Contessa Nerina Pisani, By ~ Vittorio Matteo Corcos ~ 1859 - 1933.

Vittorio Matteo Corcos

(Leghorn 1859 - Florence 1933)

Born in Leghorn on 4 October 1859, in the 1870's Corcos studied at the "Accademia delle Belle Arti di Firenze" under Enrico Pollastrini. Between 1878 and 1879 he was in Naples at Domenico Morelli's studio whose work, rich in literary associations and formal ideas made a great impression on him. A work that illustrates Morelli's influence, "Arabo in preghiera" (The Praying Arab), dates from this period.

In 1880 Corcos moved to Paris where he signed a two-week contract with the Goupil Art Gallery. From time to time he went to the studio of Léon Bonnat, portrait painter to the Parisian upper middle class and he successfully became part of elite art circles. For his own paintings he chose fashionable themes: female portraits, scenes of modern life, sophisticated interiors painted in vibrant colours and fluid brushstrokes, works in the style of Boldini and De Nittis. Between 1881 and 1886, the year when he returned to Italy, he frequently exhibited at the Salon.

"Fireworks" By ~ Konstantin Andreevic Somov ~ 1869 - 1939.

Constantin Andreevich Somov was born in St. Petersburg on November 30, 1869 into the family of the senior curator at the Hermitage, artist and art historian, Andrei Ivanovich Somov and his wife, Nadezhda Constantinovna, an excellent musician. The family had a big collection of paintings, etchings, watercolors, big library; the artists were frequent guests in the house. Constantin started to learn to play piano, singing, and painting early.
From 1888 till 1897, he studied at the Academy of Arts, where from 1894 he took a course at Ilya Repin’s studio. Later he wrote that the first five years in the Academy were a lost and fruitless time. Nevertheless he took the studies very seriously and got a number of awards in the academy. The work with Repin can be felt in some of his paintings of those years, e.g. portraits of N. Ober, wife of the sculptor Ober (1896), Portrait of Father (1897), Self-Portrait (1898).

Since his childhood Somov was a friend of Alexander Benois; during their students’ years they often gathered together in the house of Benois, there Somov got acquainted with Sergei Dyagilev, future theatre interprener, and Lev Bakst.

Mademoiselle de Lancey ~ By Carolus Duran ~ 1838 - 1913.

Mademoiselle de Lancey, Alice Tahl dite de Lancey (1851-1913)

Auteur :

Carolus-Duran (1838-1917)

Crédit photographique :

(C) RMN-Grand Palais / Agence Bulloz

Période :

19e siècle, période contemporaine de 1789 à 1914

Date :

1876

Technique/Matière :

huile sur toile

Vintage Ladies dressed in the Colour of Summer rain.

"The New Bracelet" By ~ Frans Verhas ~ 1827 - 1897.

The New Bracelet.

Jeune Fille.

Having trained with his father, he studied in Brussels before settling permanently at Schaerbeek in 1867. In Brussels he specialized almost exclusively in producing genre paintings of bourgeois subjects. His compositions were skilfully executed and he showed a keen eye for detail, portraying sumptuous interiors decorated with tapestries, satins, animal pelts and marble as a backdrop to playing children and elegant women dressed in crinolines, or striking aristocratic poses: for example The Lion (1874; Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.) and the Inconsolable Woman (1878; Antwerp, Kon. Mus. S. Kst.). He also painted historical subjects, which he treated with a powerful sense of realism (e.g. Louis XIV before Dendermonde in 1667 , 1881; and the League of Noblemen ; both Dendermonde, Stadhuis), and executed portraits (e.g. Mariam Van Duyse , 1852; Dendermonde, Vrouwekerk).

Elisabeth Alexeievna By ~ Jean Laurent Mosnier ~ 1743 - 1808.

