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horseman battle group at the Bois de la Cambre in Brussels as well as the twenty-two meter bronze pylon in Schaerbeek, originally made for the 1913 Ghent Exposition.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

Jan Mankes

The Artwork of Jan Mankes

Born in August of 1889 in the city of Meppel, Jan Mankes was a Dutch painter whose restrained, detailed work included self-portraits, landscapes and detailed studies of animals and birds. Although he developed a reputation as an ascetic, Mankes was well acquainted with both events and artists in the Netherlands.

The son of tax inspector Beint Jans Mankes and Genty Hartsuyker, Jan Mankes began his initial education in 1902 at Meppel; however, after his father received a new assignment, the family moved in 1903 to Delft, a city in South Holland. Beginning in 1904, Mankes studied at the Delft workshop of painter and stained glass artist Jan Lourens Schouten. In his free time, he also trained in stained glass techniques at the workshop of Hermanus Veldhuis and often assisted Veldhuis in his work. There is evidence Mankes participated in the restoration of stained glass panels at Sint Janskerk, a Gothic-styled church in the city of Gouda.

Mankes often traveled to The Hague where he attended evening classes at its Academy of Fine Arts and studied the painting collections in the Mauritshuis Museum. He was particularly influenced by the work of sixteenth-century German artist and printmaker Hans Holbein the Younger as well as seventeenth-century Dutch painters Carel Fabritius and Johannes Vermeer. In 1908 at the age eighteen, Mankes showed his first paintings to his friend, Delft engraver Antoine van Derktsen Angers, who advised him to leave the glass works and devote himself to a career as a painter.

After the retirement of his father in 1909, Jans Mankes moved with his parents to the village of Bovenknipe in the northern province of Friesland. Inspired by its landscapes, he decided on the main themes for his work: portraiture and depictions of the natural world’s fauna and flora. From 1909 onwards, Mankes was supported financially by his patron from The Hague, tobacco merchant and major art collector A. A. M. Pauwels. His letters to Pauwels expressing gratitude for both money and materials were published in 2012 by the Netherlands Institute for Art History; Pauwels’s letters did not survive.

In 1911, Mankes created a portrait of Anne Zernike, a progressive Mennonite woman and Netherlands’ first female minister with a doctoral degree. This portrait is now housed in the collection of the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden. In the same year, Mankes painted one of his most famous self-portraits, “Self-Portrait with an Owl”. His exposure in 1912 to the work of Japanese ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai, best known for his woodblock prints, created a lasting impression on his work, especially in regard to simplicity of composition.

On the thirtieth of September in 1915, Mankes married Anne Sernike and the couple lived for several years in The Hague. After a diagnosis of tuberculosis, he and his wife relocated in 1916 to the city of Eerbeck in the central-eastern province of Gelderland. Two years later, the couple had their only child, a son named Beint after Mankes’s father. However by this time, Mankes’s health was steadily failing due to his tuberculosis. He died on the twenty-third of April in 1920 at the age of thirty.

In addition to private collections, Jan Mankes’s work is housed in the Netherland’s Museum of Modern Art in Arnhem, the Museum Belvedere Heerenveen, the Rijksmuseum, and the MORE Museum in Gorssel as well as other international museums.

Top Insert Image: Jan Mankes, “Self Portrait”, circa 1915, Pencil and Charcoal on Paper, 21 x 17.5 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Jan Mankes, “Zelfportret met Uil (Self Portrait with an Owl)“, 1911, Oil on Canvas, 20.5 x 17 cm, Museum Arnhem, The Netherlands

Bottom Insert Image: Jan Mankes, “Annie Zernike”, 1918, Oil on Canvas, 34 x 32.5 cm, Museum for Modern Realism (MORE), Gorssel, The Netherlands

Michiel Sweerts

Michiel Sweerts, “Wrestling Match”, 1649, Oil on Canvas, 86 x 128 cm, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Germany

Born in Brussels, Michiel Sweerts was a Flemish painter and printmaker of the Baroque period. known for portraits as well as genre and historical paintings.. During his stay in Rome, he became linked to the Bamboccianti, an informal association of Dutch and Flemish artists known for their paintings and etchings of peasant subjects in Rome and its countryside.

Michiel Sweerts, the son of a Catholic linen merchant, David Sweerts, and Martina Ballu, was baptized at Brussel’s St. Nicholas Church on the twenty-ninth of September in 1618. Nothing is known of his training or any other aspect of his life before 1646 when Sweerts, at the age of twenty-eight, registered as a resident of the Rome’s Santa Maria del Popolo parish. In 1647, Sweerts became an associate of the Accademia di San Luca, a prestigious artist association approved by Papal brief in 1577.

In Rome, Sweerts painted genre paintings in the style of the Bamboccianti and a series of canvases depicting the training of painters in studios and classes. He also was the teacher of William Guglielmo Reuter, a painter from Brussels who was influenced by the Bamboccianti. Having gained a solid reputation for his work, Sweerts was invited to enter the service of Rome’s ruling papal family under the patronage of Prince Camillo Pamphilj, the nephew of Pope Innocent X. Through Prince Pamphilj’s influence, the pope bestowed upon Sweerts the papal title of Cavaliere di Cristo, a honorary title of knighthood.

During his time in Rome, Michiel Sweerts developed a lifelong relationship with the Deutz family, one of the most prominent Amsterdam trading families. In 1651, merchant and financier Jean Deutz gave Sweerts the power of attorney to act as his representative at the local customs house and as an agent on the Italian art market. Despite these patronages, Sweerts left Rome for unknown reasons between 1552 and 1654; he is recorded in Brussels in July of 1655 at a baptism. In 1659, Sweerts joined the local Guild of Saint Luke which represented the trades of local artists. He also opened an academy in Brussels where his students could work from live models.

During his time in Brussels, Sweerts became more devout and joined the Missions Étrangères, a Catholic missionary organization that was committed to proselytizing in the Far East. Between 1658 and 1661, he spent several periods in Amsterdam where he supervised the construction of a ship for the transport of the Missions Étrangères group to the Turkish city of Alexandretta and then to the Far East. By December of 1661, Sweerts had arrived in Marseilles, France; he departed by ship for Palestine in January of 1662.

Michiel Sweerts met the Étrangères delegation of Bishop François Pallu and seven priests in Palestine and sailed with them to Syria. In the Syrian city of Aleppo, he painted and proselytized; however, Sweerts was dismissed from the mission after only two years because of his unstable and undisciplined character. He traveled overland through Persia and eventually reached the Portuguese Jesuit community in the Indian city of Goa, According to missionary records, Sweerts died at Goa in June of 1664 at the age of forty-five.

Sweerts’s surviving works were mostly created during his residency in Rome. As he rarely signed his paintings, the total number varies from forty to one hundred. Due to Sweerts’s popularity at the time, many copies were made by his contemporaries, both pupils and followers. None of Sweerts’s Biblical compositions, mentioned in contemporary inventories, or the work he produced after his departure from Europe are known to have survived.

