"Sir, if you'd care to remove your robe...?" - the male art class model

 

Sculptor Antoine Bourdelle and the model for his Héraclès archer, French Army Captain André Doyen-Parigot. (Two images.) 

Among his neighbors - selected photographs by John Alinder

 

1915.

Major Alström’s wife with the owl, 1932.

 Painters Lindgren and Torell, 1919.

Siri Johanson in confirmation attire, 1931.

Ljung’s daughter standing by herself on a chair, 1920.

 Miss Linnea Ekenberg and Emil Johanson, 1919.

Stråle’s dog sitting with eyeglasses, 1922.

Agnes Johansson (right) and friend, circa 1915-20.

Erik Längquist, 1918.

*

John Alinder (22 December 1878, Sävasta, Altuna parish - 12 August 1957, Sävasta, Altuna parish), Swedish photographer. The son of a farmer, he was born in a village in Uppland, a province in eastern central Sweden; he remained in the village all his life. But he chose not to take over his parents’ farm and instead became a self-taught photographer and something of a jack of all trades. He was also a great lover of music, and held the Swedish agency for the British record label and gramophone maker "His Master’s Voice." For some time he ran a country shop from his home, and he apparently even operated a bar for a while. Beginning about 1910 and continuing two decades, he photographed the local people, his neighbors and friends, the surrounding landscape, and their way of life. He portrayed them informally, using the technology available of the time - glass plates - which he then developed in a small darkroom he had built.

Alinder's work came to light in the 1980s when a curator found more than 8,000 of his glass plates languishing in a library basement.

Self-portrait, John Alinder in his garden, circa 1910-20.

A book of a selection of his work has since been published by Dewi Lewis Publishing in Great Britain, available through their website or through Amazon.

All about hairpins - An Interior with a Lady, her Maid, and a Gentleman, by Louis-Rolland Trinquesse, 1776.

 

Adapted and augmented from the 2006 Christie's lot essay:

A petit maître who operated outside the academic establishment during the reign of Louis XVI, Louis-Rolland Trinquesse (circa 1746, Paris? - circa 1800, Paris?) was known for his portraits and genre scenes that drew on the tradition of the tableau de mode. Probably of Burgundian origins, he trained in Paris at the Académie Royale and in The Hague, and exhibited at the Salon de la Correspondance, an independent learned society devoted to the encouragement of the arts and sciences, organized by Pahin de la Blancherie and supported through subscriptions. During his lifetime, Trinquesse earned a respected position as a portraitist, counting among his patrons the vicomtesse de Laval, the governor of Paris, and the duc de Cossé-Brissac, as well as artists, architects, and men of letters. In the nineteenth century, the Goncourt brothers collected Trinquesse's costume drawings, which, today, are probably the artist's most familiar works.

As John Collins observed in his thorough study of the present painting, the work owes much "to the portrayals of intrigues among the fashionable bourgeoisie by the earlier generation of French artists, such as de Troy, Watteau, and Boucher. But rather than being regressive in outlook, Trinquesse's painting anticipates the highly polished 'Metsu Manner' of the genre scenes of Marguerite Gérard and Louis-Léopold Boilly". This intimate grouping of figures in a woman's boudoir draws attention to the presence of the male visitor who might represent a husband or fiancé, but who more likely appears to be, as Collins suggested in the Ottawa exhibition catalogue, a client being entertained by a courtesan at her morning toilette and in the presence of her maid. She listens to his entreaties while undertaking the intricate task of removing pins from a cushion and using them to secure her elaborate headdress. 

Other than the rather démodé wall coverings, the furnishings in the apartment are very up to date, the height of the newly stylish neoclassicism. Of particular note is the athénienne or brûle-parfum - a freestanding incense burner - seen in the right foreground. Apparently, Trinquesse's depiction referenced a popular model, as a very similar athénienne, dated 1775, was auctioned at Sotheby's in 2016. Likewise, a pair that closely resembles this, and which is believed to have at one time been in the possession of the comtesse du Barry, is in the collection of the musée Nissim de Camondo. 

From the Sotheby's auction of 30 June 2016, Paris, Lot 112.