William “Pud” Lane

The Music Sheet Illustrations of William “Pud” Lane

Born in New York in the early 1900s, William “Pud” Lane was an American illustrator, cartoonist, graphic artist, and advertising executive who was active during the late 1920s through the 1950s. Best known for his Jazz Age music sheet cover illustrations, he was a foundational figure in slide-film animation and early commercial television. Lane worked as a freelance cartoonist and commercial graphic artist in New York City during the late 1920s and early 1930s. He became one of the prominent designers of illustrated sheet music covers for songs that captured the exuberant mood of the Jazz Era.

In the early 1940s, New York City began a transitional era in which the spirit of the Jazz Era and the economic worries of the 1930s Great Depression gradually transformed it into a energetic wartime commercial city. The 1940s also marked the permanent demise of elaborately illustrated sheet music covers. These custom illustrated covers virtually disappeared by the mid-1940s and were replaced with standardized typography, promotional photographs, and basic geometric graphics.

After finishing his career of doing freelance cartooning and illustration in New York, William “Pud” Lane transitioned into the growing industry of commercial animation. By the late 1940s, he was working at Transfilm Inc, a prominent New York City-based film production company that was primarily known for their educational short films, promotional films for industries, sponsored travelogues and early television commercials, both animated and live-action.

Lane served as Vice President in charge of the Slide-film division of Transfilm, Inc. which was headquartered on 45th Street in Manhattan, New York. During a major corporate restructure, he oversaw that division’s corporate slide-films, filmographs, and specialized multi-media accounts. After the corporate merger of Transfilm and Caravel Films by the Buckeye Corporation, Lane became an executive and shareholder of the newly formed Visualscope, Inc, an expanding New York media and communications firm established in 1964.

During William “Pud” Lane’s position at Transfilm, the 1947 short color documentary travelogue “Southern Highlanders” was produced for the Ford Motor Company’s advertising program “Americans at Home”. Lane is credited with creating the character concept and design of the Nestle Company’s trademark “Quick Bunny” which introduced the company’s chocolate milk powder to the public. Debuting on widespread television commercials in 1973, the character, who is known as “Quicky”, became one of the most recognizable advertising mascots in advertising history.

Notes: There is, unfortunately, very little information online on Wiilliam “Pud” Lane outside of what is in this article. If anyone has additional information on Lane, please feel free to contact me through the comment window at the end of the article. If the comment section is not visible, it will appear if you click on the article’s title.

In essence, slide-film animation is an animation technique in which an animator draws sequential frames of an action such as a person walking. Each frame is cut out and mounted into individual plastic or cardboard frames. These are then loaded into a carousel slide projector. When quickly advanced through the tray, the sequential projection creates an illusion of motion. In modern digital media, this process refers to replicating the appearance of a vintage camera film strip rolling across a screen.

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Top Insert Image: Pud Lane, “I’m Nuts About Mutts”, 1933, Music Sheet Cover, Mort Dixon and Harry Woods

Second Insert Image: Pud Lane, “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder”, 1929, Sheet Music Cover, Lewis & Young and Harry Warren

Bottom Insert Image: Pud Lane, “As Long As It’s You Dear, O.K.”, 1929, Sheet Music Cover, Edgar Leslie and Walter Donaldson

Ricardo Bessa

The Artwork of Ricardo Bessa

Born in the central regional city of Viseu in 1983, Ricardo Bessa is a Portuguese Manga-style illustrator whose work depicts unique subjects and distinctive color combinations. Using both digital and hand-drawn elements, he creates illustrations that straddle the line between fantasy and reality.

After a personal exploration of digital art work in his teenage years, Bessa studied Art and Multimedia at the Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade de Lisboa where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in 2010. He continued his studies at London’s Kingston University where he achieved his Master of Arts in Illustration in 2011. Bessa worked in several Design and Art Direction positions before committing to a career as an independent illustrator in 2012.

Both an illustrator and storyboard artist, Ricardo Bessa specializes in sharply-edged, detailed figures and dynamic perspectives. His work draws inspiration from his Portuguese upbringing, the natural world, comics, mythology, and a variety of queer art. Bessa’s character studies and challenging narratives appeal to a wide range of audiences. His work can be found in advertising projects, textbooks, comics, young-adult book covers, and many digital projects.

Among Bessa’s many clients have been the Oxford University Press, Puffin Books, Bloomsbury Publishing, HBO, Macmillan Publishing, Sony, Penguin Random House, Wired, The Atlantic, and Wizards of the Coast. He has worked for such properties as “Game of Thrones”, “Dungeons & Dragons”, “Magic: The Gathering”, “Power Rangers” and “Lumberjanes”. Bessa also did illustrative work for advertising animations to promote the second series of “The End of the F***ing World”, produced and animated by Picnic Studio. In 2015, Bessa curated “Heróica”, a superhero fanzine created by twenty-one Portuguese illustrators; he was also one of the curators for “Burl & Fur”, a 2016 magazine tribute to the bara manga genre.

Ricardo Ressa has exhibited his work in such English venues as the September 2024 Pride Comic Art Festival (PrideCAF) in the city center of Bristol; the October 2024 MCM (Movies, Comics, Media) Comic Con in London; the November 2024 Thought Bubble in Harrogate; and 2025 MegaCon Live, an annual pop culture and fandom convention at London’s ExCel exhibition center.

Based in London, Bessa is represented by the Folio Illustration and Animation Agency. His site and listed social links can be found at: https://www.ricardobessa.com

Notes: A 2020 YouTube video presented through Nicer Tuesdays’s live event website highlighted a presentation of Ricardo Bessa who discussed his illustrative work for season two of “The End of the F***ing World”. This video can be found under the name: Nicer Tuesdays: Ricardo Bessa.

Top Insert Image: Ricardo Bessa, “Self Portrait”, Digital Color Print

Second Insert Image: Ricardo Bessa, “Coming Home, Part 3”, January 2018, Illustration for May Healing’s short story “Coming Home”, Woman’s Weekly Magazine

Bottom Insert Image: Ricardo Bessa, Editorial Illustration for “Sky at Night: A Window on the Universe”, British Broadcasting Company

Logan T. Sibrel

The Artwork of Logan T. Sibrel

Born in the southern Indiana city of Jasper in 1986, Logan T. Sibrel is an American artist whose paintings depict scenes of specific intimate moments. Executed in both oils and watercolors, his oeuvre contains portraits, still life works, and both interior and exterior scenes, all of which tell fragmented personal stories.