Among the genre scenes attributed to Michiel Sweerts are two that reprised the popular subject of game players, the 1652 “Damspelers (Draughts Players)” and the 1646-1652 “De Kaartspelers (Card Players)”, both of which are housed in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. Between 1646 and 1649, Sweerts produced a series of seven Biblical scenes, “Seven Acts of Mercy”, which display his masterly use of chiaroscuro to create dramatic lighting effects. He also developed new themes such as that of Roman street wrestlers in his 1649 “Wrestling Match”, again a strong example of his use of chiaroscuro.

Michiel Sweerts painted the majority of his portraits in Brussels and Amsterdam between 1655 and 1661. He was interested in depicting ordinary people and explored their distinctive characters through their curious expressions and sideway glances. Among these portraits are the 1654 “Head of a Woman” with its downward gaze, the simply-dressed maidservant in the 1660 “Portrait of a Young Woman” and the 1656 pensive “Portrait of a Young Man”, now in the collection of the Hermitage. Sweerts’s most ambitious work in terms of composition and technical achievement was the 1652-1654 “Plague in an Ancient City”, a dramatic depiction in the classical style of the devastation caused by the bubonic plague. This epic work is now housed in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

In July of 2023, Michiel Sweerts’s long-lost painting, “The Artist’s Studio with a Seamstress”, sold at Christie’s London for a record of 21.6 million Pounds, four times the previous auction record for an artist little known outside the Old Master world. Thought to have been painted around 1646-1649 in Rome, this signed work was discovered in untouched condition at a house in France.

Notes: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has an informative article entitled “Michiel Sweerts and Biblical Subjects in Dutch Art” written by Walter Liedtke for the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. This article can be found at: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/swee/hd_swee.htm

Top Insert Image: Michiel Sweerts, “Self Portrait with Skull”, circa 1660, Oil on Canvas, 78.7 x 60.9 cm, Agnes Etherington Art Center, Queens University, Canada

Second Insert Image: Michiel Sweerts, “Clothing the Naked”, 1646-1649, “Seven Acts of Mercy” Series, Oil on Canvas, 74 x 99 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Third Insert Image: Michiel Sweerts, “Mars Destroying the Arts”, 1650-1652, Oil on Canvas, 69 x 51 cm, Private Collection

Fourth Insert Image: Michiel Sweerts, “Hommes se Baignant (Bathers)”, 1655, Oil on Canvas, 109 x 164 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg, France

Bottom Insert Image: Michiel Sweerts, “Boy in a Turban Holding a Nosegay”, 1658-1661, Oil on Canvas, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Severin Falkman

Severin Falkman, “Antonio”, 1870, Oil on Canvas, 112 x 74 cm, Finnish National Gallery

Born in Stockholm in April of 1831, Severin Gabriel Falkman was a Swedish-born painter who was one of the pioneers of Karelianism, a late nineteenth-century art and literary movement in the Grand Duchy of Finland. In 1835, Finnish author Elias Lönnrot published his compilation of oral folklore and mythology from the Karelian and Finnish traditions. The cultural sections of Finland’s society became curious about the heritage of the historical, eastern province of Finnish Karelia. Gradually, this interest in Finland’s heritage developed into the Karelian movement, a Finnish version of European National Romanticism.

The youngest of four children born into the merchant family of Hans Johan and Sofia Falkman, Severin Falkman relocated with his family to Finland in the 1840s. He received his initial education at the private Helsinki Lyceum and, in 1848, became one of the first students of the Finnish Art Association’s school of drawing. From 1857 to 1861, Falkman studied in Paris under French history painter Thomas Couture who taught such artists as Édouard Manet and William Morris Hunt.

After beginning an extended art study tour of Europe, Falkman studied at the University of Helsinki and the city’s Academy of Fine Arts. For a period, he was also a student of painter and printmaker Christian Forssell, who held the position of Professor of Drawing at Stockholm’s Academy of Art. Between 1864 and 1870, Falkman worked and painted in Rome, Paris and Munich.

In 1870, Severin Falkman returned to Finland where he settled in Helsinki. He was given permission in 1872 by the Helsinki City Museum to build a studio for himself within its structure; it is now the oldest remaining artist studio in the museum and currently open for public viewing. After undertaking a photographic trip to the eastern area of Finland, Falkman published an account of its people and ethnographic objects in his 1885 “I Östra Finland (In Eastern Finland)”.

During his lifetime, Falkman painted in several genres including portraiture, still life, and scenes, both interior and exterior, that portrayed both local and medieval figures. His most important painting is the 1880-1886 historical painting “Karl Knutson Bonde Leaving Vyborg Castle for the Royal Election in Stockholm 1448”, now housed in the Finnish National Gallery. An example of the Finnish Karelianist movement, the painting conveyed the national romantic message of Finland’s important role in the political history of Sweden.

Severin Falkman was a recipient of the Imperial Order of Saint Anna, awarded for a distinguished career in civil service or for valor and service in the military. It entitled recipients to either hereditary nobility or personal nobility. Falkman died in the Finnish city of Helsingfors in July of 1889. His work is in both private and public collections including those of the Helsinki City Museum, the Pori Art Museum of Finland, and the Finnish National Gallery.

Second Insert Image: Severin Falkman, “Easter Procession in Rome”, 1866, Oil on Canvas, 112 x 87 cm, Finnish National Gallery

Bottom Insert Image: Severin Falkman, “Nature Morte (Eurasian Woodcock)”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas, 41 x 32.5 cm, Pori Art Museum, Finland

Dominic Finocchio

Paintings by Dominic Finocchio

Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1950, Dominic Finocchio is an American painter who creates narrative figurative works. The son of Sicilian parents who immigrated to the United States in the 1920s, he spent his childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, living with his parents and Italian-speaking grandparents. Interested in art from an early age, Finocchio began in his teens to study art more intensely with frequent visits to the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Central Library’s art department.

Finocchio, although interested in various genres and styles, became particularly influenced by the figurative works of Michelangelo and French neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. He also discovered the Mannerist style of the late sixteenth-century Italian High Renaissance, a movement which paid attention to lighting, clarity of line, and color. Finocchio was particularly interested in the works of Mannerist portrait painters Jacopo da Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, and Rosso Florentino, one of the founders of the Fontainebleau School.

Dominic Finocchio, encouraged by his supportive art instructor Father T. Brug, prepared a portfolio of work and submitted a grant request for attendance at Missouri’s Webster University. He studied at the university for two years before enrolling in the art curriculum at Meramec Community College where he studied drawing under department head David Durham. While attending classes, Finocchio began singing in several bands and also working as a display designer, an occupation that would support his life as an artist for the next forty-two years.

