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Porter Woodruff (1894-1959) was one of five American fashion illustrators Vogue magazine had based in Paris in the early 1920s. He continued illustrating for Vogue through the 1930s, residing in New York City and Tunisia as well as Paris. He died in Tunisia. Why little else is known about him can be gleaned here (click on the "learn more ..." line). Besides Vogue, he contributed covers to House & Garden magazine (another Condé Nast publication) around the time of the Great War, before moving to Paris. He also painted North African scenes that fail to impress me. You can Google on his name to locate some of these if you are curious. Woodruff was not a great fashion illustrator, but was good in the context of his times. Gallery House & Garden cover - June 1917 A nice composition in synch with the architectural style. House & Garden cover - November 1917 Sketch of Chanel costume - 1923 Vogue cover - March 1926 Interesting minimalist concept. Wedding dress by Je

Starting when I was a boy and for decades thereafter I had trouble telling American cruisers from battleships. Specifically, cruisers and battleships of the World War 2 era from, say, 1935 to 1950. Before the 1930s cruiser and battleship appearances were fairly distinctly different. I was not the only one who confused the two types. Aerial reconnaissance observers fairly often identified enemy cruisers as being battleships. An example is the early Japanese sighting reports of an American task force during the battle of Midway in June of 1942. Consider the two photos at the top of this post. Which ship is the cruiser and which is the battleship? The upper image is of BB-60 USS Alabama, a battleship, and the lower image is of heavy cruiser CA-74 USS Columbus. Here are ways to distinguish the two types of warship: Gallery Top: CB-1 USS Alaska, bottom: BB-63 USS Missouri, docked at Norfolk, Virginia - 1944 The USS Alaska was a very large cruiser not typical of those in the rest of the

Once upon a time -- 150 years ago, perhaps -- the consensus was that paintings should be beautiful. Modernism was a conscious, ideological reaction to and condemnation of traditional art. In other words, what academic painters did, hard-core modernists tried to do the opposite. So rejection of beauty became part of that hard-core package. I don't hold that a painting must be beautiful to be great. But I also think that great paintings are far more often beautiful than not. Moreover, I find it difficult to think that really ugly paintings are great ones. There are always a few exceptions, but not the ones of women by Pablo Picasso and Willem de Kooning featured here. The art world seems to disagree with me because the Picassos auctioned for many tens of millions of dollars, and the de Koonings aren't worth chicken feed either. First, two Picasso paintings -- the first, a portrait of one woman, the second showing women. Then two de Koonings in the same sequence. Gallery

Not all of it is good, and just like modernist architecture it would be bad if it were everywhere. That said, I am fond of Art Nouveau . When it's not overdone, it offers interesting decoration that goes beyond Greek and Roman ornamentation. The same can be said for Art Deco -- in some respects a late-stage Art Nouveau. Most Art Nouveau architecture is found in Europe. The best-known examples are in large cities such as Paris and Brussels, but a number of smaller cities such as Riga in Latvia have plenty of Art Nouveau. Another small city to add to the list is Ljubljana , capital of Slovenia, a Slavic country tucked in by Italy and Austria and ruled by Austria's Hapsburgs, starting in the 14th century and ending with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. A major earthquake in 1895 resulted in some rebuilding in the Art Nouveau style -- actually Vienna Secession style, an Art Nouveau variation with less ornamentation and comparatively little of that with plan

Sir Walter Westley Russell (1867-1949) is yet another competent English painter I am including on this blog: the supply of same seems inexhaustible. A brief biography is here . Even though Russell is not well known these days, he was noteworthy enough in his time to be knighted. Like many English contemporaries, his style changed little over his career. Based on images found on the Internet, he tended to make paintings with a warm (in the color sense) feeling, though there are some that differ. It seems he liked to portray women. A quirk in many of those portraits was his use of backgrounds with green-blue wallpaper containing many small elements in other colors. Besides similar or identical background wallpaper, Russell usually included framed pictures hanging on those walls. Doubtless these details were from his house or studio. Gallery Dover Russell did some landscape painting. Joseph Crawhall Crawhall was one of the Scottish "Glasgow Boys" group of painters. Air Chi

There are a few artists whose personal lives are more interesting than their work: Frieda Kahlo immediately comes to mind. Then there are others where paintings and biographies come close to striking a balance. Salvandor Dalí is a famous example. A less well-known example is Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938), whose biography is lightly sketched here . For some, she is best known for being the mother of Maurice Utrillo , a more famous Montmartre painter. A while ago I visited the Montmartre museum housed in a building where she had her apartment and studio for a number of years. I took photos and posted about it here and here . Probably as a result of those posts the publisher of "Renoir's Dancer: The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon" by Catherine Hewitt sent me a review copy. The book, already available in England, is due to be published in the USA late February: Amazon link here . The image on the cover is of probably the most famous painting for which she modeled. It&#

The book whose cover is shown above is about illustrator/cartoonist John Cullen Murphy (1919-2004) and fellow cartoonist friends living in or near Fairfield County Connecticut during the early 1950s and beyond. It was written by his son Cullen Murphy who for many years worked with his father on the Prince Valiant comic strip. Some links dealing with Murphy are here and here . A few weeks ago the Wall Street Journal had a favorable review of the book. Having grown up during the final glory decades of continuity and adventure comic strips, I almost immediately ordered a copy from Amazon. When it arrived, I read the whole thing in a single five-hour shot. I was aware of John Cullen Murphy, but never followed his Big Ben Bolt strip or Prince Valiant, created by Hal Foster who transitioned it to Murphy starting in 1971. The reason is that both strips were from Hearst's King Features distribution syndicate, whereas my parents subscribed to the Seattle Times, and not to the Seattle

Planned cities are nothing new: perhaps the first one, Mohenjo-Daro in present-day Pakistan, was created around 4,500 years ago. Usually such planning is little more than platting a grid pattern for streets. Here in the United States, large, early examples include Philadelphia in the 1680s and the grid layout established for New York in 1811. Not all planned cities consisted of pure street grids. Philadelphia's plan included some squares for parks, and Savanna, Georgia has many such squares. At some point, vistas, focal points, circles and other details became fashionable concepts for planners slaving over their drawing boards. I suspect that there were times that a plan was proposed and accepted simply because it looked attractive as a graphic layout -- an extension of the plan-based studies 19th century architectural students had to produce. Such street patterns might have seemed nice when displayed on a wall, but often were somewhat defective when implemented. Let's t