Jacques de Lalaing

The Paintings of Jacques de Lalaing

Born in London on the fourth of November in 1858, Jacques de Lalaing was an English-Belgian painter and sculptor who worked in a realistic, naturalistic style both as a portrait artist and creator of historical scenes. As a sculptor, Lalaing produced both allegorical and animal bronzes as well as memorial monuments. Along with sculptors Léon Mignon and Antoine-Félix Bouré, he established a distinctively Belgian tradition of animal art.

Jacques de Lalaing was the younger son of Belgian diplomat Count Maximilien IV de Lalaing, a member of a noble southern Flanders family which played an important role in the history of the Netherlands. Jacques’s older brother, Charles Maximilien de Lalaing, became an important diplomat who served as Belgian Ambassador to four countries from 1899 to 1917.

Lalaing received his academic training in England until 1875 at which time he relocated to Brussels, Belgium. He studied at the city’s Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts under genre and portrait painter Jean-François Portaels, the founder of the Belgian Orientalist school; historical and portrait painter Louis Gallait; and portrait painter Alfred Cluysenaar, best known for his monumental decorative works.

As a sculptor, Jacques de Lalaing trained under sculptor and medalist Baron Thomas Jules Vinçotte, sculptor to the court of King Leopold II, and sculptor Josef Lambeaux, known for his large bronze statues and marble bas-reliefs. Lalaing created the British Waterloo Campaign Monument in Brussels, a large edifice of bronze figures on a plinth of rusticated stone blocks, below which lies the bodies of seventeen fallen soldiers from the battles at Quatre Bras and Waterloo. He also designed the bronze horseman battle group at the Bois de la Cambre in Brussels as well as the twenty-two meter bronze pylon in Schaerbeek, originally made for the 1913 Ghent Exposition.

To ensure the accuracy of his work, Lalaing extensively used the medium of photography; he also enlisted the services of renowned photographers in Brussels to compile a photographic record of his work. Lalaing accumulated a large collection of “Academies”, images produced for artists by Parisian photographers and publishers to serve as sources for inspiration. He also photographed thousands of reference images in his Brussels studio. These photos served as a simple work tools, the preparatory sketches from which to produce the initial plaster or charcoal study. In his vast Brussels studio, Lalaing staged his subjects facing the camera: celebrities whose portrait he had been commissioned to paint, as well as professional models, children and animals selected to inspire a future composition.

Jacques de Lalaing was commissioned for interior decorative scenes for the town hall of the Belgian commune of Saint-Gilles which bordered the city of Brussels. Other artists commissioned for this project included Fernand Khnopff, Albert Ciamberlani, and Emile Fabry, among others. Lalaing created six allegorical oil on canvas panels depicting the themes of commerce and industry; these panels were placed around the allegory “Truth, Goodness and Beauty”, a collaboration between painter Alfred Cluysenaar and himself.

In 1896, Lalaing was elected a member of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels; between 1904 and 1913, he served as its director. Lalaing died on the tenth of October in 1917 at the age of fifty-eight. In addition to private collections, his works are represented in the museum collections of Antwerp, Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Tournal. A collection of Lalaing’s photographic studies are housed in the Musée d’Orsay, France where an exhibition of these images was held from September of 2022 to March of 2023. .

Notes: The website for L’Hôtel de Ville de Saint-Gilles, now a museum in the commune of Saint-Gilles, can be found at: https://hoteldeville.stgilles.brussels/fr/

Top Insert Image: Alexandre de Lalaing, “Jacques de Lalaing”, Date Unknown, Vintage Print

Second Insert Image: Jacques De Lalaing, “Shirtless Model Sitting”, 1980, Albumin Print, Musée d’Orsay

Third Insert Image: Philip de László, “Comte Jacques de Lalainig”, 1931 (Paris), Oil on Board, 90 x 72 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Jacques de Lalaing, “Model with Mannequin”, circa 1884, Albumin Photo, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

John Cavanaugh

The Sculptural Work of John Cavanaugh

Born in Sycamore, Ohio in September of 1921, John Cavanaugh was an American sculptor who lived and worked in the Du Pont Circle area of Washington D.C.. The third son of four born to poor, intensely religious parents, he lost his father to suicide in 1929. Recognizing her son’s artistic talent and seeing no local options where he could study, Hilda Cavanaugh, John’s mother, sent him to the Ursulan convent in Tiffin, Ohio. In 1938, Cavanaugh relocated to Urbana, Ohio, to study art under painter and designer Alice Archer Sewall James. After his studies with James which included sculpture, Cavanaugh registered at Ohio State University, with initial studies in Literature and English Composition. After adding sculpture courses in his second year, he graduated with his Bachelor of Arts in 1945.