During most of the 1970s, Finocchio continued his drawing but did not produce any paintings. Eventually, he began to focus solely on painting during his time away from the display work. Although St. Louis at that time was not an art-centered city, it did have several non-profit support organizations, such as Art Saint Louis and the St. Louis Artists’Guild, which provided exhibition opportunities and association with other artists. With such oppurtunities available, Finocchio retired early from his display work and concentrated on painting. Having gained exposure in the art world through the non-profit organizations, he was contacted in 2021 by contemporary gallery owner and lecturer Duane Reed for a studio visit. In late 2022, Dominic Finocchio had his first solo exhibition at St. Louis’s Duane Reed Gallery, recognized for showcasing innovative established and emerging artists.

Dominic Finocchio’s paintings are tableaus, narratives depicting the modern male set in contemporary social situations that explore aspects of masculinity. The initial combinations of figure, fauna and landscape evolve through a lengthy process of editing before the composition is finalized. Finocchio’s figurative compositions, like many of the early mannerist works, show attention to color and lighting as well as off-center placement of figures. Although aware of each other’s presence, Finocchio’s protagonists present an ambiguous story line that is left for the viewer’s exploration and interpretation.

Finocchio has presented his work in curated, invitational, and juried exhibitions for over thirty years. In 2014, his work was included in edition #17 of the quarterly publication “The Art of Man”, a journal featuring articles on artists whose portfolios contain male figurative works in the classical tradition. Finocchio’s solo exhibitions include the 2017 “Lies Provide” at the Mildred Cox Gallery in Fulton, Missouri; the 2018 “Imaginaria” at the Schmidt Art Center at Southwestern Illinois College; and the 2022 “Desire and Indifference” at the Duane Reed Gallery in St. Louis, Missouri.

Dominic Finocchio’s work has been exhibited regularly at the annual Art St. Louis Exhibition and frequently at such venues as the Springfield Art Museum in Missouri; The Foundry Art Centre in St. Charles, Missouri; The Jones Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri; the Jacoby Arts Center in Alton, Illinois; and the Evansville Museum in Indiana, among others. Finocchio’s paintings are housed in many private collections as well as public institutions, among which are the Evansville Museum of Arts and Science in Indiana, the St. Louis Marriott Renaissance Hotel, Koetting Associates in St. Louis, and the Bristol-Meyers Squibb Corporation in Evansville.

For his work, Finocchio has won the 2021 Mary Jane Twomey Award for Best of Show at the Buchanan Center for the Arts, the 2020 Caroline Karges Merit Award from the Evansville Museum of Arts and Sciences, the 2006 Phil Desind Award from the Butler Institute of American Art, and both the Elise Strouse Merit Award and Mary McNamee Bower Purchase Award from the Evansville Museum of Arts and Sciences in 2002-2003.

Dominic Finocchio’s paintings will be on exhibit April 25-28 at the 2024 San Francisco Art Market/Art Fair in the Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Boulevard, Building C, Suite 260, Booth A17

Notes: Dominic Finocchio’s website is located at: https://www.dominicfinocchio.com

Finochio is represented by the Duane Reed Gallery of Saint Louis, Missouri. Inquiries regarding his work and current exhibitions can be directed to: https://www.duanereedgallery.com or info@duanereedgallery.com

Top Insert Image: Dominic Finocchio, “Companionship”, 2022, Oil on Canvas, 61 x 45.7 cm, Courtesy of Duane Reed Gallery, St. Louis, Missouri

Second Insert Image: Dominic Finocchio, “Eight Eyes”, Oil on Canvas, 76.2 x 101.6 cm, Courtesy of Artist

Third Insert Image: Dominic Finocchio, “Worldly”, 2023. 76.2 x 101.6 cm, Courtesy of Artist

Bottom Insert Image: Dominic Finocchio, “Sit, Stand, Walk, Fly”, 2023, Watercolor and Gouache on Paper, 45.5 x 48.3 cm, Courtesy of Artist

Stephen O’Donnell

Paintings by Stephen O’Donnell

Born in the Puget Sound Basin city of Everett, Washington in 1958, Stephen O’Donnell is a self-taught artist who, in addition to other genres, often works in the style of portrait historié, the depiction of a subject in historic, biblical or mythological guise. This genre originated in the Netherlands in the latter part of the sixteenth century as a synthesis of portraiture and historical painting. The term itself, however, originated in France during the eighteenth-century.

The son of a military family whose father served in the Air Force, O’Donnell received his initial education at various schools where he established his identity as an artist. As a teenager, O’Donnell participated in art competitions and exhibitions and accepted commissions for portraits. When he was nineteen, his father retired and the family, except for O’Donnell, settled in Portland.

Instead of choosing a college-level art school, Stephen O’Donnell relocated in 1980 to San Francisco. During the next six years, he designed theatrical costumes for the city’s Shakespeare Festival, attended acting workshops and taught vocal performance workshops. O’Donnell’s primary focus at this time was on singing, most often done in San Francisco’s vibrant cabaret scene. It was not until his move to Los Angeles in 1986 that O’Donnell gradually started painting again, not to market his art but to fulfill his need to make art.

O’Donnell is not an artist who paints the world around him. He is instead an artist who paints the world of paintings. O‘Donnell doesn’t paint a tree that looks like a tree, but rather one that looks like a wonderful painting of a tree. His art training grew from his love of history and biography. O’Donnell was drawn to the art world through book illustrations and reproductions of both classical paintings and crafted artifacts; through these images, he learned the history of art and design. His interest in pre-1980 films, such as the classics shot by Vittorio De Sica and Luchino Visconti, both masters of lighting and design, also served as inspiration for his career as a painter.

Stephen O’Donnell’s greatest artistic appreciation and enjoyment in the art world lies within its history of portraiture. Although he paints a variety of portraits and other images, his oeuvre is the self-portrait in all its many forms. A play of gender is the most recognizable thematic device in O’Donnell’s work. Identifying clearly as non-binary, he has always felt a deep connection to the concept of berdache, meaning two-spirit, a person embodying a blending of both genders. Used by some Indigenous Native American cultures, it is a term for gender-nonconforming people and the roles they fill in their communities. In his self portraits, O’Donnell appears in many historical guises, either male or female, all artistically attired but presented with a bit of whimsy.

O’Donnell has been exhibiting his work since 1995 in both group and solo exhibitions throughout the United States, including the Oregon Biennial at the Portland Art Museum. His work is housed in private collections and such public institutions as the Portland Art Museum, Oregon’s Hallie Ford Museum of Art, the Long Beach Museum of Art in California, and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City, among others. O’Donnell is represented by the Russo Lee Gallery in Portland, Oregon, and TEW Galleries in Atlanta, Georgia.

Stephen O’Donnell has been married since 2006 to writer and graphic designer Gigi Little. Their 2018 book, “The Untold Gaze”, is a collection of O’Donnell’s paintings paired with short fiction works by thirty-three authors, each piece inspired by a painting. In 2023, O’Donnell published “Half-Light”, a collection of ten stories that explore, in historical and contemporary settings, the issues of gender and sexuality, aging and youthful striving, resignation and resilience. Both volumes are available through O’Donnell’s website as well as major book distributors.