Interested in art at an early age, Sibrel spent a large portion of his formative years drawing and painting, activities that were strongly supported by his family. As a Catholic child in a small rural city, his first exposure to figurative art was the compositional and narrative structure of Christian images. Sibrel studied at Indiana University, Bloomington and graduated with a Bachelor in Fine Arts in 2009.

During his studies at Indiana University, Logan T. Sibrel received a Edward L. Hutton International Experiences Program Grant (HIEP) which enabled him to study abroad for a year in Italy. After relocating to New York City, he continued his studies at the city’s Parson New School of Design where he earned his Masters in Fine Art in 2011. Sibrel also participated in a 2014 Wildfjords Artist Residency at Ísafjörðor, Iceland; the Palazzo Monti Artis Residency in 2018 at Brescia, Italy; and a 2024 Palazzo Ventidue Artist Residency in Nardò, Italy.

An essential part of Sibrel’s work process is the collection of reference imagery. Gathered from various media sources and personal photographs, the archived images serve as both inspiration and the foundation for his work’s composition. Although his paintings tell specific stories, Sibrel’s subjects are predominantly male figures who remain largely unrecognizable, thus creating a tension between familiarity and anonymity.

Because he incorporates his actual life into his work, Logan T. Sibrel’s figurative paintings are explored through a queer perspective. In many of his early works, his subjects were closely cropped and overlaid with small inserted images of a personal nature, such as a book or travel souvenir. These small images added another dimension to the work’s theme. The tenor of Sibrel’s work is often sexual in varying degrees; that sexuality is employed as a vehicle for examining interpersonal relationships.

Sibrel has participated at such group exhibitions as “Come Out & Play” at the prominent Beers Gallery in London; “Reflections” at Brooklyn, New York’s Drama Club; “Breathless” at Myriam Chair in Paris; “Wish You Were Queer” at Germany’s Museum und Galerie im Prediger; “Under My Skin” held at the contemporary Campeche Gallery in Mexico City; and “Picnic” at New York City’s Auxier Kline Gallery.

Among Logan T. Sibrel’s many solo exhibitions are those held at Germany’s Galerie Thomas Fuchs in Stuttgart, Greece’s Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery, San Francisco’s Schlomer Haus Gallery, and New York’s 1969 Gallery, Auxier Kline Gallery, and Leslie Lohman Project Space. His most recent solo exhibition will begin on January 8th in 2027 at Galerie Thomas Fuchs in Stuttgart.

Notes: Alongside his artwork, Logan T. Sibrel, along with Omar Afzaal, is a co-founder of the band “Sister Pact” which was formed in 2014. A link to Sibrel’s art and exhibition information can be found at his website: https://logantsibrel.com/

The international digital art platform “Collectors Agenda” has an excellent interview between Logan T. Sibrel and writer Anton Isiukov, entitled “Logan T. Sibrel, New York”, which was posted in its “In the Studio” section: https://www.collectorsagenda.com/en/in-the-studio/logan-t-sibrel

Top Insert Image: Katharina Poblotzki, “Logan T. Sibrel, Studio”, 2024, Color Print, “In the Studio”, Collectors Agenda-Contemporary Art and Culture

Second Insert Image: Logan T. Sibrel, “Breakfast (Watercolor Edit)’, 2022, Oil on Canvas, 76.2 x 61 cm, Galerie Thomas Fuchs, Stuttgart, Germany

Bottom Insert Image: Logan T. Sibrel, “Glenmore Collab”, 2021, Oil on Canvas, 66 x 55.9 cm, Galerie Thomas Fuchs, Stuttgart, Germany

Dani Torrent

The Artwork of Dani Torrent

Born in Barcelona in 1974, Dani Torrent is an award-winning Spanish artist, illustrator, and writer. In addition to his creative illustrations for media outlets and advertising, he is recognized for his work in the field of both young adult and children’s literature.

Torrent earned his degree in Art History at the University of Barcelona; he also finished his doctoral courses in Fine Arts at the same university. Torrent followed these studies with Film Direction at Barcelona’s Centre d’Estudis Cinematogràfics de Catalunya and master studies in Illustration at the Escola de la Llotja, the oldest art and design school in Spain. Through his knowledge of art history, he draws inspiration from such contemporary and master artists as Henri Matisse, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Utagawa Hiroshige, David Hockney and Caspar Friedrich.

Dani Torrent’s artistic style has developed over the years to one that is more gestural and expressive. For works on paper, he utilizes pencils, pastels, gouache and watercolors; acrylic paints are his choice for works on canvases. As a visual artist, Torrent has exhibited his illustrations and paintings at solo exhibitions in the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, United States, and multiple Spanish cities including Madrid, Barcelona, Girona and Huelva.

Proficient in multiple mediums, Torrent has focused his talent in the field of illustration, a genre that enables him to integrate the visual narrative principles of cinema with his knowledge of art history. Shaped by a deeply personal perspective, Torrent’s illustrative work examines commonplace experiences as well as intimate relationships. Within his children and young adult books, he avoids stereotypes and examines complex themes that include the passage of time, death, and the understanding that melancholy can be an inherent part of happiness.

Dani Torrent was awarded the Golden Apple at the 2023 Biennial of Illustration Bratislava, the most prestigious international exhibition for children’s book illustrators, and the 2025 Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators of New York. He was awarded the 2026 World Illustration Award for his book “One Day, Two Weeks, Three Months…” and the 2022 Cuatro Gatos Foundation Award for Best Young Adult Books in Spanish in the United States. Torrent was also awarded the Hiiibrand Illustration Award in China, the Merit Diploma from the 2022 Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Italy, the Young Creators Award from the Fita Foundation, and the Museari Award granted by the Museu de l’Imaginari, a cultural museum institution focused on queer art and history.

Beginning with his first picture book in 2011, Torrent has written and and illustrated multiple children and young adult books. Among those books he has illustrated are “Folktales for Fearless Girls: The Stories We Were Never Told” (2020), “Cartas a un Joven Poeta (Letters to a Young Poet)” (2025),“Goodnight Whispers” (2018), “Dad: The Man, the Myth, the Legend” (2021), “Viaje al Pueblo de las Treinta Señoritas (A Trip to the Village of the Thirty Young Ladies)” (2019), and “Tami, el Maquinista (Tami, the Train Engineer)” (2024), among others. Torrent’s 2025 “One Day, Two Weeks, Three Months…”, which was centered on intimate moments in gay relationships, has won the most prestigious recognition in the world of illustration.

Focused on his career in illustration, Dani Torrent’s upcoming exhibitions include a February show at the Jaco Moretti Gallery in Palm Springs, California, and a summer exhibition at the Boxxx Gallery in Amsterdam.

