco in 1945 where he became friends with poets Helen Adam and Kenneth Rexroth as well as painter Lyn Brockway. He returned to U.C. Berkeley where he studied Medieval and Renaissance literature, eventually becoming a shamanistic figure in the artistic and poetry circles of San Francisco. Duncan’s first book, “Heavenly City Earthly City”, a collection of verse that reflected his admiration for the metaphysical work of British poet George Barker, was published by writer and physicist Bernard Porter’s newly founded Ben Porter Books in 1947.

In 1950, Robert Duncan met painter and collagist Jess Collins and began a relationship that would last thirty-seven years until Duncan’s death. They took marriage vows and settled in a historic Victorian home in San Francisco’s Mission District. Duncan began to publish his work regularly in the early 1950s and taught at Black Mountain College during 1956. His artistic and critical success occurred in the 1960s with the publishing of three volumes of poetic work: “Opening the Field” in 1960, the 1964 “Roots and Branches”, and “Bending the Bow” in 1968.

After the publication of his “Bending the Bow”, Duncan vowed not to publish another major collection for fifteen years. In 1984, his next major work “Ground Work I: Before the War” won the National Poetry Award. The concluding volume of Duncan’s poems, “Ground Work II: In the Dark”, taken as a whole was proposed by him in 1968 and later published in 1987.

Robert Duncan’s poetry is one of process not conclusion. It is considered Modernist for his inclination towards the impersonal, mythic and canonical styles; however, it is also seen as Romantic due to its organic, lyric and forward-wandering journey. Beginning in the 1960s, Duncan’s work was influenced by both “projective verse”, poetry that is shaped by the rhythms of the poet’s breath, and “composition by field”, the use of the page as a field of language beyond traditional margins and spacing. His work includes short lyrical poems and recurring sequences of prose poems, both of which draw inspiration from the poetic work of Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and particularly that of modernist Charles John Olson and the Black Mountain School of poetry.

One of the most influential of the postwar American poets, Robert Duncan died in San Francisco in 1988 after a long battle with kidney disease. He was survived by his partner Jess Collins who died in January of 2004 at the age of eighty. Duncan’s papers are housed at the State University of New York-Buffalo and the Special Collections and Archives of Kent State University.

“There is a natural mystery in poetry. We do not understand all that we render up to understanding. . . I study what I write as I study out any mystery. I work at language as a spring of water works at the rock, to find a course, and so, blindly. In this I am not a maker of things, but, if maker, a maker of a way. For the way is itself.”—Robert Duncan, Notebook published in Donald Allen’s “The New American Poetry: 1945-1960”, First Edition, 1960, Grove Press, New York

Notes: The Archives of American Art has an online copy available for public viewing of Robert Duncan and Jess Collins’s scrapbook for Patricia Jordan at: https://www.aaa.si.edu/uv/index.html?manifest=https://www.aaa.si.edu/manifest/edanmdm:AAADCD_item_11139&c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&config=uv-config.json&locales=en-GB:English%20(GB)

Second Insert Image: Original Cover for Robert Duncan’s “Roots and Branches”, 1964, New Directions Publishing, New York

Third Insert Image: Jess Collins, Original Collage Illustration for Robert Duncan’s “The Opening of the Field”, 1960, Private Collection

Fourth Insert Image: Robert Duncan, “Bending the Bow”, 1968, 1st Edition, Publisher New Directions, New York

Bottom Insert Image: Jonathan Williams, “Robert Duncan”, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Film History: Alan Ladd

Director Frank Tuttle, “Alan Ladd as Philip Raven”, 1942, “This Gun for Hire”, Cinematography John Seitz, Paramount Pictures

Born at Hot Springs, Arkansas in September of 1913, Alan Walbridge Ladd was an American actor and film producer who found success with portrayals in film noir, war movies and Westerns in the 1940s and early 1950s.

The only child born to freelance accountant Alan Ladd and English-born Ina Raleigh, Alan Walbridge Ladd was four years old at his father’s death of a heart attack. He and his mother moved to Oklahoma City where she married house painter Jim Beavers. The family relocated to California and eventually settled in the San Fernando Valley where Beavers was given a position at the silent film studio FBO Pictures (Film Booking Offices of America).

Ladd enrolled at North Hollywood High School where, despite his small stature, he became a swimming and diving champion in his teen years. In his senior year, he also participated in the high-school’s theatrical productions, one of which included his role as the comic Ko-Ko in “The Mikado”. After graduating in February of 1934, Ladd worked in various jobs including gas station attendant, lifeguard and hot dog vendor. His first employment in the film industry was a two-year position as a grip at the Warner Brothers studios.

