Tag: portrait

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

Michael Costello

The Artwork of Michael Costello

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1957, Michael Costello is an American realist painter. After graduating from Burlington High School, he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University under figurative painter Barnett Rubinstein known primarily for his still life work. Costello’s work explores humankind’s anxiety in the twentieth-century through images that capture the human body’s vulnerability and celebrate its perceived flaws.

During his study years in Boston, Costello focused his work on twentieth-century objects and their place as icons in history. He moved in 1978 to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he has shown his work for over three decades. While living there, Costello’s work was noticed and encouraged by the late figure painter Alice Neel, whose expressive work challenged the traditional, objectified nude depictions of women by her male predecessors. 

In 1984, Michael Costello relocated his studio back to Boston and began working with the Barbara Singer Fine Art gallery through which his work was introduced to corporate art collections in the metropolitan area. In the mid-1980s, Costello began his annual European travels to work ‘plein air’ and in association with various artist residencies. In 2008, he became the first recipient of The Pollack-Krasner Masters to Byrdcliffe; the primary criterion for acceptance at Byrdcliffe is artistic excellence or demonstrated commitment to one’s field of endeavor.

Much of Costello’s inspiration springs from writings, in particular Umberto Eco’s essays “The History of Beauty” and “On Ugliness”, and from such classical figures of tragedy as Pagliacci, the clown figure of Italian opera, and Gilles, the male heraldic-dressed figures of Belgium carnivals. Costello works from life; he choses his models based on their ability to inspire empathy for the human condition. He paints them with emotional honesty, without flattery, and with recognition of any imperfections. Costello believes through the presentation of their nude bodies the psychology of the sitter overrides the formality of portraiture, thus revealing the sitter’s unconscious. 

Michael Costello’s 2018 series “La Comedia é Finita” (The Comedy is Finished)” is a series of drawings in charcoal, pastel and Russian clay that depicts models as a twentieth-century Pierrot, the clown of pantomime and early comedy theater. Costello’s drawings, depicting clowns in various states of repose and undress, explore mankind’s relationship with the icons of jesters and fools. Reminding us that we are more than we appear on the outside, the figures of varying race, gender and orientation are a reflection of our own lives with its tragedies and hopes. 

Costello has presented his work in both group and solo exhibitions since 1980. Among the over fifty group exhibitions in which he has exhibited are the 1980 and 1982 “Small Works Show” held by the Provincetown Art Association, the 1991 “Nuclear Solstice” and 1994 “Fantastically Real” at the Mills Gallery in conjunction with the Boston Center for the Arts, the 2008 “Byrdcliffe Pollock-Kransner Fellows” at the Kleinert/James Art Center, the 2013 “Off the Wall” at the Danforth Art Museum, and the 2018 “Three” at the Attleboro Arts Museum in Massachusetts. 

Michael Costello has had over thirty solo exhibitions in galleries throughout the east coast of the United States, These exhibitions include, among others, multiple shows at The New East End Gallery in Provincetown; the Barbara Singer Fine Art gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts; The Schoolhouse Center in Provincetown; the A Street Gallery in Boston; Ashawagh Hall in East Hampton, New York; the 101 Exhibit in Miami; and The Lucky Street Gallery in Key West, Florida. Since 2015, Michael Costello has shown yearly at Provincetown’s  contemporary William Scott Gallery with whom he is represented.

In addition to private collections, Costello’s work can be found in many corporate and public collections including the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, the Federal Reserve, Chicago’s Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, the Boston Public Library, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and the headquarters of Wellington Management and Fidelity Investment, among others.

“For over thirty years I have worked with models to comment on our cultural heritage, both philosophical and theological, to acquaint all that is good with beauty. We focus on making clear definitions of what is ugly and what is beautiful, which often shuns both sides to the extreme, turning the beautiful, ugly and making ugly, beautiful. My work with the model as muse gives us a window into the individual soul. I intend to inspire the viewer to observe the subject with a level of pathos; to confront the truth within themselves, what they believe to be beautiful.” – Michael Costello, Boston Voyager Interview, March 2018

Michael Costello’s website with images, exhibitions and contact information is located at: https://www.michaelcostelloartist.com

Note: A 2019 interview with Michael Costello which discusses his “Dancers” drawings, a part of the 2013 series “Boxers and Ballerinas”, can be found at the online art platform “Pineapple” located at: https://pnpplzine.com/index.php/2019/01/08/michael-costello/

Top Insert Image: Meagan Hepp, “Michael Costello”, 2018, Color Print, Boston Voyager March 2018

Second Insert Image: Michael Costello, “Pierrot Enraged”, “La Comedia é Finita” Series, 2018, Pastel, Charcoal and Russian Clay on Paper, 76.2 x 56.5 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Michael Costello, “Self Portrait Based on Rembrandt”, 2017, Oil on Canvas, 66 x 55.9 cm, William Scott Gallery

Bottom Insert Image: Michael Costello, “Marat Redux”, 2011, Oil on Canvas, 122 x 122 cm, Private Collection

George Washington Lambert

George Washington Lambert, “The Half-Back (Maurice Lambert)”, 1920, Oil on Canvas, 76.2 x 61 cm, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Although “The Half-Back (Maurice Lambert)” is a portrait of an individual, Australian painter George Lambert intended it to be seen as a general type of portrait, and thus gave it a generalized name. He originally exhibited it as “Young Man in a White Sweater” in 1920 at  London and, in the following year, at the Pittsburgh International. He later gave this portrait of his son Maurice, then an eighteen-year old sculpture student, a more athletic title, “The Half-Back”.