Notes: Dani Torrent’s illustrations, paintings and drawings, as well as available works for purchase, can be found at: https://danitorrent.com/

Second Insert Image: Dani Torrent, Illustration for “Los Cuentos que Nunca nos Contaron”, October 2018, Publisher Nube de Tinta

Third Insert Image: Dani Torrent, Illustration for “Viajes en Trenes de Primera Clase”, May 2022, Publisher Triqueta Verde

Bottom Insert Image: Dani Torrent, Illustration for “Viatge al Poble de les Trenta Senyorete”, November 2019, Publisher Editorial Comanegra

Rudolph Tegner

Rudolph Tegner, “Hercules and the Hydra”, 1932, Bronze, Rudolph Tegner Sculpture Park, Elsinore, Denmark

Born in Copenhagen in 1873, Rudolph Tegner was a Danish sculptor linked to the Symbolist movement. In the early 20th century his work caused considerable controversy in Denmark. A large number of his works are on display in the Rudolph Tegner Museum north of Copenhagen.

Tegner was the son of politician and businessman Jørgen Henry August Tegner and Signe Elisabeth Puggaard. In his travels as a young man to Greece and Italy, he studied Greek sculpture and was impressed by Michelangelo’s sculptures in the Medici Chapel. Tegner studied at the Royal Danish Academy and worked under the award-winning naturalistic painter Rudolph Bissen. From 1890 to 1893, Tegner collaborated with the Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland. He relocated to Paris where he became acquainted with Symbolism, Art Nouveau, and the sculptural works of Auguste Rodin.

Rudolph Tegner’s sculptures in this period were influenced by the stylistic innovations of the Art Nouveau movement and the erotic realism of Rodin’s figurative work. Tegner’s sculptures emphasized powerful and provocative monumental forms that opposed the restrained Neo-classical ideals of contemporary Danish art of the time. He was also strongly influenced by the ideas of German philosopher and author Friedrich Nietzsche as well as the writings of Danish critic and scholar Georg Morris Cohen Brandes who had formulated the principles of a new Realism and Naturalism movement.

In 1897, Tegner returned to Denmark. His first major work was the1891 “A Faun” that was installed at Charlottenburg Palace. He created a statuette in1902 entitled “Lucifer with Brandes’s Head”; this was a homage to the sharp critiques of Brandes towards the repressive norms, authority and hypocrisy that he saw present in the Danish society.

Rudolph Tegner’s most controversial work was his 1909 monument to physician and Nobel Laureate Niels Finsen, “Mod Lyset (Toward the Light)”, that was installed in Copenhagen. Symbolizing Finsen’s theory that specific wavelengths of sunlight have healing properties, the sculpture featured a naked standing man flanked by two kneeling naked women with arms reaching to the sky.

Tegner married Danish painter Elna Jørgensen in 1911. Five years later, he acquired uncultivated land in Danish island of Zealand in the coastal north-eastern area of Helsingør. Tegner constructed a house and subsequently a Minimalist-styled museum and sculpture park dedicated to his work. Beginning in 1917, he installed multiple sculptures of a classical theme in the park; among these is the 1919 “Heracles and the Wild Boar”. Rudolph Tegner died in June of 1950 at the age of seventy-six; his body was buried in a mausoleum at the center of the museum complex.

Notes: Beginning in 1919, Rudolph Tegner started the first edition of “Hercules and the Hydra”. It took about two years for him and a few employees to make the statue in plaster. In 1930, Rudolph Tegner personally took the initiative to propose to Mayor Peder Christensen that the statue, when cast in bronze, had to stand in Elsinore on the thriving fishing city’s harbor seawall. The statue was later moved but returned to its present location on the twenty-fifth of May in 1944.

The online magazine “Anniversary” has an excellent article by Magnus Host, entitled “Rudolph Tegner-A Misunderstood Artist”, which includes multiple images of Tegner’s work: https://www.anniversary-magazine.com/all/rudolph-tegner-a-misunderstood-artist

Second Insert Image: Rudolph Tegner, “Hercules and the Hydra”, 1932, Bronze, Elsinore, Denmark

Bottom Insert Image: Rudolph Tegnér, “Hercules and the Hydra”, 1918, Plaster Model, Rudolph Tegners Museum, Dronningmølle, Denmark

Bernard Guillot

The Photography of Bernard Guillot

Born in the Rhine River city of Basel in 1950, Bernard Guillot was a French photographer and painter who traveled extensively in Europe, the Middle East and the United States. He divided his career primarily between Egypt and the French highland region of Massif Central. Guillot was renowned for his expressive fusion of painting and photography that was heavily influenced by his dual life in those two countries.

Guillot was introduced to painting during his childhood by his mother and his godfather Antoine Mislin, both of whom were Anthroposophists, members of an early twentieth-century religious movement founded by Austrian esoteric Rudolf Steiner. After three years of medical study in Paris, Guillot entered the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts from which he graduated in 1975.

From 1975 to 1977, Bernard Guillot resided in New York City where he began to engage with photography. He created his series “Twelfth Avenue” during this period; this collection of images later became part of the 2010 exhibition “Mixed Use Manhattan”. Throughout his career, Bernard Guillot worked on several photographic series in France and Egypt. Between 1977 and 1996 in the French city of Nice, he created a photographic chronicle of his life at a house allegedly haunted by the presence of curator emeritus and poet Claude Fourmet.

In Egypt between 1977 and 2003, Guillot decisively defined both his life and inspiration. In Cairo, he wandered the spaces of the aging Hôtel Maffet Astoria and created a chronicle of photographs which centered on the themes of appearance and disappearance. Guillot revisited the hotel’s rooms every night until that last night when the hotel was finally closed and permanently sealed tight. This succession of images was published by Ides Calendes as “Hôtel Maffet Astoria, Le Caire” in 1999.

In Cairo, Guillot created the series “Cité des Morts (City of the Dead)” between 1977 and 2017. The series examined Egypt’s oldest Muslim cemetery that was also the oldest necropolis in the Middle East. Stretching more than ten kilometers, it is characterized by the coexistence of the living and the dead, as about one million Egyptians live among the tombs. Guillot’s images are sparse in people and concentrate on the effects of time upon the city and its spaces. Limited to two hundred-fifty copies, this photographic edition contained text in both English and Arabic.