After appearing in several stage productions for the Ben Bard Theater in Hollywood, Alan Ladd appeared in an uncredited role in director David Butler’s 1936 musical football-comedy “Pigskin Parade”. Although able to get short-term work at MGM and RKO, he was signed later that year by radio station KFWB as its sole radio actor, a position he held for three years. Ladd’s work as multiple characters was noticed by actress and talent agent Sue Carol who began to promote him for films and radio. Ladd’s first role through Carol was a credited role in director Frank Lloyd’s 1939 historical drama “Rulers of the Sea” with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Margaret Lockwood.

Over the next few years, Ladd had several small roles in films, among these were the 1940 “Green Hornet” serial, the 1941 comedy horror “The Black Cat”, and an uncredited role as a newspaper reporter in “Citizen Kane”. He gained some recognition for his featured role as a Royal Air Force pilot in the 1942 RKO Radio Pictures war film “Joan of Paris”, a critical success that featured the U.S. screen debuts of Paul Henried and Michèle Morgan. Ladd was given a contract with Paramount Pictures and, after a successful audition, the role of Raven, a paid killer with a conscience in director Frank Tuttle’s 1942 crime film “This Gun for Hire”. Although he had only received fourth billing, Ladd was made a star due to critical praise and fan reaction.

Paramount recognized that Alan Ladd was a potential star and immediately signed him for the adaptation of detective-novel writer Dashiell Hammett’s “The Glass Key” released in October of 1942. This was Ladd’s second pairing with Veronica Lake, who had co-starred with him in “This Gun for Hire”. He followed “The Glass Key” with the 1942 all-star musical “Star Spangled Rhythm” and two films released in 1943, “Lucky Jordan” with Helen Walker and “China” with Loretta Young.

Although classified as unfit for military service due to stomach issues, Ladd enlisted in January of 1943, briefly serving in the U.S. Army Air Forces’ First Motion Picture Unit. He attained the rank of corporal but was given a honorable medical discharge at the end of October due to a stomach disorder complicated by influenza. When Ladd returned to Paramount, he was given the 1944 drama film “And Now Tomorrow”, a melodrama that co-starred Loretta Young. He next acted in the leading role for John Farrow’s historical adventure film “Two Years before the Mast”, which became one of the most popular films in the United States after its belated release in 1946.

In 1945, Paramount Pictures bought American-British detective fiction writer Raymond Chandler’s first original film screenplay “The Blue Dahlia” as a vehicle for Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake and William Bendix. Shot quickly by director George Marshall, the film ranked among the most popular films at the British box office in 1946. Chandler was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay; Ladd was noted for his role as a tough guy in what became known as the film noir genre.

Ladd appeared in several films of mixed critical and commercial reception in 1949 and 1950. These include the 1949 “The Great Gatsby”, “Chicago Deadline”, “Appointment with Danger”, and two Westerns, the 1950 “Branded” and the 1951 “Red Mountain”. These dynamic action-packed roles were followed by Ladd’s most memorable performance as the drifter Shane, an honest character troubled by conflicting emotions. The role of Shane became the highpoint of Ladd’s film career. Directed by George Steven, the 1953 Western “Shane” won an Academy Award for its Technicolor cinematography and became a critical as well as commercial success for Paramount Pictures.

Alan Ladd entered independent film making in 1954 through the founding of Jaguar Productions, a Hollywood production company that released films through Warner Brothers. His first film, the 1954 Western “Drum Beat” was successful and was followed by the 1955 “Hell on Frisco Bay” with Edward G. Robinson, and the 1957 Western “The Big Land” in which he acted opposite Virginia Mayo. In the following year, Ladd acted with his eleven-year old son David and co-star Olivia de Havilland in the 1958 Technicolor Western “The Proud Rebel”, a Michael Curtiz film produced by Samuel Goldwyn Jr.

Ladd continued his acting with films for United Artist, Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox Studios. He also starred in directors Ferdinando Baldi and Terence Young’s 1961 “Duel of Champions”, an epic Roman adventure film shot in Italy. In 1963, Ladd accepted his last film role, the former gunslinger turned actor Nevada Smith, for director Edward Dmytryk’s drama “The Carpetbaggers”. This film adaptation of Harold Robbins’s novel was released to financial success in April of 1964, three months after Ladd’s death.

