Olga, Elizabeth, Marina - three princesses of Greece and Denmark, photographed by Bertram Park, circa 1938

 

This trio of impossibly chic sisters, "style icons" of the mid-Thirties, were the daughters and only children of Prince and Princess Nicholas of Greece and Denmark, the former the third son of George I, King of the Hellenes, and the latter, née Grand Duchess Elena, the daughter of Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia and his formidable wife, Maria Pavlovna.

Left to right: Marina, Elizabeth, Olga.

Olga (11 June 1903 – 16 October 1997), Princess Paul of Yugoslavia, wife of Prince Paul, Regent of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

Elizabeth (24 May 1904 – 11 January 1955), Countess of Törring-Jettenbach, wife of Karl Theodor, Count of Törring-Jettenbach.

Marina (13 December 1906 – 27 August 1968), Duchess of Kent, wife of Prince George, Duke of Kent, fourth son of George V.

The uncropped original of the above, the intended crop marks visible.

Another uncropped original, with crop marks and retouching - in the lamp at top - visible.

Marina, Duchess of Kent.

Princess Paul of Yugoslavia. (Two images.)

I'm more than a bit frustrated that I've not been able to find more and larger images from this "hatted" series of the sisters. I know they exist; I've seen them.

The Countess of Törring-Jettenbach.

The Duchess of Kent.

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Bertram Charles Percival Park (1883, Minster, Kent – 1972, Pinner, Middlesex), English portrait photographer. Engravings of his photographs were widely used on British and British Commonwealth postage stamps, currency, and other official documents in the 1930s. He initially worked in the family firm which made artist's materials. He married the photographer Yvonne Gregory in 1916 and three years later, joined by Marcus Adams, they established studios in London; sharing darkroom staff and facilities, they were known as the "Three Photographers". The majority of his sitters consisted of British and European royalty, society and theatrical figures. Outside of photography he was an expert on the cultivation of roses, about which he wrote several books. He was also a police commander for more than a decade.

In the medina - Moroccan portraits by Josep Tapiró i Baró

 

I've not included titles and dates on any of these as what information I've been able to gather is incomplete, confused, contradictory, unreliable, unexplainable, untranslatable, or just completely elusive. So I'm going to choke down my pedantic compulsions this go 'round; I expect the unattributed beauty of these exquisite watercolors will more than suffice.

This appears to be unfinished.

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Josep Tapiró i Baró (17 February 1836, Reus, Catalonia – 4 October 1913, Tangier, Morocco), Catalan painter; best known for his watercolor portraits from Morocco. The son of parents who owned a hardware store, he displayed an early talent for drawing, and his first formal studies began at the age of thirteen with a local wine merchant and amateur painter. In 1853, at the age of seventeen, he and his close friend and fellow student, Marià Fortuny, exhibit their work at the Casino de Reus, and later that year, the pair enrolled at the Escola de la Llotja in Barcelona. At this time, the young artist produced mostly historical and religious scenes. In 1857 he, Fortuny, and two others were given the opportunity to compete for a grant to study in Rome. Fortuny was chosen for the award, while Tapiró moved to Madrid and enrolled at the Escuela Superior de Pintura y Grabado where he studied with Federico de Madrazo. In 1862, he joined Fortuny in Rome and was introduced to his circle of artistic acquaintances. They also visited Naples and Florence together. While there, he took evening classes to learn how to paint watercolors and his works began to focus more on genre themes. These works became very popular and established his reputation. 

In 1871 he, Fortuny, and another artist friend traveled to Tangier, a trip which would prove decisive for his career. Two years later, he held his first showing of Orientalist paintings at the "International Art Circle of Rome". But Fortuny's sudden death the next year affected he deeply, and he decided to leave Rome. Instead of remaining in Spain, in 1876 he settled in Tangier, moving into a newly built home near the medina quarter and later acquiring an old theater to serve as his studio. Although he frequently travelled to exhibitions - as far afield as St. Petersburg and New York - and spent the summers with his family in Reus, he would live in Tangier for the rest of his life. In 1886, he married twenty-year-old Maria Manuela Valerega Cano, a Tangier native of Italian ancestry, thirty years his junior. Shortly after, a friend of his wife's died and they adopted her orphaned son. 

Later in life, he began having respiratory and cardiovascular problems due to a lung infection he had contracted in 1903. He often did not have sufficient energy for work, and traveling also became very difficult. The financial situation was aggravated as well by a sharp decrease in the number of foreign visitors and tourists caused by political upheaval in the region. In 1907, he and his wife rented a house in Madrid in an effort to promote his work at an exhibition of the Círculo de Bellas Artes. His health problems eventually led to his death six years later at the age of seventy-seven. Initially, he was buried in Tangier but, in 1921, the government of Reus demanded that his body be brought back to his place of birth. Only twenty-six years later, in 1947, his remains were finally returned to Reus and reinterred near his friend Fortuny. 

I couldn't find a larger version of this, but I thought it was too beautiful not to include.

White for a bride - the wedding dress of Svea Beata Myhrman, worn 19 August 1854

 

This sublime creation was worn by Svea Beata Myhrman (19 August 1819, Filipstad - 11 March 1910, Stockholm) on her wedding day, the nineteenth of August, 1854. That day also happened to be her thirty-fifth birthday, thirty-five being considered, for the time, exceedingly mature for a new bride. Her new husband was Gustaf Myhrman (30 January 1816, Stockholm - 30 September 1872), a brukspatron and notarie (millowner and notary). They would have three children. The first, Gustaf Johan Götrik Myhrman, was born a year after the couple's marriage but would die in his third year. Their second, Signe Beata Myhrman, was born 31 July 1857. I've found no record of her death date, but she would go on to be a folkskollärarinna (primary school teacher). Their third child and second son, Yngve Götrik Myhrman, was born the following year. A bokhållare - bookkeeper - he died in 1887 at the age of only twenty-eight or twenty-nine. The children's mother outlived her husband by almost forty years and died in Stockholm at the age of ninety.

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The "care and feeding" of an antique garment.

Images courtesy of the Nordiska Museet.

Half a circle and a window - the fresco of Vertumnus and Pomona by Jacopo Pontormo at Poggio a Caiano, circa 1519-21

 

The country villa of Poggio a Caiano is located in the comune of the same name in Tuscany. Also called Ambra, it is one of the most famous Medici villas and perhaps the best example of architecture commissioned by Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici, il Magnifico. The villa, located in the middle of a hilltop at the foot of the Montalbano mountains, was designed by Giuliano da Sangallo. Construction began in 1485, with work continuing for decades, long past the deaths of Lorenzo de' Medici and his architect. And its decoration, adaptations, restorations would continue for centuries. Today, state owned, it remains a priceless record of Renaissance art and architecture.

The salone. 

The decoration of the salone was only begun after 1513, in the time of Lorenzo's son Giovanni, by then Pope Leo X. The frescoes were created by the greatest Florentine masters of the time; along with Pontormo, they included Andrea del Sarto and Franciabigio. (They were finally completed some fifty years later by Alessandro Allori.) Pontormo's lunette has traditionally been described as representing the classical myth of Vertumnus and Pomona, a tale taken from Ovid's Metamorphosis. The identification goes back to Vasari, who reported that Pontormo was asked to depict Vertumnus along with other figures. But Vasari's text does not give an actual description of the work. So it's possible that the fresco tells a different story; one theory is that it's a portrayal of Bacchus and Ceres with personifications of the Four Seasons.