Lambert presented his son with a sensuous and powerful presence, typical of a matinee idol. This resulted from Lambert’s depiction of the sultry eyes, the dark brushed-back hair, the pouting expression of the mouth, and the subject’s white sweater, with the raised collar’s emphasis on the nape of the neck. Silhouetted against a plain blue background, the subject’s head and torso, composed of thin layers of paint to create a flat, matte surface,  are the focus of the painting.

Born in Paris in 1901, Maurice Lambert was the eldest of two children of George Lambert and Amelia Absell; the other child was a daughter Constant, born in 1905, who became a composer and conductor. Maurice Lambert studied sculpture under Derwent Wood at London’s  Royal Academy and also attended Chelsea Polytechnic. He is known mostly for his public sculptures. 

Considered one of the new group of British sculptors, Maurice Lambert’s  work in the late 1920s and 1930s was radical in his experimental use of materials. The wide range of his materials was evident in his 1929 “New Sculpture” exhibition, where he showed work made from African hardwood, alabaster, Portland stone, marble and metal. At the time his father painted this portrait, Maurice Lambert was still studying sculpture at the Royal College and was, also. working with his father at his studio as a model and painting assistant. 

Originally “The Half-Back” was in the collection of Australian painter Hans Heysen, known for his watercolors of monumental Australian gum trees, and images of men and animals in the Australian bush. It was purchased in 1958 by Adelaide’s Art Gallery of South Australia through a South Australian Government Grant. 

Biographical information on the life of George Lambert can be found at: https://ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon.blog/2020/12/18/george-washington-lambert/

George Washington Lambert

George Washington Lambert, “The White Glove”, 1921, Oil on Canvas, 106 x 78 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Born in September of 1873 in St. Petersburg, Russia, George Washington Thomas Lambert was an Australian portrait artist and a war artist during the First World War. After the death of his father, he and his English mother moved to Württemberg, Germany, to stay with Lambert’s maternal grandfather. Lambert received his education at Kingston College in Somerset, England, after which the family emigrated to Australia, arriving in Sydney in January of 1887.

In 1894, George Lambert began exhibiting his work at the Art Society and the Society of Artists in Sydney. After drawing pen and ink cartoons for a year at The Bulletin magazine, he began painting full time in 1896. Lambert won the Wynne Prize for his 1899 painting “Across the Blacksoil Plains”, a depiction of a heavily laden wagon pulled by a team of draft horses. 

Lambert studied at the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney until 1900, after which he won a government traveling scholarship from New South Wales. He spent a few years traveling, first to Paris, and later to London where he exhibited work at the Royal Academy. At an exhibition in Barcelona in 1911, Lambert won a silver medal for his painting “The Sonnet”.

During the years of the First World War, George Lambert served as an official war artist. His painting “Anzac”, depicting the 1915 landings of forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey, is now in the Australian War Memorial collection located in Australia’s capital Canberra. In 1920, Lambert painted another notable work “A Sergeant of the Light Horse”, which he executed in London after retuning from Palestine.

Returning to Australia in 1921, Lambert had a successful solo show in Melbourne at the Fine Art Society. This was the year he painted “The White Glove”, a oil portrait depicting Miss Gladys Neville Collins, the daughter of lawyer J. T. Collins, trustee of the Public Library, Museums, and National Gallery of Victoria. 

George Lambert posed Miss Collins in a manner suggestive of John Singer Sargent’s 1905 work “Portrait of Ena Wertheimer, ‘a vele gonfie”, with its black white-feathered hat and hand raised in front of chest. Miss Collins’s tilted head, half closed eyes, half open mouth, and almost bare right arm suggests individual sensuality, but also a form of codified behavior. Significantly different from the in-vogue contemporary brown-toned portraits, George Lambert, himself, described it as a wild, dashing portrait. 

In 1922, the Art Gallery of New South Wales acquired the painting for six hundred guineas ( $53,000 in 2019),  at the time the highest price paid by a public gallery for a portrait by an Australian artist. The work remains a part of its collection.

Gottfried Lindauer

Gottfried Lindauer, “Kamariera Te Hau Takiri Wharepapa”, 1895, Oil on Canvas, 83 x 71.7 cm, Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand

Gottfried Lindauer, a portrait artist, was born in Pilsen, Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,  who relocated to New Zealand. Lindauer’s portraits of Māori are diverse in their subjects and in how he depicted them. They can be presented full-length, half-length or in bust format for instance; frontal, body in profile or face to the front, as in his many portraits of Ana Rupene and her baby. Besides his portraits of eminent Māori, Lindauer produced many of little-known or ordinary Māori people, most of whom wear European dress, as would have been the case in their daily life.

Kamariera Wharepapa, born in 1823, was one of fourteen Māori who travelled to England aboard the ship Ida Ziegler under the sponsorship of Wesleyan missionary William Jenkins. While in England he was presented to Queen Victoria and married Elizabeth Reid, an English housemaid. The first of their five daughters was born on the return journey to New Zealand and the family settled in Maungakahia. There, in 1864, Elizabeth helped her husband lobby for a school, which was eventually built. Wharepapa died in 1920 at his birthplace Mangakahia.

Source: isluma

W. H. Auden: “The Satisfaction of Not Desiring the Nymphs”

Scott Salinger, “Francisco Gabriel”, Photo Shoot

“Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.

“After all,” sighed Narcissus the hunchback, “on me it looks good.

The contemplation of his reflection does not turn Narcissus into Priapus: the spell in which he is trapped is not a desire for himself but the satisfaction of not desiring the nymphs.

“I prefer my pistol to my p…,” said Narcissus; “it cannot take aim without my permission” – and took a pot shot at Echo.”

― W.H. Auden, The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays, 1962, Random House