Around the turn of the century, Bernard Guillot began combining painting with photography. He used Chinese ink and sometimes acrylic to paint directly onto the gelatin silver print, confusing and interfering with the original image. Through this process, Guillot sought to bring what was present, but not visible, in the external world to the surface. It is this understanding of reality as being more than the present, the seen or the known that informs much of Guillot’s works. Several photographs in the “Cité des Morts” series were altered by this process. Other series linking photography with painting include “Le Cap Blanc-Nez”, “Le Cimetière Juif de Berlin”, and “Mauer Park”.

Later during his time in Cairo, Guillot turned photographs taken with his cell phone into unique books in the style of palimpsests. Both a symbolist and impressionist, Guillot’s photographs were characterized by a mystical and poetic approach that examined time, identity, and the period between states of existence. He utilized the interplay of shadow and reflection, and gave prominence to the enigmatic and the wonders of life.

Bernard Guillot died in Paris on the twenty-ninth of June in 2021at the age of seventy-one. He had exhibited his photographs in multiple group and solo shows throughout his career. Guillot’s photographs are contained in many private collections as well as such public institutions as the Musée d’ Art Moderne in Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Bibliothèque Nationale, American University in Cairo and the Palestinian Museum, among others.

Notes: Palimpsests are manuscripts or pieces of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced, but not completely removed, to make room for later writing. Traces of the original text still are visible. A common example of a palimpsest is reused medieval parchment, a costly writing material at the time, from which old ink was scraped to provide a writing surface for new text.

Galerie Frédéric Moisan has a short article on Bernard Guillot which includes his painted photographs, drawings, paintings and a video of Guillot at the Hôtel Maffet Astoria: http://www.galerie-fmoisan.fr/en/artist/bernard-guillot#/

The photographic archive site TINTERA has a short biography on Bernard Guillot plus a collection of images from the “Atelier du Cairo”, “Hôtel Maffet Astoria” and “Cite des Morts” series: https://www.tintera.art/bernard-guillot-1

Top Insert Image: Bernard Guillot, “Self Portrait”, July 2021, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Bernard Guillot, Untitled, 1977-2017, “Cité des Morts” Series, Hand Painted Gelatin Silver Print, 67 x 57 cm, Unique Print

Third Insert Image: Bernard Guillot, Untitled, 2004, “Cité des Morts” Series, Gelatin Silver Print, 50 x 42 cm

Bottom Insert Image: Bernard Guillot, Untitled, “Hotel Maffet Astoria” Series, (Balcony Doors), 1979-2003, Gelatin Silver Print

Mare Martin

Mare Martin, “Fire Escape (Persimmon)”, 2016, Etching with Watercolor, 25.4 x 20.3 cm, Private Collection

Born in southwestern Louisiana, Mare Martin is an artist of Cajun descent who spent her formative years on a family farm in Opelousas, a small city in the St. Landry Parish. Martin’s richly textured work, an integration of life on the land and her artistic practice, depicts the junction of nature, human spirit and the cosmos.

One of seven family members involved in every aspect of farming, Mare Martin is a gardener as well as an artist; her experiences with gardens in Spain and the southern areas of the United States are interwoven throughout her work. The last two decades of Martin’s work have been heavily influenced by German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s first major scientific work, the 1790 botanical treatise “Metamorphosis of Plants”. She was also inspired by Johann von Goethe’s methodology that encouraged a deepened awareness of form through the reinforcement of sense memory and imagination.

In her process, Martin works as closely to the source as possible. The actual plant with a name is the core idea which expands through multiple media including linen canvases, oil paintings, drawings, and ink transfers. She has more recently embraced more modern methods through technology and projections. Martin’s most recent solo exhibition, “Beyond the Botanical” was held in September of 2025 at the Hilliard Art Museum in Lafayette. The show revolved around five themes: Gardens, Landscapes and Sky-scapes, Elements, Realms, and Forces.

“It took years of drawing to realize that I wasn’t just observing. I was collaborating. Before that, I painted landscapes and general scenes. But when I began to draw individual plants over and over again, in different seasons and different stages, it brought me a unique understanding. It’s a collaboration, which means my ego as an artist has to step aside. I feel more, and then the work is more pure, closer to the truth.”

—Mare Martin, November 19, 2025, Studio Session at the Hilliard Art Museum of the University of Louisiana,Lafayette

Notes: The Director and Senior Researcher of The Nature Institute, Craig Holdrege, has written an excellent article on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s approach to science which includes the essential features of Goethe’s methodology and insight. The article “Doing Goethean Science” can be found at: https://www.natureinstitute.org/article/craig-holdrege/doing-goethean-science

An extended interview/studio session with Mare Martin was held at the Hilliard Art Museum of the University of Louisiana. This interview, entitled “Mare Martin on Drawing, Meditation, and the Intelligence of Nature”, is locate on the museums’s site: https://hilliardartmuseum.org/stories/mare-martin-on-drawing-meditation-and-the-intelligence-of-nature/

Giambologna: “Oceanus”

Giambologna, “Oceanus”, 1576, Marble, Museo del Bargello, Florence, Italy

Born in the Flanders city of Douai in the year 1529, Jehan Boulongne, known as Giambologna, was a Flemish sculptor based in Italy, who was the last significant sculptor of the Italian Renaissance. Working in the period between the High Renaissance and the Baroque, Giambologna transformed the Florentine Mannerism of the mid-sixteenth century into a style of European significance.

In his youth, Giambologna studied in Antwerp under architect and sculptor Jacques Du Brœucq, a Flemish artist who worked in the Italianate style. In 1550, he relocated to Italy and studied the city’s Hellenistic sculptures, particularly those complex groupings of figures in action. Although heavily influenced by the work of Michelangelo, Giambologna developed his own Mannerist style with a particular emphasis on elegance and refined surfaces. Invested in the idea of beauty for its own sake, he created works that featured figures composed of graceful curves, sinuous lines and asymmetrical contrapposto stances.

Giambologna’s elongated Mannerist contoured figures revitalized the Florentine sculptural scene. He was a master of what became known in painting and sculpture as the figura serpentinata, the serpentine figure. Giambologna’s winding figures presented movement as well as expressions of aggression and fear. He enhanced the drama by offering his viewers more than a primary viewpoint of his work; Giambologna specifically created works that could be circled and viewed from all sides. All the features in his work required great technical skill and a precise calculation to both the work process and the stress being placed on his materials.

Giambologna was awarded his first commission by Cardinal Borromeo for a large-scale bronze “Neptune” and secondary figures for a civic fountain in Bologna that would commemorate the election of the Cardinal’s uncle as Pope Pius IV. The over-life-size bronze figure of Neptune was based on an earlier design by Giambologna for a fountain in the city of Florence. His completed figure of Neptune was erected on Bologna’s fountain in 1566. This work led to Giambologna becoming the most important court sculptor of the Medici family.