“I very frequently employ the self portrait as the basis for my work. I’ve long felt that, by beginning with myself as the model, I’m able to avoid the biggest limitation of the portrait as an art form: that it’s “about” someone specific. In my paintings, because the portrait is only of the artist, the viewer, while including whatever they might perceive of the artist, still has more of an opportunity to find their own narrative in whatever visual scenario I might present.” -Stephen O’Donnell

Stephen O’Donnell’s website is located at: https://stephenodonnellartist.com/home

O’Donnell’s blog, “Gods and Foolish Grandeur”, is located at: https://godsandfoolishgrandeur.blogspot.com

The Russo Lee Gallery in Portland, Oregon is located at: https://www.russoleegallery.com/artists/stephen-odonnell/featured-works?view=thumbnails

TEW Galleries in Atlanta, Georgia is located at: https://tewgalleries.com/artist/Stephen%20_O’Donnell/works/

Top Inser Image: K. B. Dixon, “Stephen O’Donnell”, Phto Shoot, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Stephen O’Donnell, “Le Pince-nez”, 2013, Acrylic on Panel, 30.5 x 30.5 cm (Available at Artist)

Third Insert Image: Stephen O’Donnell, “Silk”, 2023, Les Animaux Series, Acrylic on Panel, 30.5 x 30.5 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Stephen O’Donnell, “L’Innocence”, 2012, Acrylic on Panel, 30.5 x 30.5 cm, Private Collection

Valdemar Andersen

The Artwork of Valdemar Andersen

Born at Copenhagen in February of 1875, Valdemar Anderson was a Danish illustrator, painter, graphic and decorative artist. The son of a working-class family, he began an apprenticeship in painting under C. C. Møllmann. Andersen continued his education at the Copenhagen Technical School where he studied under naturalist illustrator Henrik Grønvold. In the autumn of 1894, he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts for one semester.

As an illustrator, Andersen was influenced early in his career by Skønvirke, an aesthetic art movement that combined elements of the German Jugendstil, French Art Nouveau and English Arts and Crafts with the Nordic National Romanticism. He began his career by drawing portraits for a stereotype printing firm that produced work for provincial newspapers. In 1902, Andersen joined the graphic department of “Klokken”, a local magazine for which he created its daily poster.

Recognized for the quality of his work, Valdemar Andersen began to receive private commissions, the first of which was from Ernst Bojesen, the co-director of Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag, the oldest and largest publishing company in Denmark. Andersen illustrated numerous books and also created book covers. He created illustrations for the 1905 and 1906 editions of Danish author Carit Etlar’s novels and, between 1906 and 1908, illustrated an edition of Finnish author and historian Zacharias Topelius’s “Feltlgens Historier (Field Doctor’s Stories)”.

As a decorative artist, Andersen collaborated with Danish architect and Academy professor Anton Rosen on such projects as Copenhagen’s 1908 Metropol Building; the murals for the Danish National Exhibition of 1909 in Aahus; and the 1910 vestibule of the Palace Hotel at Copenhagen’s City Hall Square. Andersen created decorative works for many of architect Ejnar Pacness’s public buildings in Jutland, among which was the 1912 Administration Building for the Aalborg Municipality.

The murals Valdemar Andersen created for the 1909 international exhibition in Aahus led to his mural commissions for the 1914 Malmö-Baltic Exhibition and the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco. He designed murals for many private homes, restaurants, and business offices including the City Hall Square headquarters for “Politiken”, the leading Danish daily broadsheet newspaper.

Andersen had the first showing of his paintings at the 1906 Spring Exhibition at Charlottenborg in which he presented his portrait of his life-long friend, Danish author and painter Johannes Vilhelm Jensen. This portrait, highlighted with gouache and pencil, was also exhibited in 1906 at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. Other portraits done by Andersen include those of author and journalist Henrik Cavling, German missionary Ludvig Kraft, novelist Peter Nansen and stage director Henri Nathansen.

Valdemar Andersen presented his paintings at Charlottenborg’s spring exhibition in 1908 as well as its 1914 spring and autumn shows. In 1912, he and fellow artist Harald Moltke had a successful show in one of Copenhagen’s many exhibition halls. Andersen later received a commission from Hafnia, the first life insurance company in Denmark, for five paintings depicting accidents for which insurance might provide some relief.

Andersen is primarily known today for developing the modern Danish poster design. Between 1906 and 1907, he shifted his poster design to a lighter graphic style. Emphasis was placed on the white surface, a limited range of clear colors and a sparse typeface of the characteristic script that became his trademark. Over the years Andersen was a leading poster artist for many companies and organizations such as Carlsberg, Asta Lampen, Trivoli Gardens, Danish Airlines, Fisker & Nielsen and the Copenhagen Zoo. He was also responsible for many of the designs on Danish stamps and banknotes of the early twentieth-century.

Valdemar Andersen died stricken by leukemia in Copenhagen in July of 1928 at the age of fifty-three. His son, Ib Andersen, was trained as an architect. However, he established his career as a graphic designer who created aggressively-designed posters strongly influenced by Cubism and the Bauhaus School.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Valdemar Andersen”, Date Unknown, Vintage Photo, Det Kongelige Bibliotek

Second Insert Image: Valdemar Andersen, “Journalistforbundets Rundskuedag (Journalist Association Circular Ski Day”, 1911, Lithograph, 64.2 x 88.8 cm, Publisher Andreasen & Lochmann Ltd

Third Insert Image: Valdemar Andersen, Lithograph, Palle RosenKrantz’s crime novel “Judge Amtsdommer Sterner”, 1906, Publisher Gyldendalin Boghandel Nordisk

Bottom Insert Image: Valdemar Andersen, “The International Air Traffic Exhibition”, 1927, Lithograph, 84 x 62 cm, Publisher Christian Cato, Copenhagen

Philip Jones

The Artwork of Philip Jones

Born in London in 1933, Philip Jones was an English contemporary painter. An artist between the visionary and nostalgic works of the Neo-Romantics and the second generation of St. Ives Abstractionists, he created subtly-shaded paintings heightened with occasional bursts of color that resided on the periphery of abstraction.

Jones’s paintings were connected to the landscape surrounding his Norfolk home as well as the scenery he observed during his yearly travels. He spent most of his winters overseas at coastal destinations in Malta, India, Namibia, and the Republic of the Gambia. Jones, through a strong sense of connection with the natural world and its elements, became very adept at portraying a particular locale through the use of fluid lines and brushstrokes.

Philip Jones was educated at the historic Malvern College where he trained under post-impressionist painter and etcher Harry Fabian-Ware. In 1953, Jones enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art where he became acquainted with fellow painters William Turnbull, Victor Willing and Michael Andrews. During his three years at the Slade School, Jones received private tutoring from mural and war artist Sir Walter Thomas Monnington and realist painter Sir William Coldstream, the Slade School’s acting principal.

