A green world, monumental and fragmentary - paintings by Jian Chongmin

"Jian Chongmin (1947, Shunde, Guangdong Province) studied at the Art Middle School attached to the Sichuan Art Academy. After his graduation in 1967, he worked for an acrobatics troupe. From 1978 on, he was responsible for artistic work with the Chengdu Airplane Company. He transferred to the Chengdu Painting Academy in 1983. Jian is specialized in oil painting, whose works have not only been awarded prizes but have also been included in national collections."

This is all the information I've been able to find on this artist. His work borders on the overly-illustrative and, at the same time, it veers toward the fantastical, both of which tendencies I often find off-putting. But the carefulness of his compositions, the saturated and nearly vibrating greens, his use of scale and shadow and viewpoint, and the tenderness of detail win me over.

A member of the family - Rosalba Faure, a miniature by François Meuret

This image is more than twice the size of the original.

One of our most treasured possessions is this miniature left to us by G's grandmother, Noni. It was painted in France in the 1830s by François Meuret, one of the preeminent miniaturists of the period; he did much work for the royal family, was "painter to the King" (Louis-Philippe), and was later made a knight of the Légion d'honneur. If my research is correct - and I do believe it is - this is a portrait of Rosalba Faure née Gallien de Préval. Of a prosperous New Orleans family of French descent, she traveled to France in 1830 and a year later married Adolphe François Faure. They had two sons together and she and her sons later spent time in both countries. Her husband, a soldier, died in Greece in 1854 and she married again the next year. Her second husband, a New Orleans cotton merchant, fought with the Confederates in the Civil War, then moved to France when his service ended. Rosalba, his wife, died in Paris in 1865. This painting was passed down in the Faure family, then by marriage to the Cooke family; G's mother was born a Cooke. If I haven't skipped any generations - and I don't believe I have - Rosalba is G's great-great-great-great-grandmother.

The crack on the left is not usually nearly as noticeable as it is here; the light was hitting it in a way that accentuated it.

I think she's lovely. And maybe I'm deluding myself, but I think she looks rather like G; the dark hair and large brown eyes, the strong brows, the pale coloring and small mouth. The miniature is three inches by four. Watercolor on ivory. The ivory has cracked in two places, sadly, which is a very common circumstance with miniatures on ivory; luckily, the cracking doesn't impinge upon the subject's beautiful portrait. The miniature came to us in an impressive - and heavy - painted brass (?) frame. There is documentation that frame and portrait have been together since the year of Rosalba's death.

When we received it, aside from the not-really-repairable cracking, I was distressed that the slightly domed glass that covered the portrait was very dirty and clouded - on the inside - and was greatly obscuring the image. I carefully removed the miniature from the frame, but found that the glass was attached to the card-backed ivory with old - original, I presume - paper tape. Most of the tape was crumbled off and the glass lifted away from the image in many places. But it look to be stuck to the image in others, and I wasn't fool enough to attempt to separate the two. I then tried to find a conservator to work on the piece but wasn't successful in doing so. So it just remained in its tarnished state with me not knowing what to do about it.

We packed it very carefully when we moved. And then a few days ago, more than a month after that move, I was holding the framed image up to a wall in the dining room, wondering - if we could ever find a way to get it refurbished - where we might want to hang it. While doing so, I thought I saw the glass move. And then, yes, it was obvious that the glass wasn't attached any longer; it apparently came loose on its own. For the first time, we're now able to see just how lovely the image is, to fully appreciate the quality of Meuret's work. I've since cleaned the glass and can now place the miniature back in the frame. With this unexpected "healing" of her portrait, beautiful Rosalba seems to have decided that she needs to have her impressive portrait properly on view once more, she's reminding us that she should be remembered and admired.

I love the detail on her scarf; are the shiny circles woven into the silk, or are they embroidery? Or sequins?

Randomly V

(It's been two months and five days since I've had time to scrape together a blog post. We're all moved into the new house, but we're far from set up yet; so much more to do. So I thought I'd make it easy on myself and start off with a simple-to-assemble "randomly" post. It's good to be back.)

Margherita Gonzaga, Duchess of Lorraine, by Frans Pourbus the Younger, 1606.

Unknown subject, photographer unknown, ND.

Moonrise, by Stanisław Masłowski, 1884.

Marie-Hélène Arnaud and Joanna McCormick in Lanvin, photograph by Henry Clarke, 1957.

Unknown subject, unknown miniaturist, circa 1770s.

Arturo López-Willshaw, by Alexandre Jacovleff, 1923.

Unknown model,  photograph by Studio Arax, ND.

Mademoiselle Vaughan, by Paul César Helleu, 1905 (?).

