Paintings I've Not Done Yet--Landscapes

Copyright, Jim Lane

The Biltmore Spillway, Asheville, North Carolina
(A composite of two photos).

In the past I've seldom been moved to paint landscapes simply to capture a particularly beautiful vista of nature. To me, a landscape always seems more like a background in search of a foreground. Even when there occurs some object of particular interest within the painting, I find myself searching for some way to inject a human presence. I guess I like to paint happenings. If the action demands a landscape, then so be it, but I've got any number of attractive background landscapes some quite similar to these. Here some of my favorites feature the works of man, whether it's a magnificent engineering wonder such as the Bixby Creek Bridge on the California Coastal Highway (above) or a rundown jail in the desert town of Chloride, Arizona, (bottom) insofar as their potential for a painting is concerned, they are both pretty much on even ground.

 

Copyright, Jim Lane

The California Coastal Highway from
Los Angeles to San Francisco.

In more recent years, I've become even more exacting in the photos from which I choose to paint. The scene has to be attractive and interesting, but I also want to pursue the unexpected, searching for some kind of humor, irony, or controversy which I can accentuate with a clever title. Would you believe, that's a pretty tall order? For example, in painting the Grand Canyon, I did so through the front windshield of a 1964 T-bird as it catapulted over the North Rim bearing Thelma and Louise (remember the movie finale). I call it simply, A Visit to the Grand Canyon. The scene of the Grand Canyon (below) was one I rejected in that I did not need or want a foreground other than the car. In painting a Venetian scene featuring the main channel past San Marcos, I did so featuring a giant cruise ship poking a good portion of its bow into the scene. I called it, Intruder of the Seas. The Venetians love the tourist's money but hate their ships.

 

Copyright, Jim Lane

The Grand Canyon--180 Degrees.
That's either the temperature or the visual span (take your pick).

Except for the French mill (below) on the Seine between Paris and Versailles, all the photos today feature homegrown, all-American sights and sites. The French mill, with its German flavored architecture is home to a large restaurant featuring traditional French cuisine, French wines, and French paintings for sale. Don't try to bargain with a Frenchman over the price of his work. First of all, it's a waste of time, and second, he will probably take offense. In my attempt, I didn't understand enough French and he not enough English for either of us to insult the other...or negotiate a sale.

 

Copyright, Jim Lane

The French Mill, somewhere along the Seine.

Near the end of our six-week jaunt around the western rim of the United States in 2014, I visited Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin East in Wisconsin, having already been to Taliesin West just outside Scottsdale, Arizona. If you ever get the chance, to see either, or preferably both, do so. The contrast between the two is staggering. Of the two the Arizona campus is the most photogenic...nearly everywhere you look. That's not the case with Taliesin East. I had to search there for a shot adequate to display Wright's incredible talent. The one below, came closest. The structure in the background is not the main house but one wing of the guest house, now occupied by an architectural student and his wife studying on a Wright Fellowship.

 

Copyright, Jim Lane

Taliesin East, Spring Green, Wisconsin.

Despite the rugged natural beauty of the California coast along U.S. 101, for the artist/architecture enthusiast (me), William Randolph Hearst's "ranch" he called San Simeon is easily the highlight of the two days it takes to drive between California's largest cities. And while the architecture is magnificent, if a little quirky, the view from the top of Hearst's mountain is nothing less than spectacular. Hearst's architect, Julia Morgan, spared no expense (in spending Hearst's fortune) as she crafted one incredible, sun-drenched view after another in virtually every direction. The shot below was my favorite.

 

San Simeon View, looking east (I think).
There's no ocean so I'm pretty sure it's not looking west.

-------------------------------------

 

As the sixth group in this series, like the others, these photos are available free of charge for use by painters as source material for their own work on an individual basis. Simply e-mail me with a request to do so at jimlane@jimlanart.com and indicate which photo you would like to use as well as your full name (no nicknames) and geographical location. If you have a website, include the URL; and please, when finished, e-mail me a photo of your painting. These images are not for publication as photos (except on a royalty basis) nor are they in the public domain.

 

Copyright, Jim Lane

A fun place to visit, but I'd definitely
 not want to live in Chloride.

Roman Architecture

The basic architectural gifts left us by the Romans.