Alan Ladd was recuperating after knee injuries at his Palm Springs house in January of 1964. He had been suffering badly from insomnia and found solace in sedatives and an increasing dependence on alcohol. The butler saw Ladd on his bed in the morning of the twenty-ninth of January; upon his return in the afternoon, the butler found Ladd dead on the bed. The death was officially ruled accidental. Alan Ladd died at the age of fifty due to cerebral edema caused by acute overdose of alcohol and a mixture of tranquilizers. Ladd was interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale California.

Notes: The CMG Worldwide website has a page on Alan Ladd which includes a biography and a complete filmography: http://www.cmgww.com/stars/ladd/

The Hollywood’s Golden Age website has an extensive biography on Alan Ladd at: http://www.hollywoodsgoldenage.com/actors/alan_ladd.html

Writer, critic and performer Trav S.D. has an excellent 2020 article on his WordPress site “Travalanche” entitled “The Short Life of Alan Ladd” at: https://travsd.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/the-short-life-of-alan-ladd/

An extensive article entitled “The Dynamic Duos Blogathon: Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake” can be found on the “ShadowsandSatin” WordPress site: https://shadowsandsatin.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/the-dynamic-duos-blogathon-alan-ladd-and-veronica-lake/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Alan Ladd as Philip Raven”, 1942, “This Gun for Hire”, Publicity Photo, Paramount Pictures

Second Insert Image: Film Poster, “Captain Carey, U.S.A>”, 1950, Director Mitchell Leisen, Cinematography John F. Seitz, Paramount Pictures

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Alan Ladd”, Paramount Publicity Photo, Gelatin Silver Print

Fourth Insert Image: Film Poster, “the Blue Dahlia”, 1946, Director George Marshall, Cinematography Lionel Lindon, Paramount Pictures, 76 x 102 cm, Private Collection

Fifth Insert Image: Eugene R Richee, “Alan Ladd”, 1941, Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Film Poster, “Calcutta”, 1947, Director John Farrow, Cinematography John F. Seitz, Paramount Pictures

Frank Brangwyn

The Artwork of Sir Frank William Brangwyn

Born at Bruges in May of 1867, Sir Frank William Brangwyn was a Welsh artist, painter, illustrator, watercolorist, printmaker and designer. A prolific artist, he created more than twelve-thousand works including ceramics, stained glass panels and windows, glass tableware, furniture, and both interior and exterior architectural designs.

One of four children born to ecclesiastical architect William Curtis Brangwyn and Eleanor Griffiths, Frank Brangwyn received his primary education at Westminster City School. However, he often played truant, spending time at his father’s workshop and sketching at the South Kensington Museum. Brangwyn later took an apprenticeship with progressive architect and designer Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo, a major influence in the Arts and Craft Movement. With a recommendation from Mackmurdo, he was able to enter the workshops of designer William Morris, one of the most significant cultural figures in Victorian England.

After one of his paintings sold at the 1884 Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy, Brangwyn joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and began painting seascapes. Securing a berth on a freighter to Istanbul, he spent 1890 and most of 1891 at sea, visiting Spain, Morocco, South Africa and Zanzibar. Brangwyn created many paintings during these voyages. His 1890 “Funeral at Sea”, a work done with a largely gray palette, was awarded a medal at the 1891 Paris Salon. Brangwyn, while traveling with Scottish orientalist painter Arthur Melville, became particularly influenced by the bright light and colors of the southern countries. He altered his palette towards lighter colors and produced many paintings and drawings in Spain, Morocco, Egypt and Turkey.

In 1895, German-French art dealer Samuel Siegfried Bing commissioned Frank Brangwyn to decorate the exterior of his Parisian art gallery, the Galerie L’Art Nouveau. Pleased with the work, Bing encouraged him to broaden the scope of his art. Brangwyn began creating tapestry and carpet designs, murals, posters and stained-glass designs for Louis Comfort Tiffany. In 1896, he created a series of illustrations for a six-volume reprint of British orientalist Edward William Lane’s translation of “One Thousand and One Nights”. After collaborating with Japanese artist Urushibara Mokuchu on a 1917 series of woodblock prints, Brangwyn met a fellow collector of Asian art, industrial magnate Kojiro Matsukata, who later became his patron.

Although not an official war artist during the First World War, Brangwyn produced more than eighty poster designs during the conflict. The majority of these designs were donated to charities including the Red Cross, the Royal National Institute for the Blind, and the L’Orphelinat des Armées, a charity that supported French orphanages. Brangwyn also produced six lithographs for the Ministry of Information’s 1917 “Britain’s Efforts and Ideals” portfolio to raise money for the war effort. As the chairman of the English Committee for Diksmuide, a Belgian city torn apart by the war, he donated a series of woodcuts to aid in its reconstruction.