In 1946, John Cavanaugh met and married Janet Corneille in Columbus, Ohio. After a move to Boston where John studied at the Swedenborgian Theological School, the couple had a son together, who due to hydrocephalic syndrome died shortly after birth. A second son, Jon, would later be born in 1951. In 1948, after a move to Iowa, Cavanaugh enrolled at the University of Iowa to study engraving and sculpture. To further his education, he again enrolled at Ohio State University where he continued his sculptural work with experiments in ceramic, cast stone, wood, and sheet metal.

Cavanaugh won the National Sculpture Society’s Purchase Prize in 1951 for his sculpture, “Goose”, which was purchased by Syracuse University’s Everson Museum. In 1955, he had his first solo exhibitions at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and the Cranbook Academy of Art in Michigan. With the added recognition to his growing reputation, Cavanaugh was given a faculty position at the Columbus Museum School in Georgia where he taught modeling classes. During this period, he began a sculptural series of haunting large-headed children, possibly in reference to his first-born child, which he repeated through the 1960s and 1970s.

In the mid-1950s, John Cavanaugh began working at North American Aviation, a major aerospace manufacturer responsible for a number of historic aircraft. Using metal salvaged from the company’s salvage yard, he created the 1954 hammered metal “Goat Head”, which won the 1954 Ohio Ceramic and Sculpture Exhibition’s highest honor. Through his working at the NAA, Cavanaugh was able to set up a studio space in Columbus, Ohio. The year of 1956 was a difficult one for Cavanaugh. With growing doubts about his sexuality, his marriage, his art and religious beliefs, he left in September of that year for New York, leaving his wife and son, extended family and friends behind. His mother disowned Cavanaugh and tried to turn his three brothers against him; he never saw his mother again and only reconciled with his brothers after her death. Cavanaugh, however, stayed on good terms with both his wife, Janet, and his son.

Old friends from Ohio helped John Cavanaugh settle on Staten Island; he supported himself by working part-time as an industrial designer and producing window displays and murals for Resident Display in Greenwich Village. Several months after his arrival, John Cavanaugh met Dorothea Denslow, who was acting Director and founder of the New York Sculpture Center in Brooklynn. In return for work at the Center, he received free studio space for his terracotta sculptural work. By 1958, Cavanaugh had his self-confidence back and was regularly working on new creations. In 1959, he met Greenwich Village resident Philip Froeder, who was studying architecture at Columbia University in New York. They soon became partners, a relationship which lasted until Cavanaugh’s death.

During the early 1960s, Cavanaugh began to produce bronze castings of his terracotta work, either as a single cast or in small editions. In 1962, he started using lead as a sculptural medium, which enabled him to quickly produce larger-scale sculptures without the prohibitive cost of bronze. Cavanaugh met the established hammered-copper sculptor Nina Winkel during this time; she became an increasingly important influence and support to him. In 1963 Cavanaugh had his first solo exhibition at the Sculpture Center, where he showed forty-seven works in lead, bronze and terracotta to positive reviews.

John Cavanaugh and Philip Froeder moved to Washington D.C. in 1963, where they both set up studio/exhibition spaces in the neighborhood of Du Pont Circle. After his first studio show in 1964 led to major commissions, Cavanaugh presented twice yearly studio exhibitions from 1964 to 1984; these amounted to eight hundred works in lead, ceramic stoneware and bronze, of which two hundred were life-sized. He also had five additional solo shows in New York’s Sculpture Center, single shows at Ohio State University in 1964, and a show at Indiana’s Ball State University in 1976.

Cavanaugh regularly exhibited with the National Sculpture Society in New York, which now awards the John Cavanaugh Silver Medal on an annual basis. A recipient of numerous awards, he was awarded the 1984 New York Foundry Prize of the National Sculpture Society. Many of his works are in the public spaces and adorn the facades and walkways of homes in Washington D.C. Cavanaugh’s major commissions include several major works for the Marriott, the Landmark Corporation and the Crown Tower apartment complex in New Haven, Connecticut, among others.

In the early 1980s, John Cavanaugh was stricken with illness, found to be related to cancer from working with lead. During his last two years he worked with intensity; however, by June of 1984, he did not have the strength to hammer the lead into shape. Cavanaugh turned to specialized glass painting and, using a combinations of plastic and was, sculpted pieces to be cast in bronze. By December of that year, he had produced over seventy wax models for casting, including five life-sized figures. John Cavanaugh died in Washington, D.C., on January 9th in 1985.

