Category: portraiture

Franz Krüger

Franz Krüger, “Portrait of Prince Nikolai Saltykov”. 1850, Oil on Canvas, 98 x 79 cm, Hermitage Museum

Born into a noble family in September of 1797 at Grob-Radegast, Duchy of Anhalt-Dessau, Germany, Franz Krüger’s first studied with the local ornithologist I. F. Naumann, for whom he painted sketches of bird species. and printmaker Carl WilheIm Kolbe, who instilled in him the qualities of precise observation. In 1812, Krüger moved to Berlin where he studied at the Academy of the Arts until his graduation in 1814, continuing his studies independently.

Between 1818 and 1819, Krüger produced a series of paintings dedicated to the struggle of the German people against Emperor Napoleon. In 1820 at the Berlin Academy, he exhibited portraits of Prince Augustus of Prussia and Count August von Gneisenau, for which he received further royal commissions leading to him becoming one of the most popular portrait painters in Europe. 

Franz Krüger became in 1825 a member and Professor of the Berlin Academy of the Arts, and later, became a court painter of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilheim III. In 1831, now a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Art, he exhibited at the Winter Palace his painting “Parade ion the Opera Square in Berlin” and his “Equestrian Portrait of Friedrich Wilheim III of Prussia”. The large parade composition, done between 1824 and 1831, is now at the Berlin National Gallery and the equestrian portrait is at the Winter Palace’s Military Gallery. 

Enjoying a special arrangement with the Russian Emperor Nicholas I, Franz Krüger left his most significant portraits of members of the Royal Family and nobility, as well as paintings and watercolors of court life, parades and military exercises, to the Hermitage Museum. These include perhaps his most famous portraits, those of Emperor Alexander I and his brother Nicholas I.

Born in October of 1736, Nikolai Saltykov was a member of the Saltykov noble family, who became a Russian Field Marshal and imperial courtier and the tutor of the future Russian Tsar Paul I  and his two sons, Constantine and Alexander. Catherine II of Russia made him vice-president of Russia’s Military Council and, ten years later, made him a member of the Order of Saint Andrew, a senator and member of the high court council.   

The portrait of Nikolai Saltykov by Franz Krüger, done in 1850, depicts Saltykov at the age of fourteen, dressed in traditional court costume. By that time, Saltykov had already taken part, with his father, in the Russian advance to the River Rhine against Prussian forces in the Seven Years’ War and was a permanent member of the Semyonovsky Regiment, one of the oldest regiments of the Imperial Russian Army. 

Frederick Evans, “Aubrey Beardsley”

Frederick Evans, “Aubrey Beardsley (With Hands)”, 1893, Platinum Print and Photogravure, Wilson Center for Photography, London

Born in London in June of 1853, Frederick H. Evans was a British photographer known fo his images of architectural subjects. Before becoming a full-time photographer in 1898, he was a bookseller. While working as a clerk in London’s breweries, Aubrey Beardsley spent his lunch breaks browsing in Evan’s second-hand bookshop, developing his artistic and literary tastes from the wide variety of books.

As a result of his visits, Aubrey Beardsley became close friends with Frederick Evans, who was developing his photographic technique of monochrome printing involving a platinum process. Using his new process, Evans shot this portrait of Beardsley in 1893.

This portrait of Aubrey Beardsley was used in the editions of his early published works and has become the defining image of the artist. It became known as the ‘gargoyle portrait’, for Beardsley’s pose resembles the famous carved figure on the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. 

Born in August of 1872, Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English author and illustrator. His black ink drawings were influenced by Japanese woodcuts, and emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler. Beardsley’s contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau and poster styles was significant despite his early death from tuberculosis in March of 1898, at the age of twenty-five.

Image reblogged with many thanks to a great photographic history site: https://artblart.com

Edward Francis Burney

Edward Francis Burney, “Seated Nude”, 1790-1800, Watercolor, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven,, Conneticutt

Edward Francis Burney, “Self Portrait”, 1785-1800, Watercolor, 18 x 14 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Born on September 7th of 1760 in Worcester, England, Edward Francis Burney became a student at the Royal Academy School of Art in 1776, at the age of sixteen. During this time, he made two fine drawings of the Antique School, which are now in the Royal Collection in London. Receiving encouragement from portrait painter Joshua Reynolds, then the president of the school, Burney exhibited several works at the Royal Academy of Art between the years 1780 to 1803. 

Though he was a capable portraitist, painting family and friends, and also historical scenes, Burney worked mainly as an illustrator, devoting a greater part of his career to book illustrations. In 1780, he exhibited three illustrations for his cousin, author Fanny Burney’s 1778 coming-of age novel “Evelina”. One of these illustrations was later engraved and used in the 1791 edition of the novel. Burney created a set of thirteen illustrations for a 1799 edition of Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, now in the collection of the Huntington Library in California.