Giambologna’s celebrated works include the 1578-1580 bronze “Mercury in Flight”, the first version of which is housed at Bologna’s Medieval Museum; the 1574-1582 marble “Abduction of a Sabine Woman” at the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence; the 1562 marble “Samson Slaying a Philistine” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; and the 1599 marble “Hercules and Nessus” in Florence’s Loggia dei Lanza.

A member of the prestigious Accademia delle Art del Disegno, Giambologna died in Florence at the age of seventy-nine in August of 1608. His work influenced later sculptors through his many pupils who traveled throughout Italy and northern Europe.

Notes: Oceanus was the Titan god of the River Okeanos and all of the earth’s rivers, wells and springs. In Giambologna’s sculpture, Oceanus stands with one foot atop the head of a river fish; this symbolizes his command over the animal and all river creatures. As with many of his sculptures, Giambologna carved his marble Oceanus in the round so the viewer can see the statue from all angles.

Commissioned in 1565, the 1576 marble “Oceanus” was designed for the piazza in front of the Pitti Palace and later erected on the axis of the Boboli Garden behind the palace. “Oceanus” was removed early in the seventeenth-century to a site on the Isolotto near Porta Romana. This great marble figure, with its mass of over two tons and height of over three meters, is now preserved in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence.

The art form of contrapposto, from the Latin ‘contraponere’ meaning ‘place against’, refers to an asymmetrical arrangement of the human figure in which the line of the arms and shoulders contrast with, while still balancing, those of the hips and legs.

Linguistic Professor Arnold Zwicky’s blog has an article, entitled “An Ideal Male Body”, that discusses both Giambologna’s marble “Oceanus” and his bronze work for the “Fountain of Neptune” at: https://arnoldzwicky.org/2023/09/15/an-ideal-male-body/

Top Insert Image: Hendrick Goltzius, “Portrait of Giambologna”, 1591, Mixed Media on Paper. Teylers Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands

Second and Third Insert Images: Giambologna, “Oceanus”, 1576, Detail, Marble, Museo del Bargello, Florence, Italy

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Edward Jean Steichen

Photography by Edward Jean Steichen

Born on March 27, 1879, Éduard Jean Steichen was a Luxembourg-born American painter, photographer and curator, who was a key figure in the development of twentieth-century photography. His parents, Jean-Pierre and Marie Kamp Steichen, emigrated with Edward to the United States in 1880, originally settling in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and later moving to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1889.

In 1894, Steichen began attending Pio Nono College, a Catholic high school for boys in the city of St. Francis, where he was recognized for his drawing skills. After quitting high school, Steichen began a four-year apprenticeship in lithography with Milwaukee’s American Fine Art Company known for its advertisements and panoramic city views. In 1895, he acquired his first camera and became a co-founder with his friends of the Milwaukee Art Students League. Steichen’s first exhibited his photographs, a series of ten works, at the 1899 Second Philadelphia Photographic Salon held at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Éduard Steichen became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1900 and signed his papers as Edward J. Steichen; however, he continued the use of his birth name until after World War I. In April of 1900, he traveled to Paris to study art, both painting and photography. Through an introduction by photographer Clarence H. White, Steichen became a close friend and collaborator with photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who established the 1897 photographic magazine “Camera Notes”.

Steichen was elected in 1901 as a member of London’s Linked Ring Brotherhood which promoted photography as one of the fine arts. In 1902, Steichen was a co-founder, along with White and Stieglitz, of the Photo-Secession movement that promoted photography as a legitimate fine art on the same level as painting and sculpture. He began experimenting in 1904 with color photography and became one of the earliest to use the Autochrome process patented in France by Louis and Auguste Lumière. Steichen helped Stieglitz found New York City’s Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, which became a prominent venue for most avant-garde artists of the time.

After high quality half-tone reproductions of photographs became possible, the genre of fashion photography became established as a fine art. This was made possible by the works of Edward Steichen and French portrait photographer Baron Adolph de Meyer, Tasked by publisher Lucien Vogel in 1911 to promote fashion as fine art, Steichen took photos of couturier Paul Poiret’s designer gowns. Published in color for the April 1911 issue of “Art et Décoration”. two photos from this shoot were done in a soft-focus, aesthetically retouched style. The images idealized the garments beyond the exact description of its fabric and buttons, marking a strong distinction from former hard, sharp commercial images.

In 1940, the Museum of Modern Art in New York inaugurated the first department of photography in a museum; it was overseen by art historian and photographer Beaumont Newhall. In 1942, Steichen curated the museum’s exhibition “Road to Victory”, a series of photographs by enlisted Armed Force members, that also included images of aerial fighting engagements taken by automatic cameras on naval planes. In 1947, he was appointed Director of Photography, a position he used to expand and organize the collection. Steichen recognized new generations of photographers and exhitited early works by such artists as Henry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Robert Rauschenberg.

Among his accomplishments during his term as Director of Photography, Edward Steichen created the MOMA world-touring exhibition “The Family of Man”, a collection of five hundred photos depicting life, love, and death in sixty-eight countries. It was seen by nine million visitors and still holds the record for the most-visited photography exhibition. “The Family of Man” is now permanently housed, on continuous display, at Clervaux Castle in northern Luxembourg, the country of Steichen’s origin.

Steichen’s career did much to popularize and promote the medium of photography. Both before and since his death in March of 1973, photography, including his own, continued to appreciate as a collectible art form. In 2006, Steichen’s early 1904 pictorialist photograph “The Pond-Moonlight”, showing a wooded area and pond in Mamaroneck, New York, sold for US 2.9 million dollars. Steichen achieved the impression of color by manually applying layers of light-sensitive gums to the paper (the autochrome process not being available until 1907). Only three prints of “The Pond-Moonlight”, two being in museums, are known to exist.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Edward Steichen, Brâncusi, Voulangis, France”, circa 1922, Printed 1987, Gelatin Silver Print, 33 x 26.7 cm, Edward Steichen Trust

Second Insert Image: Edward Jean Steichen, “Walt Disney”, 1933, Gelatin Silver Print, 24.2 x 20 cm, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Museums, Washington DC

Third Insert Image: Edward Jean Steichen, “Gloria Swanson”, 1924, Printed 1960s, Gelatin Silver Print, 24 x 19.1 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Bottom Insert Image: Edward Jean Steichen, “George Gershwin”, 1927, Gelatin Silver Print, 24.1 x 19.2 cm, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Museums, Washington DC

Egon Schiele: “Freundschaft”

Egon Schiele, ““Freundschaft (Friendship)”, 1913, Watercolor, Gouache and Pencil on Paper, 48.2 x 32 cm, Private Collection

“Freundschaft” is marked by the Expressionist era’s embrace of emotional experience over physical reality through its emphasis on inner experiences. Egon Schiele’s depiction of the human form is distinctly characterized by its contorted and sculptural portrayal. Rather than a literal interpretation, he elongated both limbs and torsos with some features accented and others diminished. Schiele’s dynamic line work, an essential element in his portraiture works, creates both tension and movement within the composition.