Cavanaugh’s life partner, Philip Froeder, fulfilled Cavanaugh’s wish for a final exhibition called “The Spirit of Motion is Almost Balanced”. He also founded the John Cavanaugh Foundation to promote and support the work and ideas of Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh’s sculpture “Demeter” can be seen in the Friendship Garden of the U.S. National Arboretum; his sculpture of Olive Risley Seward is installed in a private residence in Southeast Washington, near Seward Square.There are several sculptural plaques done by Cavanaugh on buildings in the Dupont Circle area.

The John Cavanaugh Foundation is located at: http://www.cavanaughfoundation.org

Notes: John Cavanaugh’s “Princess Pines”, featured in the bottom insert image, is currently being sold by its owner. Inquiries can be made at: periodpiles@gmail.com

Volodymyr Tsisaryk

Volodymyr Tsisaryk, “Jason and the Golden Fleece”, 2016, Bronze, 58 x 24 x 16 centimeters, Boccara Art Gallery, New York

Volodymyr Tsisaryk is a sculptor from Lviv, Ukraine, who received his Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts at the Lviv State College of Decorative Art in 1999 and his Masters in Fine Art from the Lviv Academy of Arts in 2001.

Adolph Carl Johannes Brütt

Adolph Carl Johannes Brütt, “Schwertmann (Swordsman)”, 1912, Bronze, circa 300 cm, Rathausmarkt, Kiel, Germany

Born the coastal North Sea town of Husum in May of 1855, Adolph Carl Johannes Brütt was a German sculptor and the founder of the Weimar Sculpture School and its bronze foundry. Originally trained as a stonemason in the city of Kiel, he worked on several projects, including the Linderhof Palace, the smallest of three palaces built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria. A stipend from the Sparkasse Kiel enabled Brütt to study at the Prussian Academy of Art in Berlin. After graduating in 1878, he became a student of German sculptor Leopold Rau and worked in the studio of Karl Begas the Younger.

Brütt married in 1883 and opened his own studio. In 1893, he broke away from the mainstream Munich Artists’ Association and joined the newly formed Munich Secession, a cooperative to promote and defend their art against official paternalism and conservative policies. Brütt and his close friend Felix Koenigs, a banker and art collector, promoted the Secession through exhibitions at the National Gallery, shows which included works by sculptor Auguste Rodin and the French Impressionists.

In 1900, Adolph Carl Brütt traveled with his close friends Koenigs and printmaker Max Klinger to the Paris Exposition Universelle where he entered his bronze “Sword Dancer”. This female nude wielding two swords won a gold medal and secured Brütt’s international reputation. Unfortunately, Felix Koenigs became ill at the exposition and died in Paris. Brütt later helped convey Koenigs’s estate to the National Gallery where it is now housed in the “Foundation of Modernism” collection.

Brütt became a Professor at the Prussian Academy and also taught at Berlin’s private Fehr Academy which, devoted to the ideals of the Munich Secession, was founded by Danish painter and sculptor Conrad Fehr in 1892. Other artists who taught at Fehr Academy included German landscape painter and designer Walter Leistikow and copper artist Gustav Ellers. In 1905, Brütt was appointed a Professor at the Weimar Grand Ducal Saxon School of Art where he created its division for sculpture and bronze casting.Working with his students, he created the marble reliefs which decorate the lobby of the new Weimar Court Theater.

Adolph Carl Brütt returned to Berlin in 1910 when German sculptor Gottlieb Elster, a studio co-worker, succeeded him at the Weimar Art School. For the 1916 Summer Olympics in Germany, his “Sword Dancer” was moved from its location in Kiel to Berlin. In 1928, Brütt was awarded with a honorary citizenship to the German spa town of Bad Berka, the second biggest city in the Weimarer Land district. Adolph Carl Johannes Brütt passed away in Bad Berka in November of 1939. His sculpture school became part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.

Among Adolph Brütt’s bronze and stone sculptures are the 1887 “Der Fischer (The Fisherman)”, a bonze sculpture in front of Berlin’s Old National Gallery; the 206 cm bronze “Schwerttänzerin (Sword Dancer)” in Kiel; the 1902 granite fountain “Asmussen-Woldsen-Brunnen” in the Husum Marketplace; the 1907 “Nacht (Night)”, an openly erotic marble statute at the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Art in Weimar; the 1909 marble statue of a seated Theodor Mommsen at the Court of Honor in Humboldt University; and the 1912 bronze “Schwertmann (Swordsman)” at the Rathausmarkt in Kiel.