Mosnier was a student at the Académie de St Luc, Paris, where he trained as a miniature painter. In 1776 he was appointed Peintre de la Reine to Marie-Antoinette. He was approved by the Académie Royale in 1786 and received as a full member in 1788, presenting two portraits of Academicians, the sculptor Charles-Antoine Bridan and the painter Louis Lagrenée I. He exhibited a Self-portrait (St. Petersburg, Hermitage) at the Salon of 1786, showing himself relaxed and confident at the centre of his studio.

After the outbreak of the French Revolution, Mosnier fled to London in 1790 and exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1791 to 1796. His English portraits make some concession to current English taste. From London Mosnier went to Hamburg, where he stayed four years, and then, in 1801, to St Petersburg, a favorite destination for French émigré artists. A potential rival, Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, left the city later that year, and Mosnier assumed an influential position. In 1802 he was accepted into the St Petersburg Academy, and he was made a professor there in 1806. His portrait sitters included the imperial family. Mosnier was a versatile and prolific portrait painter, capable of modifying his style in accordance with changed geographical circumstances, and using his skill as a trained miniaturist to good effect in his highly polished and detailed full-size portraits.

Portrait Of A Lady, By ~ Albert Edelfelt ~ 1854 - 1905.

From promising young Finnish painter to European celebrity, Albert Edelfelt was Finland’s first cosmopolitan art icon. His work was admired by, among many others, Vincent van Gogh. Declining a professorship at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, Edelfelt’s greatest passions were the Parisian lifestyle and summers spent in his native country.

The Last Roses Of Summer

    

The Last Roses Of Summer.

    

Marquise de Caumont By Francois Hubert Drouais ~ 1727 - 1775.

Drouais was the successor to Nattier as the chief portrait painter at the court of Louis XV. He portrayed most of the leading figures of his age, including the king and his two most famous mistresses, Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, as well as artists and leading members of the professional classes.

Drouais was born in Paris, the son of the painter Hubert Drouais (1699 - 1767), who was famous for his miniature portraits. Drouais was trained by his father and by other well-known painters, including Carle van Loo, Natoire and Boucher. He became a member of the Academy in 1758, and exhibited regularly at the Salon from 1755 to the year of his death.

Drouais was celebrated for his likenesses of aristocrats dressed in rustic costume, a current fashion, and for his representations of children, often in landscape settings.

Empress Marie Feodorovna.

Marie Dagmar was a Danish princess who married the future Alexander III. This was a case of opposites attracting. Two such different personalities came together in harmony to produce a happy family. Marie loved parties, people, dressing up, and all the gaiety that court could provide. She was immensely popular with the Russians. As Dowager Empress (widow) she had great influence over her son, Nicholas II. During the 1917 revolution she fled the country, living out her days in England.

Harriet Hoctor ~ Ballet.

At the age of 15, Harriet Hoctor made her Broadway debut in 1920 as a chorus dancer in Jerome Kern's musical Sally, produced by Florenz Ziegfeld. In 1923 she starred in Vivian and Rosetta Duncan's Topsy and Eva and toured with the show until 1926. Subsequent Broadway productions included A La Carte (1927), Earl Carrol's Vanities (1932), Hold Your Horses (1933), as well as several Billy Rose musical revues. Having caught the eye of producer Ziegfeld in Sally, Hoctor was to star in four subsequent Ziegfeld-produced musicals: The Three Musketeers (1928), Show Girl (1929), Simple Simon (1930), and The Ziegfeld Follies of 1936. Films include The Great Ziegfeld (MGM, 1936) and Shall We Dance (RKO 1937). Hoctor was also a popular feature as a ballet dancer on the vaudeville Keith/Orpheum Circuit. In 1945 she retired from performing to open a ballet school in Boston. She died in 1977.

Marguerite Bellanger Bust, By ~ Albert Ernest Carrier-Belleuse ~ 1824 - 1887.