As the majority of Schiele’s work was titled posthumously, “Freundschaft” is rather unique in that he titled it himself upon completion. There is no detailed information available on the identity of the depicted figures in this mixed-media work. The couple appear to be Egon Schiele and Walburga “Wally” Neuzil, an Austrian nurse who was both lover and muse to Schiele between 1911 and 1915.

In 1911, Wally Neuzil and Egon Schiele met in Vienna; she was seventeen and he was twenty-one at that time. It is possible that they met through Gustav Klimt, Schiele’s mentor for whom Neuzil was a model. Between 1911 and 1915, Neuzil modeled for some of Schiele’s most noted paintings. They lived together unmarried in Schiele’s Vienna home and eventually settled for a short period in Neulengbach, the lower Austrian district of Sankt Pölten-Land.

After returning to Vienna, Schiele established a studio in 1914 at Hietzing, one of Vienna’s suburbs. It was there that he became attracted to and decided to marry Edith Harms, one of two sisters who lived across the street from his studio. Upon learning this, Neuzil immediately left Schiele and never saw him again. She trained as a nurse in Vienna and began working at various military hospitals in the city. While working at a hospital in the city of Sinj, Dalmatia (now Croatia), Walburga Neuzil died from scarlet fever on the twenty-fifth of December in 1917 at the age of twenty-three.

Egon Schiele presented fifty works at the 49th Vienna Secession exhibition in 1918. His showing was a success that resulted in increased prices for his work and many portrait commissions. In the autumn of 1918, the Spanish flu pandemic reached Vienna. Edith Schiele, who was six months pregnant, died from the disease on the 28th of October. Schiele, who was very sick and in a weak condition, died three days after his wife. He was twenty-eight years old.

Notes: According to art historian and curator Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele’s “Freundschaft” was rejected for exhibition on moral grounds by the Munich Secession on the third of December in 1913. It was swiftly purchased privately by Albert von Keller, the President of the Sucession, for fifty marks.

Around 1915, Johannes Fischer created a series of photographs featuring fellow painter Egon Schiele in his studio at Hietzinger Hauptstraße 101. As a colleague and friend, Fischer often exhibited with Schiele, who was two years his junior. In the article’s first insert image, Schiele is looking directly into the camera, his head slightly inclined and his forehead furrowed. The artist’s stance and expression are reminiscent of his self-portraits, such as the 1912 “Self-Portrait with Lowered Head”. The painting in the photo’s background, “Shrines in the Forest II”, is housed at the Kamm Foundation.

Top Insert Image: Johannes Fischer, “Egon Schiele with the 1915 painting ‘Shrines in the Forest II’ in the background”, 1915, Vintage Print, 16.3 x 11.2 cm, Leopold Museum, Vienna, Austria

Second Insert Image: Egon Schiele, “Waldandacht II (Shrines in the Forest II)”, 1915, Oil on Canvas, 100 x 120 cm, Stiftung Sammlung Kamm

Bottom Insert Image: Egon Schiele, “Self-Portrait with Lowered Head”, 1912, Oil on Wood Panel, 337 x 422 cm, Leopold Museum, Vienna, Austria

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer, “The Men’s Bath”, Date Unknown (1490-1528), Woodcut on Paper, 38.7 x 27.9 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

A printmaker and painter from Nuremberg, Albrecht Dürer is considered one of the most prolific and inventive artists in the German Renaissance. Dürer worked and traveled frequently to Italy during his studies of visual arts and spent time with a lifelong partner, Willibald Prickheimer, a German lawyer and humanist author.

Albrecht Dürer’s depiction of men relaxing in a public bath house was unusual in the early 1500s because it showed nudity without an accompanying mythological or biblical narrative. The print showcases Dürer’s ability to depict the male figure in various inventive poses and may feature portraits of some of his friends. Meant to be studied closely, the image includes visual puns such as the faucet placed near the man’s groin at left. The popularity of the print during Dürer’s lifetime may relate to the 1496 closure of the public bath in his hometown of Nuremberg to prevent a syphilis outbreak.

Notes: The “Ideas Made of Light” blog has an excellent article by its author, artist and UI designer Scott M.McDaniel, on Albecht Dürer’s “The Men’s Bathhouse” at: http://www.scottmcd.net/artanalysis/?p=702

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Brian Henry

The Photography of Brian Henry

Based in Maryland’s east coast city of Baltimore, Brian Henry is a self-taught, experimental analog photographer and explorer of abandoned sites. His work is an ongoing journal that documents architectural decay, explores the human body and its relationship to deserted spaces, examines emotions stirred by intimacy, fear and mortality, and uses the medium of photography as a narrative instrument.

Brian Henry became intrigued with analog photographic material and its capabilities during a traditional high school photography class. He became interested in how little alterations in the process changed the appearance of the image. Although Henry won a several scholarships to attend art school, he chose to apply his resources to his own unscripted, artistic journey. Henry has traveled a photographic journey up and down the East Coast of the U.S., as well as Europe and the Balkans.

For a period of nearly twenty years, Brian Henry has worked with different films, cameras and chemicals to understand how each affected the image of his subject. The equipment he prefers are the Pentx 67 with 55mm and Hp5 as well as Polaroid cameras and their films. Henry has learned and expanded upon traditional darkroom printing processes, often altering the prints and complimenting the subject with effects of distress and decay. He has at times buried the images in decaying buildings to achieve the correct effect for the each print’s unique irreplaceable mementos of time.

In 2019, Brian Henry participated in the seventh edition of the Revela’t Analog Photography Festival in Vilassar de Dalt near Barcelona, Spain. He has also presented his work in several group exhibitions including the 2018 “Fotofilmic17” at Galerie Binome in Paris and “The Male Gaze” at Seattle, Washington’s Gallery 1/1 in the United States. In 2019, Henry had is first solo exhibition, “Brian Henry: Silver Gelatin & Polaroid Prints” at the Steven Amedee Gallery in New York City.