Influenced by the satirical style of painter and social critic William Hogarth, Edward Burney produced a rococo-styled set of four large watercolors, satirizing the contemporary musical and social life. Considered his most important work, these pieces from the 1820s are: “The Waltz”, “The Triumph of Music”, “Amateurs of Tye-Wig Music” and “The Elegant Establishment for Young Ladies”. Burney may have intended to publish prints of the paintings and to sell both originals and prints. There was a substantial market for satirical prints during this period. The four pictures were, however, never published.

Edward Francis Burney died, unmarried, in London on December 16th of 1848, at the age of eighty-eight. He was buried in Marylebone, England.

Joseph Campbell: “The Love of Your Fate”

Photographer Unknown, (The Love of Your Fate)

“Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called ‘the love of your fate.’ Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, ‘This is what I need.’ It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment–not discouragement–you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.

Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.” 

—-Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

Brenton Parry

Photography by Brenton Parry

Brenton Parry is a graphic designer with over twenty years of experience ranging from logos and stationary to posters and catalogues. Photography, a passion instilled by his father, has over the last fifteen years developed into a major part of his life. Parry’s male figure photography has resulted in two solo gallery exhibitions, work in two group exhibitions, a series of soft-cover male photography books published by Blurb Books, and a continuing series of downloadable male photography booklets.

Residing in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Brenton Parry works in Australia and worldwide. In 2014, he photographed the Sydney Stingers, the city’s LGBTI-inclusive water polo team to promote their annual trivia fundraising night in the Star Observer online magazine. Parry has also done product work for ASICS Sportswear and Footwear, Shimano Fishing Australia, and other companies.

More information, prints for purchase, and downloadable booklets can be found at the artist’s site located at: https://www.brentonparry.com

La Culture Physique Magazine

La Culture Physique Magazine

In 1885. French physiologist and physician Professor Edmond Desbonnet developed his Physical Culture theory and practice, which became popular in many European countries. His method was a reaction against the decadence he saw in the Belle Epoque era, and an emphasis on the premise that a healthy body was equally as important as a healthy mind. Before the first World War, fitness rooms were mostly  frequented by the French societal elite; following the war, the working classes gained access to the Physical Culture movement and its facilities. 

At the height of Desbonnet’s popularity, more than two hundred fitness centers espousing his method existed across Europe. Famous body builders, adepts of Desbonnet’s method, were often depicted in the various magazines and books that Desbonnet published. These photographs were offered for sale, often with a hand-held stereo viewer, through advertisements in his magazines. 

Professor Desbonnet published five magazines on the practice of physical culture, in which his theories were explained and illustrated by famous athletes’ photographs, such as Apolion the Mighty, with the form of an ancient Roman gladiator, and Eugene Sandow, who organized the world’s first major body building competition.

Among Desbonnet’s many publications, one of the two most popular magazines was the French “La Culture Physique”. It was an illustrated bimonthly magazine created in Paris by both Desbonnet and author-publisher Albert Surier. Published between 1904 and 1967, except for the war periods between 1914 to 1925 and September of 1943 to December of 1946, the magazine promoted bodybuilding and the benefits of an active lifestyle for all. 

During the rise of the gay consumer culture from 1945 to 1969, physique magazines, paperback novels, and other items became available through gay-oriented mail catalogues. This contributed to the sense of being in a larger community, validating one’s gay identity, and establishing models for what it meant to be gay. The legal struggles of the physique magazine publishers, in their fight against censorship laws, led to the first gay victories on the legal front, establishing the right to market these items, and became a catalyst for the rise of America’s gay movement.

For a more thorough study of the physique magazine and its contribution to the then-emerging gay rights movement, the article “Physique Pioneers: The Politics of 1960s Gay Consumer Culture” by University of Florida Professor David K. Johnson is a must read. The study was published by the Journal of Social History through Oxford University Press.

Available to read and download free through your school or library at:  https://www.jstor.org/stable/40802009?seq=1

A full version of Professor Johnson’s study can also be found at: http://history.usf.edu/faculty/data/johnsonarticle.pdf

Puck’s Mischief

Photographer Unknown, (Puck’s Mischief)

“I’ll follow you. I’ll lead you about a round, 

Through a bog, through bush, through brake, through brier.

Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound, 

A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire,

And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,

Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn”’

—-William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act Three, Scene One

In an early 17th century broadside. Puck, referred to as Robin Goodfellow, was the vassal of the Fairy King Oberon and inspired night-terrors in old women, led travelers astray, took the shape of animals, blew out candles, twitched off bedclothes, tattled people’s secrets, and changed babies in cradles with elfings while the parents slept. 

Puck utters the quote above as an aside in Act III of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, after he’s transformed Bottom’s head into that of a donkey and the rest of the craftsmen have run away. Puck indicates he’ll lead the craftsmen in circles through the forest, and that he’ll continue to frighten them by assuming various animal and inanimate forms. Puck’s sing-song wordplay in these lines serves to express his delight in creating mischief.

Elys Berroteràn, “Nicolas Quevedo”

Elys Berroteràn, “Nicolas Quevedo”, Photo Shoot for “Kaltblut.” Magazine, September, 2020

Born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1991, Elys Berroteràn is a photographer, fashion designer, model and actor. He started his career in fashion modeling and television commercial appearances. Deciding to make the fashion industry his career, Berroteràn formed Caracas Fashion in 2009, which, under his direction, is now one of the largest fashion showcases in Venezuela. One of his latest photography projects is “Moda Caracas Moda”, running the current fashion campaign “Born to be Wild”. 

Nicolas Quevedo is a model signed with the fashion and talent company Grupo 4 Colombia. 

Images reblogged with many thanks to the fashion magazine“Kaltblut.”, located online at https://www.kaltblut-magazine.com

Many thanks for inspiring this post to https://doctordee.tumblr.com

Carl Friedrich Johannes Unger

 

Carl Friedrich Johannes Unger, “Salomé (Portrayed by Eva von der Osten)”, 1917. Oil on Canvas, 135 x 90 cm, Museen der Stadt Dresden

Born in 1872 at Bautzen, a hill-top town in Germany, Carl Friedrich Johannes Unger was a painter, who during his lifetime, was a highly respected Art Nouveau  and Symbolist artist. In 1887, he took an apprenticeship as a decoration-painter in Bautzen; but later, between 1888 and 1893 studied painting in the Royal Dresden Court Theater. Unger continued his studies at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, under land and seascape painter Friedrich Preller the Younger and historical painter and sculptor Hermann Prell. 

After making a series of watercolors on the island Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, Unger effectively launched his international career in 1896 with his “Plakat” poster for the Dresden-based organ manufacturer Estey. In 1897, his painting “Die Muse (The Muse)” was eagerly purchased by the Old Masters Gallery, part of the Dresden State Art Collections. Unger continued his studies at the Académie Julian in Paris from October 1897 to March of 1898, under the tutorage of painters Tony-Robert Fleury and Jules Lefebvre.

In 1899, Hans Unger exhibited his work at the German Art Exhibition in Dresden; his “Self Portrait in a Sweater” and his landscape “Farewell” were displayed among his other works. At the 1900 Paris World’s Fair, he won the bronze medal for his exhibited works. After becoming a member of the newly established German Artists Union, Unger traveled the North Sea and Baltic areas, visited Italy and Egypt, producing pastel paintings and watercolors. For his work exhibited at the St. Louis 1904 World’s Fair, he won another bronze medal.

During 1917 and 1918, Hans Unger participated in several major Dresden exhibitions, including the 1918 Dresden Art Exhibition, with eleven paintings and ten drawings, and the Dresden Artists Society exhibition, where he entered six paintings and designed the catalogue’s cover image. With the cultural change in Germany after the loss of the war in 1918, Unger’s works of idealized women in pastoral landscapes fell out of popularity. Still a wealthy man, he continued to travel through Europe and Africa, visiting Egypt, exhibiting, and becoming an artist under the patronage of King Fuad I of Egypt. 

An exhibition for Hans Unger’s sixtieth birthday was organized by the Art Association of Saxony in 1933. After this celebration Unger’s health steadily deteriorated, with a late diagnosis of kidney disease. He died at his home in Loschwitz, Dresden, on the 9th of August in 1936, and was buried in Loschwitz Cemetery. The resurgence of interest in Jugendstil decorative art of Germany in the 1960s brought Hans Unger’s work back to the attention of the art world, resulting in an increase in popularity and several museum retrospectives.  

Note: Hans Unger’s 1917 “Salomé”, a portrait of German suprano opera singer Eva von der Osten in her performance as Salomé, was exhibited at the 1917 exhibition of the Dresdner Kunstgenossenschaft, Dresden Artists Society.

