Quelques jeunes hommes, rien de plus - photographs by Zeb Daemen

 

These first two images are portraits of the wonderful Turkish actor, Boran Kuzum.

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Zeb Daemen (born 1988), Belgian photographer and film director, primarily based out of Antwerp.

His website. 

Chez Geoffrin - two paintings and two drawings of madame Geoffrin at home, by Hubert Robert, 1771

 

Madame Geoffrin (Marie Thérèse Geoffrin, née Rodet; 26 June 1699, Paris - 6 October 1777, Paris) was the host of a celebrated Salon - her bureaux d’esprit, as she called them - and is remembered as one of the leading female figures in the French Enlightenment. From 1750 to 1777, in her townhouse at what is now 374 rue Saint-Honoré, Madame Geoffrin received many of the most influential Philosophes and Encyclopédistes and the finest artists of her time. 

Un Artiste présente un portrait à Madame Geoffrin.

The reception was simple and unpretentious, but it was precisely this simplicity that allowed lively conversation to flourish, and which made it such a draw for the salon's habitués and those who clambered to be as such. Her dinners were held twice weekly. At first her invitations were extended to scholars who would gather every Wednesday. But later she welcomed artists on Mondays, which was seen as a novelty in the milieu of the Salon.

Le Déjeuner de Madame Geoffrin.

In 1771, Madame Geoffrin commissioned Hubert Robert to paint these two pictures depicting her in her home. The artist portrays a version of the salonnière faithful to the image preserved by posterity. She is simply dressed in a gray-blue gown and hair cap. In one scene, Madame Geoffrin listens to a reading by her servant; in the other, she examines a painting being presented to her.

Her home was adorned with the work of artists who frequented her Mondays, and visitors to her home often placed commissions with those artists - the likes of Van Loo, Greuze, Vernet, Vien, and others - whose works were displayed on her walls. There has been much debate as to whether the man standing at the easel in the second painting is the artist himself, perhaps including himself as some attempt to demonstrate a familiarity with such an influential figure. But this is mere conjecture. At any rate, these two paintings would be the last commissions Madame Geoffrin placed with any artist.

It should be noted that Robert indulged in some artistic license when depicting these interiors, including artworks that do not appear in Madame Geoffrin’s inventories, editing out others that did, while other works appear likely to have been pure invention.

Drawing Lawrence - portraits of T. E. Lawrence, 1918-1934

 

Eric Kennington, 1921.

Augustus John, 1923.

Colin Unwin Gill, 1922.

Augustus John, 1919.

William Rothenstein, 1920.

Frederick Carter, 1934.

Augustus John, 1919.

Augustus John, 1919.

James McBey, 1918.

Augustus John, 1929.

Playing dress up - "Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball" by William Etty, 1835

 

Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball, also known as The Misses Williams-Wynn, is a portrait of Charlotte and Mary Williams-Wynn, commissioned in 1833 by their father, the Welsh Conservative politician Charles Watkin Williams-Wynn. Generally well received when first exhibited at the 1835 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, it proved successful in gaining the William Etty - until then known almost exclusively for history paintings and for historical and mythologically-themed subjects, most frequently containing nude figures - further portrait commissions.

Charlotte (16 January 1807 - 26 April 1869), shown standing, never married and is remembered as a letter-writer and diarist. Mary (2 March 1808 [?] - 21 April 1869) had married Member of Parliament James Milnes Gaskell in 1832 - so she was no longer a "Miss Williams-Wynn", as the alternative title asserts - and the couple would have four children; the Vogue editor Anna Wintour is one of their descendants. The sisters died within five days of each other in 1869, and the painting was inherited by Mary's family. 

After its initial appearance at the Royal Academy in 1835 and a retrospective exhibition of Etty's work in 1849, the painting was not shown publicly for one-hundred and sixty years. In 1982, a private collector purchased the piece from Mary Williams-Wynn's great-granddaughter. It remained in that collection until its 2009 acquisition by the York Art Gallery - York being the place of the artist's birth - where it forms part of a major collection of Etty's work.