Frammenti / Fragments - two still-lifes by Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo

 

Natura morta - I gessi dell'atelier, 1939.

Natura morta - I gessi dell'atelier, 1940.

Arrangements of plaster casts and other items in the artist's studio. Both in the collection of the Palazzo Fortuny, Venice.

How do you say "Yas, queen!" in Turkish...? - presenting Zeki Müren

 

Zeki Müren (6 December 1931, Bursa - 24 September 1996, İzmir), Turkish singer, composer, songwriter, actor, and poet. Known by the nicknames "The Sun of Art" and "Pasha", he was one of the most prominent figures of Turkish classical music. In 1955, he was the first singer to receive a gold certification in Turkey and throughout his career released hundreds of recordings. For his artistic contributions to the nation, he was named a "State Artist" in 1991.

Born the only child of a timber merchant, he attended Bursa Osmangazi School (later Tophane School and Alkıncı School) where his musical ability was discovered by his teachers and he began to play a prominent role in school musicals. When he finished secondary school in Bursa, his father allowed him to go to Istanbul, where he attended the Istanbul Boğaziçi High School. After finishing at the top of his class, he was enrolled at the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts (now Mimar Sinan University) where he studied the decorative arts from 1950 to 1953.

In 1950, aged nineteen, while still at university, he participated in a TRT Istanbul Radio music competition and took first place out of 186 contestants. On 1 January 1951, he gave his first live performance on Istanbul Radio, which received much critical praise, and that same year he recorded his first record. He made his first film appearance two years later, and gave his first live concert on 26 May 1955. 

After the success of his first live performance and first record, he began performing regularly on Turkish radio. His various programs continued on the air for fifteen years, most of then including live performances. He subsequently focused on concerts and recording. As his career progressed, he began to be known for the increasing uniqueness of his onstage wardrobe. Most, if not all, of it was self-designed, becoming more outrageous as time went on. 

From 1953 to 1975 he appeared in eighteen films, usually as himself. In 1965, he played the leading role in the play "Tea and Sempati" and, in 1976, he became the first Turkish artist to perform at London's Royal Albert Hall. In 1965, he published a book of poetry titled Bıldırcın Yağmuru (The Quail Rain), which contains nearly one hundred poems.

Five album covers.

He never commented on his sexual orientation. But because of his rather effete mannerisms, and his performance attire, hair and make-up - more and more "feminine" as his career progressed - it was generally assumed that he was gay.

During the last six years of his life, he was mostly out of the public eye due to heart disease and diabetes, having retired to his house in Bodrum. And in 1996, during a ceremony held for him at TRT İzmir Television, he had a heart attack and died at the age of sixty-four. After his funeral ceremony, attended by great crowds of mourners, his body was taken to his birth place, Bursa, and buried in Emirsultan Cemetery. 

In his will, he left all of his assets to two educational foundations. Together, they opened the Zeki Müren Fine Arts Anatolian High School in Bursa in 2002, and the Zeki Müren Scholarship Fund has helped thousands of students since his death. His birthday, 6 December, has been celebrated as the Turkish Art Music Day since 2012.

Le goût d'une jeune fille pour la musique - a portrait by Adèle Romany, 1802

 

Portrait d’une jeune personne près d’un piano, tenant un cahier de musique, ou Mlle Thevenet de Montgarrel, future Mme Gillet Ducoudray
Portrait of a Young Person at a Piano Holding a Music Score, or Mlle Thevenet de Montgarrel, the future Mme Gillet Ducoudray

The model’s identity is easily confirmed by the painting's provenance; until being sold in 2020, the portrait had remained in the same family for two-hundred and eighteen years, from its creation in 1802. The young music lover is Alexandrine-Florence-Virginie-Casimire Thevenet de Montgarrel (? - 1827). Her parents were Joseph Thevenet, senior employee at the royal and imperial lottery of France, and Thérèse Félicité Ledoux. On 22 June 1805, at Notre-Dame de Lorette in Paris, she married Amédée-Madeleine-Charles Gillet Ducoudray (1778-1829), the private secretary and future cabinet advisor of Louis Bonaparte king of Holland. The couple would have five children: Louis Eugène Napoléon, Alexandre Eugène, Euphrosine Virginie (ancestress of the painting's former owners), Alexandrine Laeticia, and Alexandre Joseph Amédée.

The charming young lady in the portrait, dressed and jeweled in the height of French Consulate fashion, was undoubtedly an amateur musician, surrounded as she is by music scores, seated in front of her fortepiano made by Sébastien Érard. On the music rack sits Antonio Sacchini's three-act lyric tragedy Œdipe à la colonne. On the left is the score of L’Ariodant, a drama in three parts and in prose by François-Benoît Hoffman, with music by Étienne Nicolas Méhul. 