Sid Avery

 

Sid Avery, “Rock Hudson at Home in North Hollywood”, Date Unknown, 1950-1979, Silver Gelatin Print

Sid Avery, a Hollywood photographer, was known for capturing the private moments of stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean and Audrey Hepburn. His work in the 1950’s and 60’s was a departure from the glamorized, soft-focus portraits of an earlier Hollywood era when images of the stars were tightly controlled by the major studios. He showed celebrities on the movie set between takes and away from the job, relaxing with the family or engaged in household chores. Among his candid photographs are ones of Marlon Brando taking out the garbage, Rock Hudson emerging from the shower to take a phone call, and Audrey Hepburn riding her bike at Paramount Studios with a shaggy Yorkshire terrier in the basket.

The established stars, used to the old system, were not easily convinced to let a photographer document them in their unvarnished private lives, but Avery succeeded where others failed—he managed to get in where no one else could—and he soon became the man magazine editors and art directors called on for their candid photo layouts. Avery’s most effective tool was not his technical skill as a photographer, but his personality. His friendly, unassuming style put his subjects at ease and made them open up.

Among Avery’s first odd jobs as a young man was that of taking glamour shots of the chorus girls at Earl Carroll’s Vanities and the Florentine Gardens. When drafted into the Army, Avery was assigned to the Signal Corps and selected to receive six months of training at LIFE in New York before being sent overseas. Stationed in London, he was placed in charge of the Army Pictorial Service Laboratory, where all the still and combat footage coming out of the European theater passed through his hands. When Avery returned to Hollywood after the war, he was ready for the photo journalism boom. Avery eventually became one of the top advertising photographers in Los Angeles, moving from still photography into directing television commercials and receiving numerous awards.

In the eighties, Avery redirected his energies toward preserving the history of Hollywood as depicted in still photography, founding the non-profit Hollywood Photographers Archive which was donated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts. Avery then rebuilt the collection which still thrives today, the Motion Picture and Television Photo Archive (mptv Images), representing over fifty of Hollywood’s best-known photographers. Avery’s photographs have been exhibited all over the world, from Australia to Japan to England and throughout Europe.

My thanks to Becker-Minty for the information on Sid Avery: https://www.beckerminty.com/art/

 

Fabrizio Campanella

Fabrizio Campanella, “Painting of a Young Man”, 1980, Oil on Canvas, 91 x 61 cm, Private Collection

Born in 1965 in Rome, abstract artist Fabrizio Campanella’s creative work was primarily inspired by the culturally tumultuous period of the 1980s. The Neo Geo and The Pictures Generation became prominent art movements during this decade, alongside Neo-Expressionism which became well-known in Germany, France and Italy. Currently living and working in Rome, Campanella is  a member of Art Club International, the independent artistic association founded by Italian abstractionist painter Piero Dorazio in 1995.

Campanella had his first solo exhibition in 1992 at the La Gradiva Gallery in Rome. He has subsequently had solo shows at Studio Soligo in Rome, Palazzo Collicola Visual Arts in Spoleto in 2012,  Palazzo Ca Bonvicini in Venice in 2013, and at the Officina delle Zattere in Venice in 2014. His works have also been shown in many international exhibitions, including the XIV Rome Quadriennale and  the “Hommage à Vlado Gotovac” second exhibition at the Klovicevi Dvori Gallery in Zagreb.

The “Painting of a Young Man” is one of several 1980s figurative works by Campanella painted before he began his abstractions in the 1990s. 

Gregory Maquire: “The Edge of Things”

R Breathe Photography, Untitled, (The Edge of Things)

“Birds know themselves not to be at the center of anything, but at the margins of everything. The end of the map. We only live where someone’s horizon sweeps someone else’s. We are only noticed on the edge of things; but on the edge of things, we notice much.” 

—Gregory Maguire, Out of Oz

Image reblogged with thanks to https://thouartadeadthing.tumblr.com

Ian McEwan: “Waiting”

 

Photographer Unknown, (Waiting), Silver Gelatin Print

“Waiting. Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached.”

—Ian McEwan, Atonement

Born in 1948 in Aldershot, Hampshire, England, Ian McEwan spent most of his childhood in the Far East, Germany, and North Africa, where his father, an army officer, was posted. Upon his return to England, he studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature in 1970. He later received his Masters of Arts degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia..

McEwan’s  2001novel “Atonement” was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread Novel Award and was the winner of the W. H. Smith Literary Award in 2002. The novel, beginning in 1935, tells the story of Briony, a young girl and aspiring writer, and the consequences of the discovery she makes about Robbie, a young man destined to play a part in the Dunkirk evacuations. This novel was adapted for the screen, with the film, directed by Joe Wright, opening both the Vancouver International Film Festival and the 64th Venice International Film Festival.

Ian McEwan is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, in 1999. He was awarded a CBE, Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, in 2000.