Jones had his first exhibition in 1954 at the Royal Society of British Artist Galleries. During his career, his paintings were shown at many of London’s most prestigious galleries. In 1955, Jones had an exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, well-known for exhibiting the work and developing the careers of major artists. In 1964, there were two exhibitions: the London Group, one of the world’s oldest artist-led organizations, and the Artists‘ International Association in Soho. Jones’s work was shown at Mansard Gallery at Tottenham Court Road in 1967 and, in the next year, at the Contemporary Arts Society exhibition in the Whitechapel Gallery.

Philip Jones left London in 1979 and relocated to Clermont Hall in Norfolk, a county known for its small chapels, plowed fields, outbuildings and green spaces. The works he painted in Norfolk are known for their palettes of predominately muted browns, soft blues and strong greens that conjure up the countryside’s lush foliage.

Following this period of withdrawal from London’s art scene, Jones resumed presenting his work for exhibitions. For the remaining fifteen years of his life, he entered his work into the annual Royal Academy exhibitions. In 2008, Jones had a solo exhibitions in March-April at London’s Oliver Contemporary and September-October at Madrid’s La Galería Espacio Minimo. Philip Jones passed away on the last day of December in 2008.

The work of Philip Jones is housed in both private and public collections in the United Kingdom and Europe. The Estate of Philip Jones is represented by Jenna Burlingham Fine Art on George Street, Kingsclere, Hampshire, England. For information on work by Philip Jones, the gallery’s website is located at: https://www.jennaburlingham.com

Second Insert Image: Philip Jones, “Reflections, Calangute”, 2000, Oil on Paper, 58.4 x 76.2 cm, Jenna Burlingham Gallery, Kingsclere, England (Available)

Bottom Insert Image: Philip Jones, “Rocks at Mġarr”, 1999, Oil on Board, 37 x 49 cm, Jenna Burlingham Gallery, Kingsclere, England (Available)

Thomas Blackshear II

The Artwork of Thomas Blackshear II

Born in Waco, Texas in November of 1955, Thomas Blackshear II is an African-American illustrator, painter and sculptor. His work as an illustrator and painter is known for its dramatic use of light and inspirational mood. Blackshear’s oeuvre contains work that draws on Black Heritage, Christian, Native American, and Western themes.

Born to U.S. Air Force pilot Thomas Richman Blackshear and his wife, Thomas Blackshear II spent his early years primarily in Atlanta, Georgia. An artist from his childhood, he was awarded a scholarship from the Art Institute of Chicago. After one year of study at the Chicago Institute, Blackshear transferred to Chicago’s American Academy of Art from which he graduated with a B.F.A. in 1977.

Blackshear found employment with the Hallmark Card Company in Kansas City, Missouri where he apprenticed under illustrator Mark English, one of the country’s leading illustrators for publications. Blackshear worked briefly as head illustrator for Kansas City’s Godbold/Richter Studio before launching a freelance artist career in 1982. His early work included more than one hundred-forty illustrations for LucasFilms, Anheuser-Busch, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, The Walt Disney Company, The National Geographic, and the Milton Bradley Company, among others.

Through a connection with writer and illustrator Jerry Pinkney in the early 1900s, Thomas Blackshear began work for the United States Postal Service on a series of stamp portraits for its Black Heritage series His work for this series included five stamps honoring such notables as Chicago-area’s first non-native settler Jean Baptiste Point du Sable (1987), union and civil rights activist Asa Philip Randolph (1989), and journalist and educator Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (1990). Blackshear also completed ten illustrations for the Postal Service’s 1995 Jazz Music series that included, among others, stamps honoring Jelly Roll Morton, Coleman Hawkins, and John Coltrane.

Blackshear illustrated the Postal Service’s 1990 Golden Era Movie series and its 1997 Classic Movie Monster series. The stamps for the Golden Era series were illustrated as miniature movie posters for such features as “The Wizard of Oz” and “Stagecoach”. For the Classic Movie Monster series, Blackshear created five portrait illustration of the actors in their makeup: Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Lon Chaney as Phantom of the Opera, Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolf Man, and Boris Karloff as the Mummy and Frankenstein’s monster. He also illustrated a 1999 stamp for James Cagney, a 2004 stamp for James Baldwin, and a 2010 stamp honoring Mother Teresa.

Well known and highly respected in the religious art world, Thomas Blackshear’s colorful paintings of Christ and other Biblical figures are located in numerous churches throughout the country. In the mid-1990s, he founded the “Ebony Visions” project, a large and varied collection of images and sculptural figurines, both religious and historic, of African American culture. “Ebony Visions” has been rated the number one black-figurine collectible group in the United States for twenty years.

Blackshear has lectured and conducted workshops in Germany and Sweden and also taught at the San Francisco Academy of Art College. Among his many recognitions are the 1988 Gold Medal of the National Society of Illustrators, two Silver Awards in the 1989 San Francisco Society of Illustrators Show, and two Gold Awards in the 1990 Illustrators West Show. In 2006, Blackshear had a solo exhibition through the Vatican in Rome; his painting of Pope John Paul II was unveiled for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Pope John Paul II Foundation.

Thomas Blackstone II was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 2020. He is represented by Broadmoor Galleries in Colorado Springs, Colorado and Trailside Galleries located in Jackson, Wyoming and Scottsdale ,Arizona.

Second Insert Image: Thomas Blackshear, “Background Cactus”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas, 58.4 x 50.8 cm, Inquire

Third Insert Image: Thomas Blackshear II, “Old MacDonald”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Thomas Blackshear, “Last Drop Out of His Stetson”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas, Inquire

Tomas Clayton

The Artwork of Tomas Clayton

Born in 1957 in Birmingham, Tomas Clayton is an English portrait painter who specializes in oils on masonite works. After his parents’ divorce early in his life, the absence of a father figure had an impact on his life that still to some extent permeates the subject and mood of his work. In the late 1960s, Clayton’s mother remarried and the family moved to Hereford where Clayton was awarded a three year Art Foundation Course at the Hereford Art College.

Clayton returned to Birmingham where he studied graphic design and illustration at the Ruskin Hall College of Art. After leaving college, he worked as a graphic designer and animator for the British Broadcasting Company and Central Independent Television, now known as ITV Central. Several years later, Clayton became a successful freelance graphic designer and illustrator for several corporations.

In the late 1970s, Tomas Clayton discovered a cache of vintage photographs that included formal portraits and images of family gatherings taken in the late 1800s to the early 1900s. The presence of all the lost personalities, dressed in their stiff collars and corsets, made a strong impression on the style of Clayton’s later work. Other influences were the many painters and illustrators who had captured his imagination in the early 1970s. Among these were Scottish illustrator and painter Wilson McLean, American illustrator Brad Holland, French illustrator Jean Giraud also known as Moebius, and American graphic artist Paul Davis, a Hall of Fame member of the Society of Illustrators.

Clayton’s portraits have a very distinctive style that is carefully created with great attention to detail. Inspired by the nostalgic portraits and artifacts of the First World War era, he creates highly stylized images of actors and soldiers, as well as average men and women, that blend elements of that period with contemporary imagery. The surface areas of Clayton’s portraits are textural and display a surrealistic effect through his use of monochromatic tones. While the face is central to any portrait, the eyes of Clayton’s subjects become, in many of his works, the major focus. Dates written in Roman numerals occasionally are included in his images..