And in Mlle Thevenet's lap, the score to L'Amour filial, an opera in one act, text by Charles-Albert Demoustier, music by Pierre Gavaux. In a possible tribute to her father, who likely commissioned the painting, she appears to point to the lines that read: 

« Moi, chaque matin, je reçois

Le premier baiser de mon père »

After being retained by the sitter's family from the date of its creation, the portrait was sold by the Drouot auction house in 2020 for € 41,800.

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Adèle Romany (7 December 1769 - 6 June 1846, Paris), French painter known for miniatures and portraits, especially those of people involved in the performing arts. Born Marie-Jeanne Mercier, the illegitimate child of the marquis Godefroy de Romance, former captain of the guards, she was legitimized at the age of nine. Little is known of her artistic training, but she later stated that she trained in the studio for female artists directed by the wife of Jean-Baptiste Regnault. In 1790 she married the miniature painter François Antoine Romany, but they divorced only three years later. In that same year she exhibited for the first time at the Paris Salon, the French Revolution having given women artists better access and more opportunities within the art establishment. This was also the year she changed her first name to Adèle and, in future, her paintings were signed with several variations consisting of her maiden and married names: la Citoyenne Adèle dit Romany; Adèle Romany née Romance; Mme Adèle de Romance; Adèle Romance dit Romany; Mme Adèle Romany Deromance; Mme Romany-de-Romance. Typically, though, she exhibited work at the Paris Salon from 1793 to 1808 under the name Romany, but from 1808 to 1833 under the name Romanée. In 1808, she was awarded a gold medal of the jury. She died in Paris, aged seventy-six.

Unlikeliest song-and-dance man - Clark Gable and company, Idiot's Delight, 1939

 

Clark Gable, Virginia Grey, Paula Stone, Virginia Dale, Bernadene Hayes, Joan Marsh, and Lorraine Krueger.

Idiot's Delight, from Hollywood's "golden year" of 1939, was made at MGM with a screenplay by Robert E. Sherwood, adapted from his own 1936 Pulitzer-Prize-winning play of the same name. The production reunited director Clarence Brown with stars Clark Gable and Norma Shearer; they had worked together on "A Free Soul" eight years before, to great acclaim for all of them. 

The film begins with the backstory of the two leads and then the story continues, twenty years later, at a hotel in the mountains of a fictitious Alpine country. The setting of the original play had been Italy. But with Europe on the brink of World War II, the studio made every attempt to keep from offending Italy and other totalitarian states - the vaguest geographical location, the use of Esperanto in "foreign" dialogue and signage - but the film was banned in those countries nevertheless. Released in January of 1939, it was generally well received, though it still lost money for the studio.

Clark Gable plays Harry Van, a WWI veteran, who, at the beginning of the film, is part of a faltering mindreading act. When we meet him again, he's the manager and headliner of "Les Blondes", a troupe of six chorus girls touring Europe. But perhaps the thing most notable about the film - and the obvious reason for this post - is that it's the only one in which Gable - quite unexpectedly - sings and dances. Along with "Les Blondes" he gives a creditable performance of Irving Berlin's "Puttin' On the Ritz." 

"Les Blondes" were portrayed by actresses Virginia Grey as Shirley, Lorraine Krueger as BeBe, Joan Marsh as Elaine, Virginia Dale as Francine, Paula Stone as Beulah, and Bernadene Hayes as Edna. I can't say that I know all that much about any of them, though I recognize (a no longer blonde) Virginia Dale as one of the leading ladies of "Holiday Inn." But I'm most familiar with Virginia Grey, who went on to a long career in film and television, and the same year appeared as Joan Crawford's wise-acre co-worker at the perfume counter in "The Women." (She also had a lengthy romance with Gable after the death of Carole Lombard and the end of the war.)

It's said that Gable - whose very next role would be Rhett Butler - spent six weeks rehearsing the number with dance director George King, as well as practicing at home with his soon-to-be-wife, Carole Lombard. Because of his nervousness, on the day of shooting the set was closed during the filming of the sequence. But then, apparently, the number was accomplished in only one take.

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Director Clarence Brown makes a rather uneasy looking addition to the line-up.

Gable and "Les Blondes" on the move on the studio lot. (See my post of July 21 for more of this specific sort of publicity photograph.)

Two lobby cards for the film.

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You can also see a few portraits taken of Gable and Shearer for the film in an old post here.