 

Carrier-Belleuse is the name used by this sculptor--born Carrier de Belleuse--on his mature pieces, after initially signing works "A. Carrier." His career began firmly in the applied arts, with his apprenticeship at thirteen to a Parisian ciseleur today known as Bauchery (or Beauchery), and he did subsequent work for Jacques-Henri Fauconnier and Fannière Frères. His formal education took place at the Petite Ecole--chosen after an unhappy stint at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1840 under the direction of David d'Angers, his official master. While at the Petite Ecole in the 1840s, Carrier-Belleuse began his lifelong practice of providing commercial houses with models for edition, as statuettes or as ornament for functional pieces. Around 1850, the sculptor moved to England as a designer for Minton China Works, at Stoke-upon-Trent, as well as for Wedgewood, Coalbrookdale Ironworks, and Graham & Jackson furniture makers. Even after returning to Paris in 1855, he continued to send models to British firms throughout his life.

Joseph Karl Stieler Portrait of Mathilde von Bayern.

Mathilde wears an evening dress with huge outer sleeves in her 1830 Stieler portrait. Her only visible jewel is her belt buckle.

The Interrupted Sleep, By ~ Francois Boucher ~ 1703 - 1770.

Boucher was an artist of incomparable virtuosity and industry with a preference for mythological and pastoral subjects. Here he shows a beautifully dressed shepherd and shepherdess. The latter sleeps, while the former tickles her pink lips with a bit of straw. The simplicity of the subject belies the complexity of the composition, which is organized around a series of intersecting diagonals. This canvas, much admired when it was exhibited at the Salon of 1753, was described as one of a pair of overdoors from Bellevue. The château belonged to Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV.

I Wish I could........

I wish I could press snowflakes in a book like flowers.

Ball Gown ~ 1858 ~ Boston.

"Angel Of The Annunciation" By ~ French School ~ 19th Century.

French School (19th Century)

Angel of the Annunciation

Laura, By Ken Hamilton.

Laura, can describe the work of Ken Hamilton. A sense of wonder and questioning radiates from his work, as if his figures are lost in a maze of inward contemplation or thought. This same stillness appears to be drawn from the work of Dutch master, Johannes Vermeer. Hamilton himself describes his vision as “contemporary and also timeless; realistic yet representing an unreal world; almost touchable but totally beyond our reach; as plain as day but still mysterious.”

Ken Hamilton’s style can be described as a contemporary Renaissance; a modern “rebirth” of the ideals enlisted by the    artists of the 15th and 16th centuries, going against the popular use of abstraction and distortion seen so frequently in modern and contemporary art.

Ken Hamilton was born in Nigeria, West Africa, where he lived until age 11, at which time he moved to Ireland and has remained ever since.

"Violet" By ~ Sir James Jebusa Shannon ~ 1862 - 1923.

James Jebusa Shannon  American artist (1862-1923) 

SHANNON, JAMES JEBUSA (1862- ), Anglo-American artist, was born at Auburn, New York, in 1862', and at the age of eight was taken by his parents to Canada. When he was sixteen, he went to England, where he studied at South Kensington, and after three years won the gold medal for figure painting. His portrait of the Hon. Horatia Stopford, one of the queen's maids of honor, attracted attention at the Royal Academy in 1881, and in 1887 his portrait of Henry Vigne in hunting costume was one of the successes of the exhibition, subsequently securing medals for the artist at Paris, Berlin and Vienna. He soon became one of the leading portrait painters in London. He was one of the first members of the New English Art Club, and in 1897 was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and R.A. in 1909. His picture, " The Flower Girl," was bought in 1901 for the National Gallery of British Art.

Arlene Dahl ~ 1928 - 1950's.

Elegance and femininity are fitting descriptions for Arlene Dahl. She is considered to be one of the most beautiful actresses to have graced the screen during the postwar period. Audiences were captivated by her breathtaking beauty and the way she used to it to her advantage, progressing from claimer to character roles.

