sandr021

Back in 2012 I posted about the interesting (to me) case of a famous artist's son who became an admiral and the son of an important admiral who became a painter. I wrote: "Let's start with Augustus John (1878-1961), best known as a portraitist who sired children by his wife and other women. His second son (by his wife) was Caspar John (1903-1984), who went on to become First Sea Lord (1960-63), attaining the rank of Admiral of the Fleet in 1962. In the Royal Navy, First Sea Lord [was] the highest position that an officer can attain." Caspar John's Wikipedia entry is here . Recently I became aware that the grandson of Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet (1829-1896) also became a Royal Navy Admiral. Millais was one of the original members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and later went on the become a successful portrait painter and, not long before his death, president of the Royal Academy. "Bubbles," a 1886 painting of a young boy, became famous b

Sergei Kirov (1886-1934) met a curious end, as explained in this Wikipedia entry. He was a prominent Bolshevik, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijani Communist Party and at the time of his assassination head of the Leningrad branch of the Communist Party. Following his death he was treated as something of a martyr to the Communist cause. In post-Stalin USSR a major warship was named after him. Yet, as Wikipedia indicates, for many years there have been strong suspicions that Kirov had been killed by order of Josef Stalin and the assassination was covered up in part by the posthumous honors. A few years later in his great purges, Stalin simply had people snuffed out on the pretext they were traitors. No posthumous honors. Perhaps Stalin had learned something from the Kirov experience or maybe the sheer logistics and justifications of the purges eliminated such honors. When I was in Málaga, Spain in November I visited a branch of Saint Petersburg's excell

Ever since I viewed the painting "A Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach" by Stanhope Forbes (1857-1947) at an exhibit in San Francisco a dozen or more years ago, I've wanted to see it again. (I posted twice regarding Forbes -- here on 14 May 2018 and here on 13 June 2011.) The painting is based at the Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery, not very far from Newlyn in Cornwall, where it was painted. I was on a bus tour of England's West Country recently, and hoped to track it down while passing through Plymouth. Alas, the tour provided no time for that. Not that it mattered, because Plymouth is in the process of consolidated several museums into one structure, and all are closed during the construction. That afternoon the tour bus dropped us off at St. Ives, a flashier arty spot on the north shore than Newlyn on the south shore of the peninsula, about ten miles away by road. I never quite got to Newlyn, but took photos in St. Ives, one of which gives us idea as to how well F

I recently wrote here about British artist/illustrator Frank Wootton (1914-1998) who was skilled at depicting light, shade and reflections on shiny metallic surfaces. Doing this convincingly requires skill and especially experience. Just for fun, below I present some images by Wootton along with a few by Rembrandt who also was no slouch when it came to metal. The Wootton images are photos of details of paintings I saw in the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon, just north of London. Lighting conditions were poor, and protective material affected color and allowed reflections, so keep in mind that what you're viewing is an approximation. Gallery Man with the Golden Helmet - c.1650 (detail) Note how Rembrandt deals with the effect of light on warm gold and cool steel. Man in Armor - 1655 Here he deals with steel.  I'm not sure if the painting has been cleaned and colors are original or if the yellow hue is due to old varnish. Old Man in Military Costume - 1630-31 An earlier pain

Hugh Goldwin Riviere (1869–1956) lived a long life and made a living as a portrait painter in the United Kingdom. The most detail I could find about him during a short Google search is here -- almost nothing there, as you can see. Nevertheless, he painted many portraits, a number of which can be seen here . Note that nearly all are of persons of local or middling national interest. There are no royalty, top-level nobility or senior military leaders shown. Nor are there subjects from the entertainment world. That said, Rivière (of Huguenot descent) was competent in his work and also painted subjects besides portraits on occasion. Despite his competence, as readers of this blog might be aware by now, he had a great number of British competitors who were equally good, and a few who were much better. In the Gallery below, a few portraits are presented, then three other works. The latter pre-date the portraits, so I'll conjecture that he tried other subjects before settling on po

Konstantin Alekseyevich Korovin (1861-1939) was a Russian painter with a free, sketchy technique influenced by Impressionism, though his style apparently was always somewhat loose before he first visited Paris in 1885. He was well-connected, knowing many of the important artists and patrons in Czar Nicholas II's day. Not long after the Revolution he moved to Paris, where he lived the rest of his life. Biographical information can be found here . Korovin's stylistic sketchiness seemed to kick into a higher gear following his move to France in 1923. Perhaps this had to do with the need to quickly produce paintings to bring in money. Or maybe it had to do with Paris being an avant-garde artistic place (though the same might be said for Russia, especially in the early post-Revolution years). Or it could have been that this was his natural artistic trajectory as he continued to gain maturity and experience. And, possibly, this looser style was what the Paris art market wanted