Reblogged with thanks to https://hatecolours.tumblr.com

Second Insert Image: Adolph Carl Johannes Brütt, “Schwertmann (Swordsman)”, 1912, Bronze, circa 300 cm, Rathausmarkt, Kiel, Germany

Bottom Insert Image: Louis Held, “Adolph Brütt in Front of His Marble Theodor Mommsen”, circa 1903

Bronze Censer

Ming Dynasty Bronze Censer, Artist Unknown, 1368-1644 AD, Bronze, Hardwood, Jade, Private Collection

This Chinese Ming Dynasty censer has a bronze globular mask decorated body with twin handles. It is supported by a tripod of mask bronze legs resting on a hardwood stand. the cover is hardwood with central jade decoration. The height of the censer is 23 centimeters.

Nicolas Pain

Nicolas Pain, “Octopus III”, 2016, Bronze, 1 x 1 x 1 Foot

After graduating in 1990 with a B.A. in Graphic Design, English sculptor Nicolas Pain pursued a career as a graphic designer though his interest and ability in three dimensional work drew him into the to the video game industry in the late nineties. This allowed him to support his life long interest in both SCUBA diving and marine wildlife that proved to be the trigger for his sculptural work which he began in 2005.

Ian Rank-Broadley

Ian Rank-Broadley, “Heroic Torso”, Bronze, Size 1.5 m, Edition of 3

Ian Ramk-Broadley is a British sculptor, one of Britain’s foremost medallic artists. His effigy of H.M. Queen Elizabeth II appears on all UK and Commonwealth coinage since 1998. He has recently completed work on one of the most important war memorials since WWII, the Armed Forces Memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. .

The “Heroic Torso”, cast from bronze, was inspired by Classical fragments but given a contemporary twist. The lizard attempts to conceal the maleness of the figure, and yet becomes the focus. This edition of the sculpture is in a private collection.

Cast Bronze Lord Vishnu

Cast Bronze Lord Vishnu, Lost Wax Method in the Hoysata Style

Vishnu’s face is perfectly shaped giving him a truly divine appearance. His face is angular and sharp with his oval eyes almost looking through you with the power of his gaze. He is dressed in royal silk garments and holds in his four hands the sankha (conch), chakra (discus), gada (mace), a fly whisp in his front right hand.

The conch represents “Om”, the first sound of creation and also the beginning of matter, since sound and matter are consider to be synonymous. The discus is thought to represent the sun. Vishnu’s weapon, the mace, represents the elemental force from which all physical and mental powers derive.

His head dress design is called a Kirita Makutam, a head dress in the shape of a large puja bell. Both in his head dress and on his belt is a carving of the god of time Mahakala. Vishnu’s large mace was cast separately and can be removed from the piece.

Francisque Joseph Duret

Francisque Joseph Duret, “Chactas Meditating on Atala’s Tomb”, Cast Bronze, 1836, 135 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, France

The Romantic sculptor Francisque Duret, born in 1804, presented the model of his “Chactas Meditating on the Grave of Atala” at the Paris Salon of 1836. Several reduced-size bronzes of the sculpture were cast by the Delafontaine foundry after 1848. Duret based this work on Atala, the famous novel published in 1801 by François-René de Chateaubriand, and on Girodet’s iconic painting “The Entombment of Atala”, painted in 1808 and now on exhibit at the Louvre.

This sentimental and edifying tale tells the story of Chactas, an Indian of the Natchez tribe in Louisiana, returning to the grave of his sweetheart, Atala. The Indian girl, recently converted to Christianity, chose to poison herself, despite her love, rather than break her vow of chastity. Seated on an ivy-covered rock, a symbol of remembrance and fidelity, this athlete in mourning represents the so-called “savage” on the path to redemption, for Chactas will be converted in his turn. This moralizing story, according to Emmanuelle Héran, should be understood in the historical context of the July Monarchy, which viewed religion as a force for order and social stability

Only the exotic accessories identify this “Hercules of the wilderness:”: the plaited hair, the earring and necklace… Although the nudity suggests “primitive” man, there is undoubtedly a suggestion of the classical era, for there existed few depictions of the American Indian at that time: Chactas became a pioneering image of the Indian in the Western imagination. The new collective psyche that emerged from the turmoil of the Revolution praised sensitivity and depicted man confronting the mystery of his fate, turning away from the heroes of classical antiquity.