Of Norwegian extraction, Miss Dahl was born in Minneapolis. Following high school she joined a local drama group, supporting herself with a variety of jobs, including modeling for a number of department stores. Arriving in Hollywood in 1946, she signed a brief contract with Warner Brothers, but she is best remembered for her work at MGM. The Bride Goes Wild (1948) was her first work at Metro. It was an odd but rather humorous love story, which starred Van Johnson and June Allyson.

"Elegant Lady" By Charles Amable Lenoir ~ 1860 - 1926.

Charles-Amable Lenoir (22 October 1860–1926) was a French painter. Like his mentor, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, he was an academic painter and painted realistic portraits as well as mythological and religious scenes. His artistic career was so prestigious that he won the Prix de Rome twice and was awarded the Légion d'honneur.

Lenoir was born in Châtellaillon, a small town just outside of La Rochelle. His mother was a seamstress and his father was a customs officer. When he was young, his father was reassigned and the family moved to Fouras. He did not start out in life as an artist, but instead began his education at a teachers' college in La Rochelle. Upon graduation, he worked as a teacher and supervisor at the lycée in Rochefort.

Portrait By ~ Carlo Dolci ~ 1616 - 1686.

Carlo Dolci, byname Carlino    (born May 25, 1616, Florence [Italy]—died Jan. 17, 1687, Florence), Italian painter, one of the last representatives of the Florentine school of Baroque painting, whose mainly devotional works are characterized by their oversweet and languid piety.
Dolci studied with a minor local painter and at an extremely early age showed a talent for portrait painting. Failing to develop significantly in this direction, however, he vowed, inspired by Counter-Reformation teachings, to devote his career to painting religious subjects. At a time when other Florentine artists migrated to Rome, the centre of monumental Baroque painting, Dolci remained in Tuscany and developed his manner out of the more sober, static native traditions of Florence.

Dolci painted pictures that were highly popular in his day. The figures in his dramatically concentrated compositions are typically half-length and treated with refinement of detail, soft colour, and strong contrasts of light and dark.

Thumbelina and the Butterfly.

 

Lotte Reiniger has the distinction of creating the very first feature animation, her enthralling The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), an epic silhouette film featuring highly ornate shapes of exotic lands, gallant heroes, nefarious magic, and a rousing climax with a multi-headed beast. A German leftist in the age of fascism, after the war she moved to England, where she continued to build a visionary oeuvre totalling over fifty films, mostly shorts, many of them for BBC Children’s TV. She made her last film, The Rose and the Ring (1979), at the age of 80. In addition to their craft and charm, her films have two outstanding features: they are highly intricate, yet also opaque, inviting viewers to fill in details with their own imagination, thus creating a captivating aesthetic as commanding today as ever.

Portrait By Philip Wilson Steer,1860 - 1942.

Philip Wilson Steer 
English Artist (1860-1942) 
  Steer was among the leaders of British artists in his generation who looked to France for inspiration. One of the only few truly English Impressionist. He trained in Paris 1882-4 (around the time Sargent was reaching his height there) and revisiting France four times between 1887 and 1891.

Castro Alves Poem.

Ask for a mirror from Venice…
Gaze at your face…and you will see
One of the most beautiful paintings
Which — men would not know how to make,
Which — two alike God did not do.

In your beautiful mouth
You will see a pretty rose
Almost closed while smiling
And, like shining drops,
The pearls of your teeth
In the breast of the sparkling flower.
The Oriental perfume
— When you pray innocently —
One cradles in your lips.
And in your breast, one trembles,
You have the Poetry, one moans,
You have the harmony of the Heavens.
Do you want to see Paradise?
Reveal your lips…A laugh
Come show us Eden…
Sing!… And the sacred hymns
You will see in Heaven
Falling stars listen to you.
You have the night by the strings
Where the breeze in arguing themes
Howls… dies of slowness.
They are more than stars — shining
Your fascinating eyes,

"Where There's A Will" By ~ Edmund Blair Leighton ~ 1853 - 1922.

