Philip de László, portraits of his five sons

Henry Guinness de László (1901-1967)

1915.

Circa 1906.

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Stephen Philip de László (1904-1939) 

(He died at thirty-five of injuries from a car accident.)

1912.

In Spanish costume, 1919.

In Spanish costume, 1919.

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Paul Leonardo de László (1906-1983)

As a young Bacchus, 1911.

1910.

1916.

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Patrick David de László (1909-1980)

1918.

1919.

1932.

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John Adolphus de László (1912-1990)

"The Temptation", 1919.

1918.

1917.

Nathaniel Olds, by Jeptha Homer Wade, 1837

Wade painted Nathaniel Olds and his wife, Sarah Avery Olds, in 1837. Nathaniel wears the green-tinted glasses - for which his portrait, in the Cleveland Museum of Art, is so well known - apparently to protect his eyes from the extremely bright light of whale oil lamps, thought at the time to be harmful to one's eyesight.  Sadly, I've not been able to find any information about the sitters.

Wade's portrait of Mrs. Olds is certainly the less successful of the two, perhaps hinting that the dash of its pendant was just a charming fluke, and that the artist's subsequent change of profession was not ill-advised.

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Jeptha Homer Wade (11 August 1811, Romulus, New York – 9 August 1890, Cleveland), American industrialist, philanthropist, and one of the founding members of Western Union Telegraph. He made the first Daguerreotypes west of New York, and was a portrait painter in his youth, before moving to Michigan in 1840 and developing an interest in the telegraph. He later used his great wealth to benefit his adopted home city of Cleveland.

Owe Zerge - selected paintings, circa 1919-1948

I hesitate to post these images because of the "questionable" subject matter. The question, of course, is what was the artist's intent in these images of young boys, often nude? And in art, generally, when does the depiction of youthful beauty cross the line and become something else? At what point does the non-graphic nude depiction of a child become exploitive? How old does a young person have to be before they are "safe" to portray naked: physically mature or emotionally mature or statutorily mature? Is the nude figure in contemporary art inherently a sexual object, or does the relative age of the sitter influence that perception? In an era that is over-sexualized, in general - in both the Arts and in our culture - how do we make these sometimes subtle distinctions?

Owe Zerge (1894, Oppmanna - 1983, Kristianstad), Swedish painter. Between 1914 and 1915 he studied at the Althin Målarskola in Stockholm, and then enrolled at the Royal Swedish Academy of Art, where he remained until 1919. The following year he traveled in France and Italy, and he won an honorable mention at the Paris Salon of 1921. By the late Twenties he had settled near his birthplace, building a studio in the village of Arkelstorp, near Kristianstad. He painted a wide variety of subject matter - it appears he made the majority of his livelihood with portraiture - but his paintings and drawings of boys are a large part of his oeuvre.

Cupid Chastised, by Bartolomeo Manfredi, 1613

Bartolomeo Manfredi (25 August 1582 [baptised], Ostiano – 12 December 1622), Italian painter, a leading member of the Caravaggisti of the early 17th century.

Isaac Levitan

Evening Bells, 1892.

Isaac Ilyich Levitan (30 August 1860, Wirballen – 22 July 1900, Moscow), considered by many the greatest Russian landscape painter.  He was born in a shtetl in Lithuania to a poor but educated family.  When he was ten, his family moved to Moscow where, in 1873, he entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.  His mother died two years later, and his father became very ill, dying soon after.  The family descended into extreme poverty and he was expelled from school for inability to pay but, eventually, Levitan was given a scholarship in recognition of his prodigious artistic abilities.  When he was seventeen, his works were exhibited for the first time.  He received good notices in the press, and in the following years became increasingly successful, prolific and much celebrated.

Moon at Twilight, 1899.

Birch Forest, 1885-1889.

Much of his best known work has been described as being "the landscape of mood", in which nature is somehow spiritualized, and seems to reflect aspects of the human soul, a type of landscape painting that could only be Russian.  His work is a perfect example of a crisp, Impressionist-influenced realism, which still manages to be inherently and profoundly poetic; perhaps it comes as little surprise that Anton Chekhov was his closest friend. 

The Evening After the Rain, 1879.

Vladimirka Road, 1892.

Moonlit Night, Highway, 1897-98.

He had been ill for some time, and in 1897 Levitan was diagnosed with degenerative heart disease, possibly as a result of the lingering effects of the abject poverty of his youth.  He died three years later at the age of thirty-nine.

Autumn.

Water Lilies, 1895.

A Train on its Journey.

The Quiet Abode, 1890.

By the Deep Waters, 1892.

Princess Thyra of Denmark

Miniature by Johannes Zehngraf (1857-1908).  Circa 1900-10.

Princess Thyra of Denmark (29 September 1853, Copenhagen – 26 February 1933, Gmunden), born Thyra Amelie Caroline Charlotte Anne, the youngest daughter of Christian IX of Denmark and Louise of Hesse-Kassel. Quiet and gentle, she had neither the great beauty of her eldest sister, Alexandra, Princess of Wales, nor the great charm of her other sister, the future Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia. But her mother still hoped for a marriage nearly as impressive as her first two daughters' had - rather unexpectedly - been.

1864.

1869.

With her sisters, Dagmar (Minnie), then Tsarevna Maria Feodorovna of Russia, and Alexandra, then Princess of Wales.  Circa late 1860s.

But at the age of eighteen Thyra fell in love with a lieutenant in the Cavalry, Vilhelm Frimann Marcher, and became pregnant. Because of Thyra's station, marriage was never considered. Instead, the young girl went with her mother to visit family in Greece, where her brother was king. Her extended stay there was then explained by false reports that she had taken ill. As "official " news gave out that her condition had worsened, her father and younger brother joined her and her mother. At the end of 1871, she gave birth to a daughter. Only a few months later, in January of 1872, the baby's father hung himself. (The circumstances of his suicide are unclear, and it is further unknown whether Thyra ever knew of his death.) Because of the princess' depression, she lingered in Greece until March. And then, on her way home she became actually ill, with typhoid, and didn't reach Denmark until June.  Her little girl was adopted by a Danish couple; it isn't known if Thyra ever had any further contact with the child.

Circa 1870.

Circa 1870.

1870s.  (I haven't been able to identify the artist.)

For the next several years she lived quietly and gave little or no thought to marriage but her mother eventually resumed the search for a suitable husband. In 1878 she married Ernst August, 3rd Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale, the exiled heir to the Kingdom of Hanover. As the Kingdom of Hanover had been annexed by Prussia in 1866, and since the relations between Denmark and Prussia had long been very tense, the match was controversial. But the couple was happy and had six children. (Ironically, their youngest child, Ernst August, married the only daughter of the Kaiser, bringing about a partial rapprochement between the Hanover family and the Hohenzollerns.)

Circa 1886.

With members of her extended family - Danish, British, Russian - at Bernstorff, 1892.  Thyra is at center, in the light colored suit.

Circa 1900.

Two of their sons died young, and Thyra had frequent bouts of depression - and perhaps more than one breakdown. But the gatherings of her Danish family - always very close - were a frequent and pleasant diversion, and the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland were comfortable in their exile in Austria. Her husband died in 1923, and Thyra lived another ten years, passing away at the age of seventy-nine.

Circa 1913.