Gods and Foolish Grandeur

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

One bust, not two, then none - multiple views of Charles I and Henrietta Maria by van Dyck

By the middle of the 1630s the great Italian sculptor and architect Gianlorenzo Bernini was at the height of his powers, his name known throughout Europe, already recognized as the greatest sculptor of his time; he was what we'd now call an "art superstar". The current King of England, Charles I, could think of no one better to immortalize his royal image in marble. And so he commissioned a portrait bust, writing to Bernini that the artist's name was "exalted above those of all men of talent who have exercised your profession." Since the king had no intention of traveling to Rome, and the sculptor wouldn't come to England, Charles had his court painter van Dyck paint a now-famous triple portrait of the king that Bernini would work from to capture his subject's likeness.

Van Dyck's triple portrait of Charles I is dated circa 1635-36.

The painting was delivered to Rome in 1636. The marble bust was soon completed and was very well received on its arrival at the English court; Charles would pay the sculptor quite lavishly for the commission.The portrait was so admired that plans were made for the queen to be portrayed by Bernini as well. Toward the same purpose, van Dyck painted three views of Henrietta Maria, though on three separate canvases. As it turned out, the English Civil War intervened and the second bust was never begun.

The Queen's portraits are dated 1638; the full-face view and the left-facing profile are in the Royal Collection.

The right-facing profile view is in the Memphis Brooks Museum in Memphis, Tennessee.

The King's bust would have a fate as unfortunate as its subject's. Sold off after the fall of the monarchy, it was returned to the Royal Collection at the Restoration, only to be destroyed in a fire at Whitehall Palace in January of 1698. There were copies believed made of Bernini's original, but those still existing and thus attributed are of differing design and some appear to have been made sometime after the destruction of the original.

One of the busts traditionally believed to be a copy after Bernini. Attributed to Jan Blommendael, circa 1700.

Another bust thought to be after Bernini. The sculptor is unknown, but it has been suggested that it is John Bushnell. Circa 1675.

Saturday, January 9, 2016

Karsavina and Nijinsky - portraits in costume by Jacques-Émile Blanche

Tamara Karsavina in the costume worn as the title role in The Firebird (L'Oiseau de feu), 1910.

Bakst's original design for the role of the Firebird, 1910.

Four studio portraits of Karsavina in the role of the Firebird.

Vaslav Nijinsky in costume for la danse siamoise from Les Orientales, 1910. The costume is also by Bakst.

Two sketches of Nijinsky by Blanche.

Nijinsky posing in the painter's studio, photographed by Blanche.

Four photographs by Eugène Druet, taken in Blanche's garden in Passy.

***

Jacques-Émile Blanche (1 January 1861, Paris – 20 September 1942, Offranville), French painter. The son of a successful and fashionable Parisian psychiatrist, he was brought up in the affluent Passy neighborhood in a house that had once belonged to the Princesse de Lamballe. The product of a cultured upbringing, he became a well-known figure in artistic and society circles. Although he received some instruction from the decidedly second-rate artists Henri Gervex and Ferdinand Humbert, he can be considered, for all intents and purposes, self-taught as a painter. But he became a very popular and prolific portrait painter, and showed very successfully in both France and England, winning important prizes; he was eventually to be made a Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur. He had strong connections with England and English society, and was a prominent figure in the Arts community there as well.

With his wide-ranging artistic and literary connections he came to portray most of the important artists and writers of his day, and his best-known works are dashing portraits of those in that milieu. He could count Degas and Whistler, Beardsley and Sargent, Proust, Henry James, Gide, and Cocteau among his friends; as with several of those just mentioned, many of his intimates were homosexual, though I've yet to read anything that infers that he was, himself. He became a respected art critic and was a great supporter of the new avant-garde movements - like Cubism and Surrealism - that sprung up during his later years. He was also the author of two volumes of reminiscences considered, at best, "unreliable". He spent much time at his home in Offranville, near Dieppe in Normandy, where he would die during World War II at the age of eighty-one.

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Moonlight and the sea - woodblock prints by Yoshimune Arai II

Fishing at Night.

These prints are the work of Yoshimune Arai II (1873 - 1945). Sadly, I've been able to find nothing else about this artist. But I love these poetic nighttime scenes, truly deserving of the romantic term nocturne. And I also find it interesting to compare the different individual prints pulled from the same carvings - though, in at least one instance here, it looks like a new block or blocks were carved. I find the slight - sometimes nearly undetectable - variations in color and saturation and detail so interesting. (Some of the color variation is due to photographic reproduction, of course.) The prints shown here are circa 1910s - 1930s.