Edmund Blair Leighton, ROI (British, 1853-1922)

Where there's a will
signed and dated 'E.BLAIR LEIGHTON.1892

"The Sea Hath It's Pearls" By ~ William Henry Margetson ~ 1861 - 1940.

The cool monochrome of the location suggests an English coastal resort, though clearly Margetson had the Mediterranean in mind. His lovely fossicker is dressed to evoke the ancient classical past more than late Victorian England. Indeed, Margetson's rather dry application of pale pigment echoes Roman fresco technique. Like most of the lesser genre painters and portraitists of his day, he succumbed to the ever-virulent strain of Victorian classicism, being influenced by better-known contemporaries such as Leighton and Poynter. It goes without saying that the pearl of the title is a punning allusion to the maiden herself.

The Green Calash, By ~ Ellen Day Hale ~ 1855 - 1940.

Painter, etcher, and writer Ellen Day Hale, was one of the few women professional artists of her era, late 19th and early 20th centuries, to 'rise to the top' at a time when men ruled the domain of fine art.  Heavily credentialed in painting and printmaking by study at respected institutions, "she also played a major role as a mentor for a younger generation of aspiring women artists,

Young lady in a garden by Betty Maude Christian Fagan

"A Thorn Admidst Roses" By ~ James Sant ~ 1820 - 1916.

Portrait painter in oil. Born in Croydon. Studied art under John Varley and Sir Augustus Callcott, also at the R.A. Schools. Exhibited many works at the Royal Academy from 1840. Elected A.R.A. in 1861, R.A. in 1869, and retired from the R.A. in 1914. Appointed Principal Painter in Ordinary to Queen Victoria. He received many important portrait commissions, but also painted landscapes and genre. Lived in London and died on 12th July 1916.

"Girl With Straw Hat" By ~ Friedrich von Amerling ~ 1803 - 1887.

Friedrich von Amerling was a painter of exceptional forte, widely spatted for his sentimental, simple and pious view of the world in a realistic way in his portrait paintings. One of the biggest exponents of Biedermeier Painting Movement, this 19th century painter contributed humongously to the development of this influential painting style. Born into nobility, this blue-blooded artist exhibited outstanding skills so far his clarity of contour and rich coloration was concerned. In that way, his painting style, to a certain extent, was inspired by that of Ingres. In other words, he was the most outstanding Austrian portrait painters of the 19th century. Apart from being a portrait painter, he also showed great skill in painting historic, genre, and landscape paintings. Amerling, besides being a painter, was also a teacher who taught Hungarian painter József Borsos. He mainly worked for aristocracy. He is still remembered as a legendary painter of the 19th century.

Bonnet and Pearls, Marta Berzkalna ~ Vogue Russia ~ By Mariano Vivanco,

Marta Berzkalna in Vogue Russia April 2011 by Mariano Vivanco

Springtime, By ~ Marty Bell ~ 1931 - 2003.

Internationally collected oil painting artist Marty Bell, born in 1931,emerged with new developments in her style and direction. Propelled by her creative drive, vision and passion for unique beauty, her brushes produced even greater artistic expressions, appealing to a wide variety of contemporary and traditional tastes. Marty painted professionally since 1968. Although largely self-taught, early in her career she shared her talents for eleven years by teaching up to 40 students weekly. High popularity of her original paintings prompted the closing of  her art school to concentrate on her own work. With increasing market demand, she began producing limited edition reproductions and later formed Marty Bell Fine Art, Inc. in 1987 as her publishing company.  Marty has been honored by over 200 successful single or featured artist shows, has sold out more than 100 limited edition reproductions and sold over 2400 original paintings.  Marty Bell passed away October 15th, 2003, after a year and a half struggle with cancer.  She will be missed.

"Conversation In The Garden Of Luxembourg" By ~ Vittorio Matteo Corcos ~ 1859 - 1933.