From 2007 to 2023, Tomas Clayton has shown his work in many group exhibitions including regular presentations at the Royal Portrait Society, New English Art Club and Mall Galleries at Saint James, London. In 2016, Clayton won the Columbia Threadneedle Prize for both his “Après la Guerre (After the War)” and “Chère Capucine (Dear Capucine)”, a portrait of a young man playing his resonator at a Parisian night club.

Tomas Clayton is represented by The Contemporary Fine Art Gallery Eton located upstairs at The Piper Art Bar building in Windsor, Berkshire, United Kingdom. Clayton’s work can be found at: https://www.cfag.co.uk/exhibition_thumbs.php?exhibition_id=319&show_rand=0&show_biog=1

Tomas Clayton’s website, which contains contact information for commissioned work, is located at: https://www.tomasclayton.co.uk

Top Insert Image: Tomas Clayton, “Her Name Was Magill”, Oil on Masonite, 67 x 85.1 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Tomas Clayton, “Blue-eyed Boy”, 2012, Oil on Masonite, 81 x 90.1 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Tomas Clayton, “The Serpent”, Oil on Masonite, 65 x 65 cm, Private Collection

William Theophilus Brown

The Artwork of William Theophilus Brown

Born at Moline, Illinois in April of 1919, William Theophilus Brown was an American artist who became prominent as a member of the Bay Area Figurative Movement, a group of 1950s and 1960s artists in San Francisco who abandoned Abstract Expressionism and favored a return to figuration in painting.

Theophilus Brown was a member of a family descended from early-American intellectuals. His great-grandfather was friends with writers Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson; Brown’s father was an inventor and chief designer with the John Deere Company in Illinois. At the age of eleven, Brown painted a portrait which his father submitted to a regional art contest juried by the iconic midwestern artist Grant Wood. Brown received a third place award which was presented personally by Wood.

In 1941, Brown received his Bachelor of Arts in music from Yale University where he became lifetime friends with composer and violist Paul Hindemith as well as novelist and poet Eleanore Marie Sarton. Brown was called after his graduation for military service in World War II. After the completion of his military service, Brown took advantage of the G.I. Bill and relocated to Paris where he worked under cubist painters Fernand Leger and Amedeo Ozenfant. In his travels, he met many artists among whom were Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Georges Braque, and Willem de Kooning who had a major influence on Brown’s early work. Brown was also acquainted with several composers including John Cage, Samuel Barber and Igor Stravinsky.

In 1950, Theophilus Brown initially relocated to New York where he became deeply immersed in the evolving school of Abstract Expressionism. Over the course of his studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Brown began to develop his own unique voice. He eventually realized that the genre of abstract expressionism was not an ideology he wanted to pursue. Brown graduated with his Master of Fine Arts in 1952. It was in his University of California classes that he met fellow student and painter Paul John Wonner who became his lifelong partner. Wonner earned both his Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts as well as his Master of Library and Information Science at UC Berkeley.

Brown and Wonner shared a studio space in Berkeley at the same building where painters Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff had workspaces. These artists got together for drawing sessions and began to incorporate painter David Park’s reintroduction of the human figure into their own works. Collectively, the group became part of the Bay Area Figurative Movement. This movement was a diverse range of artistic practices that united the figurative form with both the formality and vigorous painting techniques of Abstract Expressionism. The exploration of these two movements together created new works in the fields of landscape, portraiture, still life and nude paintings.

In 1956, Theophilus Brown’s paintings of football players, presented as abstracted bodies in motion, appeared in an issue of Life magazine. The paintings caught the attention of Los Angeles gallery owner Felix Landau who began to exhibit Brown’s work. In the following year, Brown’s work was included in the Oakland Museum’s Bay Area Figurative Painting Exhibition. He and Wonner moved to Malibu in the early 1960s and became part of the Southern California art scene. The years in Santa Monica and Malibu were very productive for Brown with works on both canvas and paper of beach scenes that featured mostly male nudes set in carefully crafted abstract landscapes. In these works, he stripped away the detail and focused on shape, form, and light.

Brown taught at the University of California, Davis between 1975 and 1976. His relationship with Wonner endured until the death of Wonner in 2008. A daily painter into his ninth decade, Theophilus Brown died in San Francisco on the eighth of February in 2012 at the age of ninety-two. His papers are housed in the Archives of American Art, a research center of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. Brown’s work is housed in both private and public collections including Sacramento’s Crocker Museum of Art which has a collection of eighteen-hundred works by Theophilus Brown and Paul Wonner.

Notes: In May of 2020, writer Erin Clark wrote a carefully researched article on Theophilus Brown entitled “The Charmed Life of Theophilus Brown” for the online Artworks magazine. This article is located at: https://artworksmag.com/theophilus-brown/

Matt Gonzalez, a close friend and fellow artist with Theophilus Brown and Paul Wonner, wrote an article in 2011 for The New Fillmore entitled “A Friendship with Theophilus Brown”. This article is available on Art & Politics: The Matt Gonzales Reader located at: https://themattgonzalezreader.com/2011/09/05/theophilus-brown/

The WordPress site Art Matters has an extensive collection of short articles written over a period of years about Paul Wonner and Theophilus Brown. This collection can be found at: https://trgtalk.wordpress.com/category/artists/brown-wm-theophilus/

The Theophilus Movie website contains several video clips of Theophilus Brown and a section to fundraise the production of biographical documentary on Brown’s life and work. The Theophilus site is located at: https:/www.theophilusmovie.com

Second Insert Image: William Theophilus Brown, “Portrait”, 2001, Ink Wash and Gouache on Paper, 35.6 x 27.9 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: William Theophilus Brown, United (Football), 1956, Oil on Paper, 106.7 x 139.7 cm, Kim Eagles-Smith Gallery, Mill Valley, California

Bottom Insert Image: William Theophilus Brown, “Self Portrait”, 1994, Acrylic on Canvas, 30.5 x 30.5 cm, Private Collection

Aldo Pagliacci

Paintings by Aldo Pagliacci

Born in 1931 in San Benedetto del Tronto on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, Aldo Pagliacci was an Italian painter and self-taught violin craftsman whose artistic talent was evident from an early age. At the age of twenty, he had already exhibited paintings at the Biennale of Venice and the Rome Quadrennial. After these exhibitions, Pagliacci relocated to Rome circa 1930.

In the 1890s, Italy had claimed Ethiopia was an Italian protectorate and tried to conquer the country unsuccessfully. In 1934, Ethiopia was one of the few independent states in a European-dominated Africa. After a border incident in December of 1934 between Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland, Benito Mussolini rejected all attempts at arbitration and, in October of 1935, invaded Ethiopia. In 1936, Pagliacci volunteered for military service as part of the invasion.