Family portrait (On the Balcony), by Fyodor Slavyansky, 1851.

L'Amour et l'Hymen buvant dans la coupe de l'Amitié (Cupid and Hymen Drink from the Cup of Friendship),
by Jean-Baptiste Regnault, 1820.

Madame Spranza, Mathew Brady Studio, New York City, circa 1855-60.

Unknown subject, Josiah Johnson Hawes and Albert Sands Southworth, circa 1850.

Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers, 1934. (Film still?)

Anna Pavlova, circa 1911-12.

Portrait of a Monk of the Benedictine Order Holding a Skull, by Sir Anthony van Dyck, ND.

Portrait d'homme, by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, circa 1760.

New Moon, by Isaac Brodsky, 1912.

"French pet store", photographer unknown, circa 1925.

Antoinette-Pauline de Montet-Duchambge, by Robert Lefèvre, circa 1810.

Jimmy Martin, photograph by Kris Studios, ND.

Cordelia, by Sir Walter Westley Russell, 1930.

From house to home

Or more accurately, from apartment to house to home. After living in the same apartment for the whole ten years of our cohabitation, Gigi and and I just bought a house. Built in 1908, it is a solid, remarkably intact structure, but it is in need of a LOT of cleaning, renovation, and restoration. All of which is fully underway. But in the meantime, I'm finding it difficult to give sufficient attention to this blog. I'll be back, more than intermittently, when the - literal - dust settles, and the old house has become our home. xo

Oh, and it needs a bit of gardening, too....

Two girls in wartime - Grand Duchesses Maria and Anastasia Nikolaevna, 1915

In 1914, at the commencement of what would come to be called "The Great War" - World War I - the ladies of the Imperial family and of the Russian aristocracy quickly moved to organize and supply hospitals for the wounded, to work as administrators of hospitals under their patronage; many trained as nurses and actually assisted in surgery and in the care of the wounded. The Empress set up several hospitals and took a great interest in the overall running of hospitals during the war. She made visits to those at the front, especially, but her main focus was the hospitals she'd set up near her home at Tsarskoe Selo. She and her two elder daughters had trained as nurses and spent much of the war serving in that capacity, both in the operating room and in the wards; most days they would don their Red Cross nurse's uniforms and walk or drive to the nearby hospitals and report for work.

The Empress's two younger daughters - Maria was sixteen in the Spring of 1915, Anastasia, fourteen - were considered too young for nursing duties. But they had a hospital at Tsarskoe Selo under their patronage, where they would go to visit with the wounded soldiers - many not much older than they - and plays cards and checkers and billiards with them. Both girls were very down-to-earth and became good friends with many of "their" soldiers.

I've seen many photographs of ladies of the Imperial family taken during the war, nursing - wearing their characteristic nun-like Red Cross  uniforms - or visiting with the wounded. The two above caught my attention, though. I've spoken before about how the condition of some of the images of the last Imperial family - faded, stained, torn - often cause a shudder of foreshadowing, informed by what we know of their sad fate. The condition of these two make me wonder about something else, though: who did they belong to? How did they end up in this state? I wonder if either or both of these might have been kept by one of the soldiers in the picture. Only two years later, and for seven decades after, having an image of the Imperial family in one's possession could have been very compromising, even dangerous. The second, especially, looks to have been folded up, the folding causing most of the eventual damage. I have no way of knowing, but I like to think that this was kept, folded up and hidden away, by a soldier that the two young girls were friends with. A small, potent memory of his youth. When he had somehow managed to survive the wretched, filthy war. Was safe, in clean sheets, getting better each day. Looking forward to a game of cards with one of the Grand Duchesses. A kind and funny, pretty young girl. A girl like any young girl. His friend.

From my personal collection. By the size and texture of the paper, this looks to be from a journal printed during the war.

Princess Beatrice, portrait by von Angeli, 1875

Princess Beatrice was eighteen the year Baron von Angeli - her mother Queen Victoria's favorite portrait painter at the time - completed this portrait. Victoria and Albert's youngest child, she is seen here in the bloom of youth; it would be a full decade before her mother would very grudgingly allow her to wed and have a family of her own.

There is some alteration to the color of the paint surface and/or varnish with this painting. Most likely some sort of instability in the paint or medium; several of von Angeli's have a similar discoloration. It's interesting to compare the lithograph below, by Carl Feederle (1832-81), with the original. It has a completely convincing rectangular format, including more of the Princess' wrap and a balustrade. But the original was almost certainly always an oval. Queen Victoria commissioned portraits of all her daughters when they were aged from about seventeen to nineteen years old. (The others are by Winterhalter, who had passed away by the time Beatrice's came due.) Each of the paintings has an oval format, and a frame that matches the one seen here.