Frank Brangwyn became widely known for his mural work and received numerous commissions from both England and the United States. Originally commissioned to paint the altar recess of Saint Aidan’s Church in Leeds, he decided to work in glass mosaic due to the pollution in the air. This work, completed in 1916, covers the entire altar recess with scenes from the life of St. Aidan. Included among Brangwyn’s other mural commissions were the Great Hall of the Worshipful Company of Skinners for the Royal Exchange in London, the Missouri State Capitol Building, the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg, and a mural created specifically for exhibition at the 1915 San Francisco Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Brangwyn, in collaboration with muralists Diego Rivera and Josep Maria Sert, decorated the concourse of the RCA Building in New York City.

The most notable of Brangwyn’s mural commissions, due to both its size and its history, was the one requested by Edward Cecil Guinness, First Earl of Iveagh, in 1926. Brangwyn was to paint a pair of large canvases for the Royal Gallery of the House of Lords at Westminster. These canvases were to honor those peers and their family members who died in the First World War. Finished after the death of Edward Guinness, the life-size battle scenes were found by the House of Lords to be too grim and, thus, they refused the work. In 1928, the Lords offered a second commission, a series of sixteen large works which became known as the British Empire Panels. This series, completed in 1933, was viewed by the Lords who, considering them too colorful and lively for the proposed location, again refused the work.The sixteen canvas murals were later purchased in the following year by the Swansea City Council who installed them in the city’s Brangwyn Hall.

Frank Brangwyn became increasingly pessimistic after the House of Lords twice refused his work. During the 1930s, he began to dispose of his possessions, donating many of his and other artworks to museums in Britain and Europe, including the British Museum and the William Morris Gallery. In 1936, Brangwyn presented over four hundred works to the Arents House Museum in Bruges, Belgium. The two 1926 life-size battle scenes were included with the group of gifts he donated to the National Museum Wales between 1929 and 1935.

In 1944, Brangwyn, now recovered from his depression, secured Pre-Raphaelite illustrator Frederic Shields’s designs for architect Herbert Horne’s Chapel of the Ascension in London. This was an important achievement as the chapel was completely destroyed in 1940 during the bombing of London. One of Brangwyn’s last works was a 1950 series of illustrations for his friend Herbet Julyan’s book “Sixty Years of Yachts” published by London’s Hutchinson & Company. Frank William Brangwyn lived in his final years as a recluse in East Sussex until his death in June of 1956. His body was interred at St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, Kensal Green.

Among Sir Frank William Brangwyn’s many awards and honors were the 1902 Chevalier of the Legion of Honor; the Gold Medal of Venice and the Grand Prix of Milan, both in 1906; the 1911 Chevalier of the Order of the Crown of Italy; the 1919 Commander and Cross of the Order of Leopold I of Belgium; and the 1932 Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts. Brangwyn was awarded the title of Knight Bachelor, Great Britain in 1941.

Notes: The definitive Frank Brangwyn website is located at: https://frankbrangwyn.org

Sir Frank William Brangwyn was elected a full Royal Academician of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1910. The Royal Academy of Arts has a biography and a collection of his works at its website: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/frank-brangwyn-ra

An extensive biographical article on Frank Brangwyn can be found at the Chris Beetles Gallery website: https://www.chrisbeetles.com/artists/brangwyn-sir-frank-ra-hrsa-rsw-rws-prba-re-hrms-roi-1867-1956.html

A lecture on Frank Brangwyn’s British Empire Panels, written by University of Bristol’s Art History lecturer Dr. Sehra Jumabhoy, can be found at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery site: https://www.glynnvivian.co.uk/brangwyns-british-empire-panels/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Frank Brangwyn”, circa 1900, Vintage Print

Second Insert Image: Frank Brangwyn, “Study of Artichokes”, Date Unknown, Gouache and Pencil on Paper, 121 x 81 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Frank Brangwyn, “The Tarpit”, Date Unknown, Intaglio Etching on Paper, 65.4 x 73.3 cm, Museum Wales

Fourth Insert Image: Frank Brangwyn, “Bricklayers, Study for Rebuilding Belgium”, 1915, Black and Red Chalk on Buff Paper, 69 x 47 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Frank Brangwyn, “Makeing Sailors, The Gun”, circa 1917, “The Great War, Britain’s Efforts and Ideals” Series, Lithograph on Paper, 47.1 x 37.1 cm, Tate Gallery, London