Family portraits - two paintings by Rudolph Friedrich Wasmann, 1843

 

Adolph Wasmann, a medical doctor, was the younger brother of the artist. He was born in Hamburg on 20 December 1807 and died 24 November 1853 at the age of only forty-five. On 1 July 1843, in Berlin, at the age of thirty-five, he had married the twenty-year-old Caroline Luise Mathilde Behrens. Born in Berlin in May of 1823, she survived her husband by more than thirteen years. But she would die in Hamburg on 28 March 1867 at the age of forty-three, even younger than her husband had been at the time of his death. I haven't been able to find any record of children, or any explanation for their early deaths. Considering the date of the portraits, they were certainly created to commemorate the couple's wedding. 

Dr. Adolph Wasmann.

Caroline Luise Mathilde Wasmann née Behrens.

Siendo fabulosa en la Habana vieja - "Havana Glamour Girl", Nina Leen for Life Magazine, 1946

 

Alina Johnson de Menocal (center) and Nina Gómez de Freyre with manicurist. (Two images.)

This was going to be a very simple post... and then it wasn't.

I found all these wonderful images, taken by photographer Nina Leen and published in Life Magazine in 1946. The feature purported to show the glamorous daily life of Alina (or, in the magazine, Aline) Johnson de Menocal, a Cuban socialite and wealthy and glamorous young matron. But... after combing through the Life archives for 1946 - twice - I haven't been able to find out what issue they were included in. I wanted to find the article, because the internet has totally mucked up the visual record, and now nearly every Cuban lady that was photographed by Leen, in preparation for the feature, is now identified online as... "Aline Johnson de Menocal." And it didn't take me too long to realize that the pampered and chic female in the photographs, modeling her up-to-the-moment wardrobe, was not one but several. I've only been able to identify the focus of the feature, the actual Alina, along with Serafina "Nina" Gómez de Freyre - who Alina's daughter refers to as an aunt - and Lillian Gómez Mena. 

The "glamour girl" of the article was Alina Mercedes Johnson Aguilera before her marriage to Luis Narciso Menocal Nadal. Both had been partly educated in the Unites States; her husband had been John F. Kennedy's roommate at Choate and was lifelong friends with the President. I'm forced to admit that I haven't been able to make any sense, from what little I've been able to find, of their family connections or source of income. But the couple had five children: Teodoro, Alina, Luis, Ilia, and Carlos.

Alina Johnson de Menocal.

Alina Johnson de Menocal giving instructions to her staff. (Two images.)

Alina Johnson de Menocal with her daughter Alina Carlota "Nina." (Two images.) 

Alina Johnson de Menocal (in dark shorts) with Lillian Gómez Mena (in striped shorts) and Nina Gómez de Freyre. (Three images.) 

Alina Johnson de Menocal. (Three images.)

Alina Johnson de Menocal and her husband Luis Narciso Menocal Nadal. (Two images.)

Unknown woman. (Seen at far right in the previous image.)

Unknown woman. (Seen in the following three images, along with Nina Gómez de Freyre in the foreground at right.)

Lillian Gómez Mena in the background at center.

Unknown woman. (Seen standing in the previous three images.)

Lillian Gómez Mena.

Nina Gómez de Freyre. (Five images.)

Alina Johnson de Menocal's feet. (Two images.)

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Nina Leen (circa 1909-1914; she always kept her actual age a secret - 1 January 1995, New York City), Russian-born American photographer, particularly associated with Life magazine. She studied painting in Berlin, and also lived in Italy and Switzerland, before emigrating to the United States in 1939. Her photographs for Life were first published in April 1940. While she never became a staff photographer at the magazine, she contributed as a contract photographer until it closed in 1972. Her work graced over fifty of Life's covers, and she contributed countless reports from around the world. She was an avid photographer of animals, and she also documented European royalty, fashion models, dancers, and actresses. From 1973, she frequently published her work in book form. She was married for some time to the fashion photographer Serge Balkin.

Dancing into battle - two paintings by Cesare Fracanzano

 

Two fighters, circa 1637.

The artist has signed his name on the scrap of paper.

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The Wrestlers, circa 1640s.

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Cesare Fracanzano (9 October 1605, Bisceglie - 1651, Barletta), Neapolitan painter, native of Apulia. The son of a nobleman originally from Verona - himself a mannerist painter - he moved to Naples in 1622 along with his younger brother, Francesco, who was a painter as well. A student of José de Ribera - known to his contemporaries as Lo Spagnoletto - Fracanzano's pictorial style was based on that of his teacher, but also that of Tintoretto, the Carracci brothers, and Guido Reni. After four years of apprenticeship and work in Naples, he returned to Apulia in 1626, settling in Barletta where he married. He carried out commissions there for the church and the nobility, only leaving to honor commitments in other parts of the region, as well as in Naples and Rome. His son, Michelangelo Fracanzano, was also a painter, and died in France about 1685.

Un grande quadro familiare - the family of merchant Antonio Ghidini, by Pietro Melchiorre Ferrari, circa 1769

 

Antonio Ghidini was a successful merchant trading in fabrics, and officially accredited to the Bourbon court of Parma. As the letters on the cabinet in the background attest, Ghidini also had strong ties to England, then one of the most important centers of cloth manufacture in Europe. Other documents mention the city of Manchester, as well as the Booth family, major producers of textiles during this period. Befitting the family of a prominent fabric merchant, the Ghidini family is stylishly dressed. The elegant dress of the wife is made from a pink and green foliate stripe called "Melandri" (?) which was produced in Lyon as well as in the Veneto, and in Spitalfields in London. 

The work has been dated circa 1769 due to the presence of the medallion held by the eldest child, an object which had been created to commemorate the marriage of Ferdinando di Borbone, King of Naples and Sicily, to Archduchess Maria Carolina, a daughter of Empress Maria Theresa, in the previous year.

This painting, displaying an informality of composition, with the subjects seeming to be caught in a moment of domestic intimacy, was an example of a relatively new trend in continental portraiture, influenced by the popularity of the British "conversation piece." Until recently, the painting was considered the work of Baldrighi, Ferrari's master; before that, it had been credited to the French court painter Louis Michel van Loo. But the portrait was re-attributed to Ferrari thanks to the discovery of a list of artworks in the possession of the Ghidini family: "Un quadro grande che rappresenta I ritratti della famiglia Ghidini di Pietro Ferrari (A large painting representing the portraits of the Ghidini family by Pietro Ferrari.)” 

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Pietro Melchiorre Ferrari (2 February 1735, Sissa - 3 October 1787, Parma), Italian painter, active mainly in Parma. His father, Paolo Ferrari, was a painter in the ducal court of Parma. The younger Ferrari studied under Giuseppe Peroni, and later in the Academy of Fine Arts at Parma under Giuseppe Baldrighi.