Brian Henry and Greg Hatem are co-owners of Bazaar Curious Gifts at 3534 Chestnut Street in Baltimore’s iconic Hampden neighborhood. This is the gift shop for those seeking strange and unusual gifts, among which are an unique collection of natural history items, antique medical instruments, unique home decor items and other curious objects. The Bazaar Curious Gifts online shop is located at: https://www.bazaarbaltimore.com

“My work is an ongoing journal documenting architectural decay and my own mortality. I attempt to portray the beauty I see in these structures and occasionally include myself and others within them…. When I shoot Polaroid film, I consider it a unique souvenir of my experience. There’s something meaningful in creating something tangible within a space that will soon be destroyed. Other film mediums allow me to bend reality and add additional effects of distress and decay. In some instances, I have used photographic paper and film found in abandoned buildings. Other times, I have buried my images in decaying buildings for effects. It is all part of my attempts of connecting with a space.” —Brian Henry

Notes: The Thoughts & Photography of Johnny Martyr website has a 2019 interview with Brian Henry entitled “The Instant (Film) Decay of Brian Henry” at: https://johnnymartyr.wordpress.com/2019/03/21/the-instant-film-decay-of-brian-henry/

The fine art photography daily “LENS/CRATCH” has an article and interview with Brian Henry entitled “Beyond Instant Eros: Brian Henry’s Polaroids of Desire and Decay” at: https://lenscratch.com/2024/05/queer-photography-week-decay-mortality-brian-henry/

If you choose to repost some of Brian Henry’s photos, please credit the artist on the posting.

Top Insert Image: Brian Henry, “Self Portrait”, Color Print

Second Insert Image: Brian Henry, “Presence”, Gelatin Silver Print

Bottom Insert Image: Brian Henry, Title Unknown (Self-Portrait), Gelatin Silver Print

Gonzalo Orquin

The Artwork of Gonzalo Orquin

Born in 1982 at Aracena, a town in the Sierra de Aracena and Picos de Aroche National Park, Gonzalo Orquín is a Spanish multi-media artist, painter and photographer. His oeuvre includes works on paper, oils on canvas, street art, and installations.

At an early age, Orquin relocated with his family to Seville, the provincial capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia. He studied Fine Arts at Spain’s University of Seville between 2000 and 2004. Orquin continued his studies at Italy’s University of Perugia in 2005. He later undertook a residency at the Fondazione Sant’Elia, the cultural center for the promotion of the artistic and cultural heritage of the Province of Palermo, where his work was inspired by the light and traditions of the surrounding area.

Gonzalo Orquin’s work is influenced by the traditional Spanish realism of both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. through which he transforms the intimacy of everyday occurrences into measured dramatic events. His paintings consist of portraits and populated scenes, both interior and exterior, that are often created with a muted palette. Committed to the rights of the LBGTQ world, Orquin’w work, which displays a thoughtful depth of emotion, focuses on both gay and straight subjects with an eye to both the past and the present.

In 1999 at the age of sixteen, Orquin had his first exhibition in Seville. His first solo exhibition was held in Rome in 2006. In that year, Orquin received the Oltre i Libri Award from the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities. He has participated in group shows at Rome’s Royal Spanish Academy and St. Petersburg’s Museum of 20th and 21st Century Art. Orquin has presented his work in solo exhibitions at Rome’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MACRO), and the Leslie=Lohman Museum of Art in New York City.

As a photographer, Gonzalo Orquin is best known for his 2013 series “Si Quiero”, a collection of sixteen photographs of same-sex couples kissing in churches mainly located in Rome. Originally presented as part of “Trialogo”, a solo exhibition of his work in various mediums, these images were considered offensive by the diocese of Rome which threatened legal action. For the duration of the exhibition, these images were covered with black cardboard. Later exhibitions of the entire series were held at the Gallery MooiMan in Groningen, the Netherlands, and New York’s Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in April/May of 2015.

In 2023, Orquin presented his exhibition “Being Human-The Sea At Night Is Too Big” at Brussels’s MigratieMuseumMigration (MMM). This show focused on the stories and experiences of migrant and refugees arriving in Europe, either by sea to Italy or by land to Bosnia. The project was a collaboration with Italian photojournalist Francesco Malavolta which included a documentary film by French director Alex Forge who narrates Orquin’s work process and meetings with the migrants and refugees.

Gonzalo Orquin currently lives and works between Italy and Spain. A twenty-year retrospective exhibition of his work was held in Palermo, Italy in September of 2025. Orquin’s website is located at: https://www.gonzaloorquin.com

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Gonzalo Orquin”, 2021, Color Video Shot

Second Insert Image: Gonzalo Orquin, Untitled Still Life (Art Supplies), Oil on Canvas

Third Insert Image: Gonzalo Orquin, “Julian and Leo”, 2022, Oil on Canvas, 90 x70 cm

Bottom Insert Image: Gonzalo Orquin, “Un Muchacho Ruso”, 2022, Oil on Canvas, 45 x 45 cm

Cornel Brudașcu

The Paintings of Cornel Brudașcu

Born in the Sălaj County village of Tusa in 1937, Cornel Brudașcu is a Romanian painter who began his career under the his country’s former Communist regime of the 1960s. He studied painting at the Universitatea de Artă şi Design in the north-western city of Cluj-Napoca. Over the course of his career, Brudașcu’s work gradually progressed into gestural compositions that melded figurative forms with abstraction.

After his university graduation in 1962, Brudașcu began to establish an impressive body of work. However, while there were opportunities for exhibitions in the 1960s, there was no established art market in Romania. In the 1970s, the only decade in which the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu allowed cultural exchange with the West, Brudașcu and other artists became acquainted with contemporary American art through Western magazines, reading rooms, and informal networks. Publications, such as Germany’s “Popcorn” and London’s “Oz”, offered images of counter-culture music and art movements beyond the Iron Curtain.

As a member of Romania’s 1970s avant-garde painters, Brudașcu experimented with solarized photography and created a series of Pop Art paintings, photo- based portraits of friends as well as figures appropriated from magazines. These works gained him international recognition in 2015 due to their inclusion at the Tate Modern’s “The World Goes Pop” in London. Both the Centre Pompidou and Musee d’Art Moderne at the Ville de Paris have works from this series in their collections.

