Youth and otherwise - self-portraits by Émile Friant

1880.

Émile Friant (16 April 1863, Dieuze – 9 June 1932, Paris), French painter and engraver. The son of a locksmith and a dressmaker, a client of his mother took an interest in the young Friant and, having no children of her own, undertook to provide for his education. Originally studying chemistry, his aptitude for art soon brought about a change in the direction of his studies. Because of the disturbances caused by the Franco-Prussian War, he, his patroness, and his family had moved to Nancy, and there he began intensive training, focusing on still life and landscape painting. At fifteen, a painting he exhibited made him a local celebrity in Nancy and, the next year, the municipal council granted him an allowance to go and further his training in Paris. He studied with Alexandre Cabanel, but later became disenchanted by the academic style and working within the atelier system, and returned to Nancy. Beginning in 1882, he began exhibiting at the Paris Salon. He went on to win second place in the Prix ​​de Rome in 1883, winning two more medals at subsequent Salons, and was awarded the gold medal at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1889. In the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth, he devoted much energy to printmaking, mainly drypoint. He became a professor of drawing at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1906, and was appointed a professor of painting there in 1923. He was also promoted, in 1931, to the position of commander in the Légion d'honneur. He died as the result of a fall at the age of sixty-nine.

1877. The artist was fourteen.

1878.

1880.

Circa 1880s.

1885.

1887.

1892.

1893.

1907.

1920.

The simplest claret-colored velvet - Edith Kingdon Gould in a Worth gown, portrait by Théobald Chartran, 1898

Edith Mary Kingdon Gould (24 August 1864, New York – 13 November 1921, New Jersey), American actress and socialite. Born to Canadian parents, she was educated in England, and worked as a stage actress until her marriage to George Jay Gould I, extremely wealthy financier and son of Jay Gould, in 1886. Both bride and groom were only twenty-two, and the groom's family were quite understandably unhappy with his choice; at the time, actresses were considered only slightly better than prostitutes. But the new Mrs. Gould, by her vivacity and good humor, eventually won them over. Even more impressively, she went on to be accepted by New York's extremely snobbish "Society". The couple would have seven children. (In the last years of their marriage, Gould also had a mistress with whom he had three more children; he married his mistress six months after Edith's death.) She died at the age of fifty-seven while playing golf with her husband on the golf course of their home in Lakewood Township, New Jersey. From the New York Times: "Edith Kingdon Gould, wife of George Jay Gould, fell dead today while playing golf with her husband on the private golf course at their estate, Georgian Court, in the outskirts of Lakewood. Heart disease was the cause of death." From the Atlanta Constitution: "Mrs. George Jay Gould, the beautiful Edith Kingdon, noted actress of the eighties, collapsed at the ninth tee of the private golf course on the Gould estate, Georgian court, Sunday afternoon while playing a game with her husband, and died in his arms as he was carrying her to the mansion ...."

The original Worth gown.

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Mrs. Gould was better know for a slightly more elaborate style of dress. Three images from 1903.

Her jewels were lavish, and lavishly talked about.

Two images from 1908.

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Théobald Chartran (20 July 1849, Besançon – 16 July 1907, Neuilly-sur-Seine), French painter and sometime magazine caricaturist. A student of Cabanel, he began his Salon career in 1872. Five years later he won the Prix de Rome and a third class medal at the Salon, a second class medal at the Salon of 1881 and a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1889. He was also made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. His clientele reached well beyond France. Beginning in 1881, he exhibited at the Royal Academy and at the Grafton Gallery in London, and he traveled to the United States to complete commissions. Popular during his lifetime but now considered not of the first rank, he is probably best remembered for his 1902 portrait of First Lady Edith Carow Roosevelt, which is still in the White House collection. He may be even better remembered for his portrait of her husband, begun the same year. The President so hated the finished work - his family apparently called it the "Mewing Cat" because of the President's decidedly timid aspect - that he eventually had it destroyed and hired John Singer Sargent to paint a replacement.

Five unhappy Victorian paintings

A Widow's Mite, by John Everett Millais, 1870.

The Governess, by Alexandre Cabanel, circa 1865-70.

For the Last Time, by Emily Mary Osborn, circa 1864.

A Wounded Danish Soldier, by Elisabeth Jerichau Baumann, 1865.

The Sister's Grave, by Thomas Brooks, 1857. 

The Victorians just celebrated sadness.

Study of Adam for Le Paradis perdu by Alexandre Cabanel, before 1867

This is a finished sketch of the figure of Adam for Cabanel's painting Le Paradis perdu (Paradise Lost). The original painting was commissioned by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and was exhibited at the Universal Exhibition of 1867 in Paris, but was destroyed in the bombing of Munich during World War II. Cabanel also executed a reduced version of this work, now titled Adam et Ève chassés du Paradis or Adam et Ève après la chute (Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise or Adam and Eve after the fall), which survives in a private collection. Adam's pose in this sketch is noticeably different than that in the finished painting.

The smaller, surviving version of Paradise Lost. 1867.

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Two preparatory sketches; both reflect the pose the artist eventually chose for the figure of Adam.

Another sketch for the project, this version using the same pose as that in the featured study of Adam.

Portraits d'hommes

Andrew Copland, by George Watson, 1802.

Portrait of a Man, by Domenico Tintoretto, circa 1586-1589.

Unknown, nd.

Portrait of a Man, by William Allan, 1814.

Colonel George Douglas, later 13th Earl of Morton, by John Smibert, 1727.

Self-Portrait as a Child, by Alexandre Cabanel, 1836. (He was thirteen when this was painted.)

A Young Man Wearing a Wreath of Vine Leaves, by Jacob Adriaensz Backer, 1630.

Portrait of a Middle-Aged Man, by Karl Wilhelm Bardou, 1821.

Paul Swan - "The Most Beautiful Man in the World", circa 1910.

Man Wearing Laurels, by John Singer Sargent, circa 1874-80.

Francis Greville, Baron Brooke, later 1st Earl of Warwick, by Jean-Marc Nattier, 1741.

Raden Syarif Bustaman Saleh, attributed to Friedrich Carl Albert Schreuel, circa 1840.

James Schuyler, by Fairfield Porter, 1955.

Self-Portrait, by Frank Holl, 1863. (He was eighteen when this was painted.)

Benjamin Tevis, by Thomas Sully, 1822.

Andries Stilte as a Standard Bearer, by Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck, 1640.

Unknown, nd.

Self-Portrait in Hell, by Edvard Munch, 1903.

Anne Louis Goislard de Montsabert, comte de Richbourg-le-Toureil, by Nicolas de Largillière, 1734.

August Semeleder, by August Xaver Carl von Pettenkofen, 1840.

Portrait of a Man, by Diego Velázquez, circa 1630.

Portrait of a Man, by François-Xavier Fabre, 1809.

Unknown Japanese, nd.

David Johnston, by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, 1808.