During the second World War, Aldo Pagliacci served as a magazine correspondent but was captured by the British in 1941. Pagliacci was taken to a Rhodesian prisoner of war camp where he was assigned to decorate the camp church’s interior. He claimed he accomplished the task in four months fueled by the cognac and whiskey provided by two Franciscan friars. Sometime after his return to Italy in 1946, Aldo Pagliacci began a twenty-year travel period in Central and South America. He lived and worked for extended periods in Mexico, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela.

In 1971, Pagliacci established a studio in Rome and began a period of studio work and travel throughout northern Europe, specifically Germany, Sweden, Holland and Norway. It is known that he began his career as a maker of violins and cellos in Rome at this time. A Pagliacci violin, dated 1973 with a production number of fifty, was auctioned by Tarisio Fine Instruments & Bows in 2021.

No specific information exists as to where Pagliacci learned his skills at crafting musical instruments. Due to the very long and swinging f-shaped openings on the sides of the violin’s body, his violins are believed to be based on those of the Marches region of central Italy. Pagliacci’s models differ from the Landolfi violins of the Madrid area in that they are wider and rounder. The corners of Pagliacci’s violins are short and the arching is flat which produces a more powerful soloist tone. There is no specific knowledge on the number of music instruments he actually created; however it is speculated it was more than one hundred.

In about 1980, Aldo Pagliacci settled on Forio d’Ischia, an island southwest of the city of Naples. He would remain on Forio d’Ischia until his death in 1991. Pagliacci’s paintings are housed in the major museums of Central and South America as well as many private collections, including the collections of Nelson Rockefeller and film actor Clifton Webb.

Notes: Musical instruments created by Pagliacci occasionally appear at auction sites. A violin, numbered eighty-five and dated 1985, sold through the privately owned London auction house Bonhams for £12,500 (14,542 Euros).

Top Insert Image: Aldo Pagliacci, “Fire in Santa Maria in Montesanto”, 1970, Oil on Canvas, 70 x 50 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Aldo Pagliacci, “In the Bakery”, 1954, Oil on Plywood, 55 x 41 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Aldo Pagliacci, “View of Rome, Ponte Mazzini”, 1948, Oil on Canvas, 75 x 65 cm, Private Collection

Ernst Thom

The Artwork of Ernst Thoms

Born in November of 1896 in the Weser River city of Nienburg, Ernst Thoms was a German painter associated with the New Objectivity movement. Mainly a self-taught artist, he is known for his Surrealist figures, landscapes, still life and portrait paintings, and theatrical sets.

New Objectivity began in Germany during the 1920s as a reaction against the self-involvement and romantic longings of Expressionism. Expressionism had abandoned nature and artistic tradition and centered itself around emotional experience and inner turmoil in reaction to the modern world and the creation of personal identity. New Objectivity was one of several movements critical of expressionism; it professed both objectivity and utility, a return to artistic tradition, and a straight-forward approach to art in all its fields.

After serving as an apprentice painter between 1911 and 1914, Ernst Thoms studied for a few months at the Hanover School for the Decorative and Applied Arts before he was called to military service in World War I. At the start of the war, he was captured and held as a prisoner of war in England for five years until 1919. Released at the war’s end, Thoms returned to the Hanover School in 1920 where he studied under painter and graphic artist Fritz Burger-Mühlfeld, known largely for his later abstract works. While studying at Hanover, Thoms became acquainted with painter Grethe Jürgens, also a student of Burger-Mühlfeld, and her circle of New Objectivity artists.

In the 1920s with reparations for the war and tariffs on its products, Germany’s economy reached a point of super inflation where millions of marks were worthless. Thoms survived by working as a house painter. However in 1924, he found work as a painter of advertisements and theatrical stage sets at Hanover’s opera house. Thoms had his first show in 1926 at the Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hanover. The Kestner Society, a Hanover art institution to promote the arts, gave him a solo exhibition in 1928 at Berlin’s Galerie Neumann- Nierendorf. Thoms also showed work at exhibitions in Amsterdam, Stockholm and other German cities between 1928 and 1932.

As a New Objectivity artist, Ernst Thoms worked in an unsentimental style that was often imbued with lyrical or fanciful qualities. His works presented ordinary and undramatic subject matter; however having been influenced by the works of Giorgio de Chirico, Thoms inserted elements of magic realism within the spaces of his scenes. An example is his 1926 “Junk Shop”, an interior scene inhabited by three customers who are surrounded by a myriad of artifacts set at different angles. Thoms’ 1926 “Dachboden (Attic)” is another interior scene that is composed of angular spaces which contain either objects or disclose other locations. “Dachboden” was included in his first exhibition and was purchased by the Hanover State Museum.

In 1931, Thoms joined the Hanover Secession. one of a wave of secessions that constituted a break between avant-garde artists and conservative standard bearers of European academic and official art. The Vienna Secession, which favored the Art Nouveau style, remains the most influential of the various secessions; it was inspired by the 1892 Munich and 1898 Berlin secessions. During the second World War, Thoms was conscripted by the German Reich to military service and served from 1939 to 1940. During the war, both his house and studio were struck by Allied bombing; all of the works that were still his personal possessions were destroyed..

After the end of the second World War, Ernst Thoms continued his painting and returned to Hanover in 1950. He was given a retrospective of his work on his sixtieth birthday by the Kunstverein Hanover, one of the oldest and most renowned art associations in Germany. In 1964, Thoms was awarded the Grand Cross of Merit of the Lower-Saxony Order of Merit. Established in 1815, the Lower Saxony Order of Merit recognizes the subjects of the Kingdom of Saxony for distinguished civic service and virtue; the Grand Cross is the highest of the three classes of crosses.

Beginning in 1968, Thoms suffered from deteriorating eyesight but continued to paint into his last years. He died at the age of eighty-six in May of 1983 at Wietzen near his birthplace of Nienburg. Thoms is buried in the Kräher Weg in Nienburg/Weser Cemetery.

Top Insert Image: Ernst Thoms, “Selbstbildnis (Self Portrait)”, 1926, Oil on Cardboard, 35.7 x 27 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Ernst Thoms, “Im Lager”, 1917, Gouache on Paper, Museum Nienburg/Weser

Third insert Image: Ernst Thoms, “Fischerdorf in Schweden”, 1931, Mixed Media Ink Watercolor, Museum Nienburg/Weser

Bottom Insert Image: Ernst Thoms, “Selbstbildnis (Self Portrait)”, 1932, Oil on Canvas, 29.4 x 25.5 cm, Private Collection

Marylyn Dintenfass

The Artwork of Marylyn Dintenfass

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1943, Marylyn Dintenfass is an American painter, printmaker and sculptor known for the dynamic color palette of her oil paintings. She graduated from New York’s Queens College in 1965 with a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts. During her studies, Dintenfass worked with abstract expressionist painter John Ferren and muralist Barse Miller. She developed her own style of abstract expressionism and acquired an appreciation for the wide range of materials available.