Following his Pop Art images, Cornel Brudașcu made a radical shift away from his previous work. This change was the result of new visual elements and a more personal approach to his paintings’ themes and genres. At unspecified times over a period of fifteen years, Brudașcu created a collection of simple graphic sketches and small, untitled paintings with dark burgundy hues. He interwove those works with male figurative paintings of a post-impressionist style that were tinged with a distinct homoeroticism. This painterly series of figurative works bear witness through their dream-like compositions to his slow, poetic journey of gay affirmation.

As with many other Romanian artists, the subject of hero and anti-hero is a dominate theme in Brudașcu’s paintings. Influenced heavily by the works of El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos) who reached his artistic maturity in Spain, Brudașcu’s fluid expressionist style inspired the many master-class students who attended his studio to be independent in their thinking and work. Throughout his career, Brudașcu’s oeuvre has maintained a balance of intimacy and cultural commentary that has united local Romanian histories with broader art movements.

Cornel Brudașcu has continued to exhibit his work since 2005. Among his solo exhibitions were shows at Galeria Plan B in Berlin, the VNH Gallery in Paris and Spatiu Intact in Cluj, Romania. His paintings have been presented in group exhibitions in Berlin, Hong Kong, London, Paris, Bucharest, New York, Ostrava, and Leipzig, among others. Brudașcu continues to live and work in Cluj-Napoca as a teacher at the internationally renowned Fine Arts School of Cluj.

Notes: Galleria Plan B has a biography and a selection of Cornel Brudașcu’s work at its website: https://www.plan-b.ro

The online Frieze Magazine has an article on Cornel Brudașcu by art and culture writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen at its site: https://www.frieze.com/article/cornel-brudascu

A second article on Cornel Brudașcu by Kristian Madsen, that includes several images from various stages of his work, is located at The Clavert Journal site: https://www.plan-b.ro/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Cornel-Brudascu-The-Calvert-Journal-2017.pdf

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Cornel Brudascu”, Color Print, The Calvert Journal 2017, United Kingdom

Second Insert Image: Cornel Brudașcu, Untitled (Faces on Red Field), 2024, Oil on Canvas, 50 x 40 cm, Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, Paris

Bottom Insert Image: Cornel Brudascu, Untitled (Figure/Blue Lines), 2019, Oil on Canvas, 51.8 x 47.9 cm, Allison Jacques Gallery, London

James Owen Mahoney

James Owen Mahoney, “The Etruscans”, Circa 1932, Oil on Canvas, 208.3 x 167.6 cm, Private Collection

Born in Dallas, Texas in October of 1907, James Owen Mahoney was an American artist noted for his canvas paintings and contributions to the revival of mural painting in the United States. He majored in art at Southern Methodist University from which he graduated in 1928. Mahoney continued his education at the Yale University School of Fine Art where he studied under painter Eugene Savage, a muralist who was trained in Early Renaissance techniques. The acquisition of these formal and technical Renaissance practices resulted in Mahoney’s mastery of tonal gradations and figurative modeling.

In 1932, Mahoney’s impressive work earned him the Prix de Rome and fellowship at the American Academy; he occupied a studio at the Academy’s palazzo on the Janiculum Hill in western Rome. This opportunity gave Mahoney direct exposure to the grandeur of Italy’s art, architecture and culture, an experience that remained with him throughout life. After returning to New York in 1936, he made the decision to focus on the genre of mural painting, an art style supported by the Federal Arts Project and favored by the public.

James Owen Mahoney eventually emerged as one of the leading muralists in the country. He received many commissions, among which were several murals to be displayed at the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition, two murals for the New York World’s Fair of 1939, and murals for private residences in New York, Connecticut, and Texas. After winning a national competition, Mahoney painted a third mural for the 1939 World’s Fair: a painting, measured one hundred by thirty-four feet, for the Building of the Government of the United States.

In 1939, Mahoney accepted an invitation from Dean Gilmore Clarke to become a member of Cornell University’s faculty at its College of Architecture. During the next three years, he regularly traveled between his Ithaca studio and his New York City apartment. In 1942, Mahoney joined the U.S. Army Air Corps and was stationed, after an officer training course, with a British military unit where he specialized in interpreting aerial photographs of enemy positions. After the war, Mahoney returned to Cornell University, took residence at the campus Faculty Club, and renewed his teaching responsibilities.

Although he maintained his ideals from Yale University, James Own Mahoney adapted his art teachings on theory and methods to a form of modified surrealism that combined trompe l’oeil elements, i.e. visual illusions, with real found objects, a characteristic of mid-twentieth century American art. Mahoney continued his mural work, albeit on a smaller scale as public favor for grand-scale murals had fallen, as well as his verre églomisé (reverse glass paintings) for sites in Baltimore, Atlanta, Ithaca and other cities. All these works were distinguished by their impeccable craftsmanship, Art Deco opulence, and suitability to the site.

Mahoney served as chairman of Cornell University’s Department of Art, during which he fostered a program that brought contemporary artists to Cornell. These artists presented their views and participated in critiques of student art. An individual with a complex personality, Mahoney was an avid and perceptive reader with strong literary opinions; his interests ranged from aesthetic theory to the latest fiction. Although trained in Renaissance traditions, he had high regard for the bucolic images of Samuel Palmer, the neo-primitive works of Henri Rousseau and the simple small-scale paintings of Giorgio Morandi.

James Owen Mahoney died at the age of eighty on the nineteenth of October in 1987 in Ithaca, New York. He left his library of approximately seven-thousand five-hundred volumes to the Cornell University Libraries, all the paintings in his possession to Cornell University’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum, and his house and furnishings to the Unitarian Church of Ithaca.

Notes: James Owen Mahoney’s “The Etruscans=, painted in 1932 during his tenure in Italy, is a powerful work. Imbued with grandeur, it captured Mahoney’s attention to line, sculptural forms, tonal gradations, and Art Deco flamboyance. Equally conscious of the art of composition, he filled the large-scale canvas with a surprisingly intimate and engaging scene.

Verre églomisé refers to the process of applying both a painted design and gilding onto the rear face of glass. In this process, the artist’s natural methodology is reversed, with highlights applied first and background applied last.

Top Insert Image: James Owen Mahoney, “The Red Bird”, Oil on Canvas, 195.9 x 182.6 cm, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University

Second Insert Image: James Owen Mahoney, “Legend”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas, 160 x 2223.5 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: James Owen Mahoney, “Allegorical View of South Texas”, 1936, Mural Oil on Canvas, Hall of State, The State of Texas Building, Dallas, Texas

Bottom Insert Image: James Owen Mahoney, “Sunday Afternoon”, Oil on Canvas Stretched on Hardboard Panel, 121.9 x 152.4 cm, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University