Dark boys - three tenebrous portraits

 

Portrait de jeune homme à col ouvert, portrait of Eugène Delacroix, by Théodore Géricault, circa 1816-17. *

Ragazzo con gli orecchini, by Juana Romani, circa 1890.

Reynold Arnould, by Jacques-Émile Blanche, 1933. The young artist Arnould was fourteen at the time of this portrait.

*

* Long attributed to Géricault, recent scholarship tends to reattribute it to Delacroix as a youthful self-portrait.

 

"... Something nice with swans" - visions of Leda and her avian friend

 

(Note: This post, its title taken from my beloved "Sunday in the Park with George", was finished and scheduled well before Sondheim's death... a strange and poignant coincidence.)

Heinrich Lossow, before 1897.

...And often not so nice. Leda's coupling with that randy Zeus - this go 'round disguised as an elegant but aggressive water fowl - is one of mythology's many weird and decidedly icky stories. Right from the very beginning, though, artists have been inspired to retell the scandalous tale; countless interpretations of the story exist. Many of them are quite graphic, the story itself being a ready excuse. Told in paint and stone and metal. With Ledas tender and confused, ecstatic and traumatized. This is just a tiny selection.

Odilon Redon, 1910.

Unknown artist, third century AD.

Veronese, circa 1585.

Leonardo da Vinci, circa 1506.

Paul Cézanne, circa 1880.

Théodore Géricault, circa 1817.

Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, circa 1870.

Arturo Michelena, 1887.

François Lemoyne, before 1737.

Francisco Viera Portuense, circa 1800.

Copy of a lost painting by Michelangelo, after 1530.

Peter Paul Rubens - obviously based on the same lost Michelangelo - before 1600.

Paul Mathias Padua, 1939.

Attributed to Gillis Coignet, circa 1592-99. (Unrestored and restored.)

Franz Russ the Younger, circa second half of the nineteenth century.

François Boucher, 1742.

Léon François Comerre, 1908.

Étienne-Maurice Falconet, circa 1764-66.

Gianbettino Cignaroli, circa second quarter of the eighteenth century.

Lelio Orsi, circa 1560.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1895.

Hans Zatzka, before 1945.

Correggio, circa 1530-31.

Louis Frederick Grell, 1937.

 François-Édouard Picot, 1832.

Antoine Coypel, before 1722.

Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller, 1783.

Georg Pencz, circa first half of the sixteenth century.

Louis Icart, 1934.

Cesare da Sesto, after Leonardo da Vinci, circa 1515.

 Francesco d'Ubertino Verdi, called Bachiacca, circa 1518-20.

Henri Paul Motte, 1900.

William Shackleton, 1928.

Unknown artist, circa third or fourth century AD.

Adolf Erbslöh, 1909.

Wilfred Gabriel de Glehn, circa first half of the twentieth century. 

*

Perhaps understandable considering the subject matter - ? - this appears to have a subject only rarely taken up by women artists. Marie Laurencin - whose work I don't honestly care for - painted a handful of Ledas; sadly, hers were actually the only examples by a female hand that I could find.

Marie Laurencin, 1923.

Randomly XVII

 A charcoal burner of the Transatlantic Company of Fort-de-France, Martinique, circa 1900.

Portrait of madame Larmoyer, by Antoine Vestier, 1804.

Courtesy Stephen Rutledge.

 In Poppyland, by John Ottis Adams, 1901.

Courtesy "Andre Duveen."

Caricature of Joan Crawford on the cover of Cinearte, February 1936.

 The Farmer in the Artist’s Studio, by Heinrich von Rustige, circa 1839.

Portrait of the Danish Naval officer Louis de Coninck, by Friedrich Carl Gröger, circa first quarter of the nineteenth century.

Self-portrait, by Salomon Adler, circa second half of the seventeenth century.

 Self-portrait, by Judith Leyster, circa 1630.

The Allegory of Painting, by Gerrit van Honthorst, 1648.

Wrestling Match, by Michiel Sweerts, 1649.

Fighting Putti, by Guido Reni, 1625.

"Joe Stecher demonstrates head scissors", 1918.

Semele and Jupiter, by Paolo Pagani, circa 1693.

 Portrait of Federico II Gonzaga, by Titian, circa 1529.

 Bust of Caracalla, Italian, nineteenth century.

Courtesy Ralf De Jonge.

Capt. William T. Shorey and his wife Julia Shelton, with their daughters Zenobia and Victoria, circa 1910.

La Familia Basabe, Julio Romero de Torres, 1919. 

Nature morte aux citrons, by François-Emile Barraud, 1921.

Atalanta’s Eclipse, by Charles Meere, 1938.

Courtesy Stephen Rutledge.

Portrait of Luiza Pesjak, by Mihael Stroj, 1855.

Netherlandish artist, active in England, circa 1600.

Bildnis eines jungen Mannes, by Auguste Alexius Canzi, 1832.

Miškinė in Lithuania, by Petras Kalpokas, 1945.

Josefa del Águila y Ceballos Alvarado y Álvarez de Faria, wife of José de Narváez Porcel, II vizconde de Aliatar, by Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz, 1852.

The Blacksmith, by Frank Leyendecker, 1922 (?).

Academic male nude, by Théodore Géricault, circa first quarter of the nineteenth century.

 The Annunciation  to the Shepherds, attributed to Théodore Gericault, circa first quarter of the nineteenth century.

Charles Ferdinand d'Artois, duc de Berry, en uniforme de la cavalerie noble de l'Armée de Condé pendant son exil à Edimbourg, by Henri-Pierre Danloux, 1796.

The comtesse de Castiglione, by Pierre-Louis Pierson, circa 1865. (Two images.)

Amity, by Bernard Fleetwood-Walker, 1933.

Venus and Adonis, by Arthur Kampf, 1939.

Courtesy Ralf De Jonge.

 Blue Landscape, by Stefan Popescu, 1913.

Cain Killing Abel, by Bartolomeo Manfredi, circa 1610.

Cain and Abel, by Svend Rathsack, 1910.

Three window dressers, by John Rutherford Boyd, circa 1930s.

Portrait of Laura Colton Chapin, by William Sidney Mount, 1833.

Columbia Varsity Eight at the Poughkeepsie Boathouse, 1910.

Courtesy Stephen Rutledge.

Antoine Philippe de La Trémoille, Prince de Talmont, by Léon Cogniet, copy after Guérin, commissioned by Charles X in 1826.

Sweden, 1943.

"Mrs. Hugh J. Chisholm Jr. (Bridget Bate Tichenor) in a coat of red and black broadcloth, red silk jersey dress. From Nicole de Paris.”, by Horst P. Horst, 1939.

Courtesy Paul Ellis.

Portrait of a Lady, by Konstantin Egorovich Makovsky, 1883.

Daguerreotype portrait of an Iroquois man with hand painted detail, circa 1852.

The guardsman Alexei Yakovlevich Okhotnikov, reputed lover of Empress Elisaveta Alexeievna, unknown artist, before 1807.

The Artist's Wife, by Charles Haigh-Wood, circa 1890s.

Nu masculin de dos, by Edouard Antoine Naudin, 1840.

Unknown title, by Kenne Grégoire, circa 2010.

Ernest Long, marine engineer, arrested for "crossdressing", 1922.

Gamblers, by Pavel Fedotov, 1852.

Portrait of the marquise de Grollier, by Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, 1788.