Though mostly known for her paintings, Marylyn Dintenfass was first recognized for her sculptural mixed-media installations. Her use of ceramics, epoxies, pigments, wax, steel, lead and wood expanded the traditional definitions of ceramic work. The installation sculptures and architectural reliefs Dintenfass created were unique to her organic and structural personal style. For her work, she constructed a pictographic language that consisted of symbols and the fusion of curves and lines.

After a tour of museums in Paris, Rome and Amsterdam, Dintenfass traveled to Jerusalem in 1966. She studied etching and worked with Swiss painter Ruth Bamberger known for her textile design and fresco work. Through interactions with artists and intellectuals in the city, Dintenfass was given her first architectural commission; the design of Jerusalem’s first disco. She worked with a wide range of materials to fashion shapes, surfaces, textures, colors and light; these components became intrinsic parts of her developing artistic form .

Marylyn Dintenfass received large-scale installation commissions for the State of Connecticut’s Superior Courthouse; the New York Port Authority’s 42nd Street Bus Terminal; IBM’s headquarters in San Jose, Atlanta and Charlotte; and the Ben Gurion University in Israel, among others. In 2010, Dintenfass produced “Parallel Park”, a site-specific work for the exterior walls of the Lee County Justice Center’s parking garage in Ft. Myers, Florida. Each of her twenty-three images were enlarged tenfold to a size ten by seven meters through the utilization of digital software. These were then printed with archival ink on Kevlar fabric. Installed on all four facades of the garage, Dintenfass’s patterned images recalled the friezes and frescoes of Medieval as well as Italian Futurist artists.

Dintenfass’s paintings combine the intense gestural movements of Abstract Expressionism with the repetitive image technique from Pop Art. Central to her work are both the underlying grid reference and the adjustability of the modular sections in their relationships to others. These structural aspects lend stability to Dintenfass’s exuberantly colored and dramatic abstractions. Her abstract images often contain formations of circles or stripes that are formed over alternating layers of high gloss or matte textures.

Marylyn Dintenfass has shown her work in more than sixty national and international exhibitions including solo shows at the Queens Museum of Art, the Greenville County Museum of Art and the Mississippi Museum of Art, among others. Her work was included in the 2008 inaugural exhibition of New York’s Museum of Arts and Design. Works by Dintenfass are housed in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

Dintenfass was awarded the Silver Medal at the First International Exhibition held in Mino, Japan, and the Ravenna Prize at the 45th Concorso Internazionale Della Ceramica D’Arte in Faenza, Italy. She was also a member of the faculty at New York City’s Parsons School of Design for ten years. Dintenfass was a visiting professor at Norway’s National College of Art and Design, the Brezel Academy of Art and Design in Israel, Canada’s Sheridan College, and New York City’s Hunter College.

Notes: Due to the large-scale format of work by Marylyn Dintenfass, the best way to view her art is through exhibitions. Her website, which includes exhibitions and publications as well as video interviews, is located at: https://www.marylyndintenfass.com

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, Marylyn Dintenfass at “Parallel Park”, 2011, Permanent Public Installation, Fort Meyers, Florida

Second Insert Image: Marylyn Dintenfass, “Token Thorn Prick”, “Drop Dead Gorgeous” Series, 2012, Oil on Canvas, 254 x 195.6 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, Installation of “Things Are Not What They Seem” Exhibition, Date Unknown

Dunbar Dyson Beck

The Paintings of Dunbar Dyson Beck

Born in Delaware, Ohio in 1903, Dunbar Dyson Beck was an American painter, muralist, educator, and designer of both interiors and exteriors, as well as theatrical sets and costumes. He studied at Northwestern University in Chicago before earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Yale University in 1926. Beck was invited to teach at Yale during the following academic year. In 1927, he won the prestigious Prix de Rome for his painting “Adoration”. This scholarship enabled Beck to spend three years studying at Rome’s American Academy and travel extensively in Europe and Africa to study traditional arts.

Upon his return to New York in 1930, Beck taught at Columbia University and then at Cooper Union’s School of Art. He began to receive several important commissions for altar paintings, murals and portraits. Beck painted a mural in 1934 for the lobby of New York City’s Radio City Music Hall. He also received a commission from Theodor Steinway to execute a gold-leaf decorative frieze on the side of a custom Steinway piano for President Roosevelt’s White House. Beck’s decoration represented the five musical forms indigenous of America: a New England barn dance, a lone cowboy playing a guitar, the Virginia reel, black field hands singing, and an Indian ceremonial dance.

Dunbar Beck’s commissioned work in New York included both mosaics and murals for the Rockefeller Center on Fifth Avenue, as well as, murals for the 1939-1940 World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows- Corona Park. In the late 1930s, Beck met Eleanor McClatchy, president of the McClatchy publishing company, who recognized his talents and encouraged his relocation to Sacramento, California where he could live and work. McClatchy became Beck’s most important patron with commissions ranging from stage sets for Sacramento’s Eagle Theater to design work for the Sacramento Bee, the fifth-largest newspaper in California.

In the 1940s, Beck painted a series of eight paintings which focused on the theme of prize-fighting. These works were inspired by an unpublished play of unknown origin entitled “TheNational Ring”. In these works, Beck created the presence of a boxing match with his dramatic placement of compositional elements and his use of theatrical lighting effects. He used architectural elements, diagonal perspectives and concentric circles to create movement; his figures, with their raised fists and muscular arms, are highlighted as it they were spotlit for an unseen audience. Similar to the fight scenes painted by George Bellows, anticipation and emotional tension in Beck’s work are emphasized as details are minimized.

Settled in Sacramento, Dunbar Beck made many contributions to the local art scene, among which were the Sacramento Art Deco Society and the Sacramento Public Library Program. He also served as set designer for the Sacramento Civic Theater and became an architectural preservationist for the Sacramento area. Beck was a juror for exhibitions held at Sacramento’s Kingsley Art Club and completed murals and mosaics for local churches. He executed fourteen oil paintings depicting the “Stations of the Cross” and a series of stain glass windows for St. Rose’s Chapel in South Sacramento. Beck also executed work for churches in New York, Texas and Pennsylvania.

Dunbar Dyson Beck died of cancer, at the age of eighty-three, in February of 1986 at a Sacramento convalescent home. In addition to his work in prominent public places, Beck’s work is housed at Smith College and in private collections. His 1934 portrait of American architect William Adams Delano resides in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

Notes: The Sacramento Public Library in collaboration with the Sacramento Art Deco Society has a YouTube video, entitled “Dunbar Dyson Beck: Renaissance Master of Poverty Ridge”, that is narrated by local historian Bruce Marwick.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Dunbar Dyson Beck”, Date Unknown, Vintage Print

Second Insert Image: Dunbar Dyson Beck, “Palais des Papes, Avignon”, 1928, Watercolor on Paper, 31.8 x 23.8 cm, Private Colledtion

Third Insert Image: Dunbar Dyson Beck, “Self Portrait”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas, Crocker Art Museum, Sacrament, California

Bottom Insert Image: Dunbar Dyson Beck, “Allegory of Charity”, 1925, Oil on Canvas, 132 x 104.1 cm, Private Collection