The Apoxyomenos from Croatia

The Apoxyomenos from Croatia

Apoxyomenos (the “Scraper”) is one of the conventional subjects of ancient Greek votive sculpture. It represents an athlete caught in the familiar act of scraping sweat and dust from his body with a strigil, the small curved instrument used in Roman baths.

This substantially complete bronze Apoxyomenos, who strigilates his left hand held close to his thigh, was discovered by René Wouten. He found this bronze statue fully covered in sponges and sea life. No parts of the statue were missing, though its head was disconnected from the body. The bronze figure was recovered in 1996 from the northern Adriatic Sea between the Vele Orjule and Kozjaki inlets, near the Croatian city of Lošinj.

At 192 cm in height, this Apoxyomenos is currently thought to be a Hellenistic copy of sculptor Lysippos’ Apoxyomenos from the second or first century BCE. It is currently conserved, as the Croatian Apoxyomenos, in Zagreb’s Mimara Museum. The Apoxyomenos is similar to an Ephesus bronze votive figure in several ways: the almost portrait-like individuality of the face and a non-Classical form with a broad, fleshy jaw, short chin and hair made rough and unruly by sweat and dust.

Thomas Shields Clark

Thomas Shields Clark, “The Cider Press”, Bronze, Golden Gate Park

Thomas Shields Clark graduated from Princeton University in 1882. He was a pupil of the Art Students League, New York, and of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Later he entered the atelier of Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, and, becoming interested in sculpture, he worked for a while under Henri Chapu. As a sculptor, he received a medal of honor in Madrid for his Cider Press.

This 1892 Bronze sculpture was originally exhibited at the Midwinter International Exposition in 1894. The Apple Cider Bronze bears some resemblance to Douglas Tilden’s Mechanics Monument located on Market street in that it bears tribute to the value of hard work. However, this purchase and contribution by DeYoung was apparently inspired by art rather than memorial, since the only cider industry of note in the San Francisco Bay Area is Martinelli’s (1868) located in Watsonville, down the peninsula.

This statue was originally a drinking fountain with a cup attached by a chain, and some say it ran with cider instead of water.

The Carpeaux Fountain

The Carpeaux Fountain at Jardin Marco Polo, South of the Jardin du Luxembourg in the 6th Arrondissement of Paris

The central axis of the Luxemburg Garden is extended, beyond its wrought iron grill and gates opening to rue Auguste Comte, by the central esplanade of the rue de l’Observatoire, officially the Jardin Marco Polo, where sculptures of the four Times of Day alternate with columns and culminate at the southern end with the 1874 “Fountain of the Observatory”, also known as the “Fontaine des Quatre-Parties-du-Monde” or the “Carpeaux Fountain”, for its sculptures by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. It was installed as part of the development of the avenue de l’Observatoire by Gabriel Davioud in 1867.

The bronze fountain represents the work of four sculptors: Louis Vuillemot carved the garlands and festoons around the pedestal, Pierre Legrain carved the armillary with interior globe and zodiac band; the animalier Emmanuel Fremiet designed the eight horses, marine turtles and spouting fish. Most importantly Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux sculpted the four nude women supporting the globe, representing the Four Continents of classical iconography.

Igor Mitoraj

Igor Mitoraj, Bronze Doors at Saint Maria Degli Angeli, Rome, Italy

The Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels and the Martyrs ( Santa Maria Degli Angeli e dei Martiri) is a titular basilica church in Rome, Italy built inside the frigidarium of the Baths of Diocletian in the Piazza della Repubblica.

Igor Mitoraj was a Polish artist born in Oederan, Germany. Having previously worked with terracotta and bronze, a trip to Carrara, Italy, in 1979 turned him to using marble as his primary medium and in 1983 he set up a studio in Pietrasanta. In 2006, he created the new bronze doors and a statue of John the Baptist for the basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Rome.

The right hand bronze door depicts the Resurrection, and the left hand door the Annunciation. Most of the surfaces of both doors are blank, showing textured and patinated metal, but out of the surfaces emerge dismembered figures and heads as if they were floating in water. The three figures of Christ, Our Lady and the Archangel Gabriel have arms amputated, and this detail is an allusion to the damaged Classical statues that used to be displayed in the adjacent museum. The figure of Christ is further divided into four by two slashes in the form of a cross.

Thanks to http://deaprojekt.tumblr.com for the reblog of the top image.