Vittorio Matteo Corcos - Conversations in the Garden of Luxembourg

Vittorio Matteo Corcos (Leghorn, October 4, 1859 - Florence, 1933) was an Italian painter. In 1880 he moved to Paris where he signed a two-week contract with the Goupil Art Gallery. From time to time he went to the studio of Léon Bonnat, portrait painter to the Parisian upper middle class and he successfully became part of elite art circles. For his own paintings he chose fashionable themes: female portraits, scenes of modern life, sophisticated interiors painted in vibrant colours and fluid brushstrokes.

"ON The Seashore" By ~ George Elgar Hicks ~ 1824 - 1914.

George Elgar Hicks

Born on March 13, 1824 in Lymington, Hampshire, England, George Elgar Hicks was the second son of a wealthy magistrate, who along with fellow painter William Powell Frith, became amongst the most admired and popular painters of the Victorian era. Hicks parents encouraged him to become a doctor, leading him to study medicine at University College, London from 1840-1842. However after three years of "arduous and disagreeable study", Hicks began training as an artist. In 1843 Hick's attended Sass's Academy and by 1844 had entered the Royal Academy Schools. Hicks then married Maria Hariss in 1847 with whom he would eventually have eight children. In 1859, Hicks exhibited his first large genre painting at the Royal Academy, following Frith's recent commercial success in painting similar scenes. Hicks continued to paint genre scenes to much acclaim throughout the 1860's before shifting to historical scenes, literary scenes,and portraiture in the 1870's and 1880's. Hicks died a month before the declaration of World War I, in 1914. Paintings of his can be found in the Tate Museum in London.

Madame Misonne By ~ Leonard Misonne ~ 1910.

Belgian, b. 1870

Misonne was a master pictorialist photographer, whose atmospheric landscapes and street scenes are among the finest pictorial depictions of such subject matter. He employed many process and techniques throughout his career and championed a highly diffused printing system and light quality. His photographs are among many important collections and anthologies on the history of pictorialist photography.

Coco Rocha in Vogue US December 2008 by Annie Leibovitz

Coco Rocha in Vogue US December 2008 by Annie Leibovitz

Madonna, Rafael Sanzio.

Mario Scalini, state supervisor of fine arts for Modena and Reggio Emilia, was doing inventory of the tens of thousands of art pieces in storage in his area when he found a small portrait of a lady framed by a beautifully elaborate gilded 17th century frame in the vault of the ducal palace of the Este family in Sassuolo, outside of Modena.
He immediately noted the high quality of the painting. The piece was thought to be an 18th century copy of the head of the Madonna in Rafael’s famous Holy Family of the Pearl now in the Prado museum, so Scalini found its exceptional quality incongruous. Also, why would a mere 12 by 16-inch copy be put in such a large, sumptuous frame?
He followed up on his hunch that this might be an actual Raphael by digging through the ducal archives for any reference to the portrait. He found nothing about a copy, but he did find an inventory reference from 1663 to a “portrait of a woman” by Raphael. There is no record of the Raphael portrait currently in the collection, nor was there any trace of it having been ceded to the Elector of Saxony in 1746 when Francesco III d’Este had to sell many of the most valuable pictures after he was bankrupted by the Wars of the Spanish, Polish, and Austrian Successions. There was no record of it being loaned or dispersed at any other time either, so it seems the Rafael was squirreled away somewhere and forgotten, maybe to be mistaken for a copy decades later

"ELEGANT" By ~ Albert Lynch ~ 1851 - 1912.

Lynch specialised in painting female subjects to which he brought a charming elegance and sophistication typical of such belle epoque paintings. He worked most often in pastel or watercolour, although he occasionally used oils, and he provided illustrations for two books, 'La Dame aux Camelias' by Dumas fils and 'La Parisienne' by Henry Becque. He was made a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur in 1901

Talbot, Photographie, 1911 - 1920.

Photographie du Studio Talbot, Paris, vers 1911-1920

Papier photographique ; épreuve noir et blanc sur papier argentique montée sur carton sous feuille plastique.