It's amazing how much our art and architecture have changed in the past two thousand years. Yet, at the same time, it's equally amazing as to how much such thing have not changed. There are many cities, or parts of cities in the world today in which a citizen of ancient Rome, walking down the street, would not feel at all out of place in gazing up at some of our more important social and governmental structures. They would very often still see the same classical orders of columns they would have encountered in the Roman Forum. They might be startled by the sheer number of people milling about but not by the forest of stone columns supporting the massive porticos they and their friends the Greeks first constructed. Even the layout and appearances of our places of worship would remind them of their temples and basilicas. Architects might disagree, but, directly or indirectly, I would argue that the single greatest historic influence in world architecture today came from the ancient Roman Empire.

 

The oldest and best preserved example of Roman architecture
in the "Eternal City" today.

In discussing classical architecture, it would be easy to go back still further in time to the ancient Greeks, but their simple, post and lintel construction pales in comparison to the remarkable innovations the Romans made in borrowing (or stealing) the basic structural engineering and decorative motifs from their Mediterranean neighbors. Likewise, in discussing Roman architecture, it would be all too easy to zero in on a few great surviving structures (the Pantheon, and the Coliseum, for example) while largely ignoring everything else. That's not to say they both weren't great triumphs in Roman architecture, but the houses in which the Romans lived, the baths where they relaxed, the basilicas where they did business, and the theaters where they were entertained are at least as interesting and important (if not more so).

 

The Roman insula--no elevators, no air conditioning, no
privacy, and not much in the way of sanitation or security.

Let's start with their homes. As with us today, the type and size of our domestic architecture is almost totally dependent on the size and type of our wallets (or money bags in the case of the Romans). Then, as now, the lower classes could barely afford to live in small, cramped, noisy apartment buildings which they called insulae. They lacked indoor plumbing, privacy, safety features, central heating, and offered little protection from crime and drunken violence. Moreover, they burned to the ground every decade or two (the Roman version of urban renewal). Those Romans with the brains and work ethic to learn and practice a trade lived in modest, but often quite substantial dwellings, some of which survive today. They featured shops along the street, which supported the family business and three or four other rooms along with a lovely garden in the back. As with virtually all urban housing in Roman times, the orientation was inward while the outer walls were fortress like.

 

The street frontage usually featured small shops.

Once you moved up in the Roman world, even in crowded cities and suburbs, the more well-to-do lived quite comfortably, even by modern-day standards. They had servants, their homes were spacious and gracious, tastefully furnished and often ornately decorated. They traveled on horseback or in "litters" carried by slaves, while their social life included daily hours spent at the baths, the theater, or at sporting events. Food was fresh from nearby farm markets, wine was plentiful, and fresh, clean water from the cities' numerous aqueducts was taken for granted. Still, the architectural orientation was inward, the structural appearance more akin to a prison than our idea of a fine home.

 

Though they may not have been all that attractive from the
outside, the homes of more wealthy Romans housed within their
thick masonry walls a relaxed, secure, pleasant world of their
own replete with many of the creature comforts we enjoy today.

On the domestic front, Roman architecture reached its zenith not with the merchant class but the Plebeians, landowners of great wealth and political power, owners of hundreds of acres and sometimes thousands of slaves. They very often they also had their hands in a number of less reputable business (even criminal) endeavors such as prostitution, gladiators, and the slave trade. These Romans, if they spent any time at all in the cities, also had second homes (or villas) several miles from the crime, grime, and slime of major cities such as Rome, Naples, and Messina (Sicily). Here the architecture didn't resemble a fortress so much as a small village with thin, minimal walls linking a number of separate structures, These villas were, in fact, large farms without which the major nearby cities could not have survived. In time, their weak defenses made them prime targets for invading marauders. Few examples exist today.

The Roman country villa. Notice that in such estates the
courtyard is minimally walled and located in front of the
main dwelling, which is awash with trading activities
and social intercourse.

Back in the big cities of the Roman Empire, the architectural jewel and centerpiece was the forum. There the upper classes and the upper middle-classe met to walk, talk, listen, complain, trade, worship, and basically, kill time. Though the forum of each city or town was the central feature of the community, city planning (except for military camps) was not one of the Romans' strong suites. Sometimes, after a major fire, some effort was made to make the city more livable, but there was seldom an organized grid of streets, which were, in any case, usually too narrow for the hordes of pedestrians, wagons, chariots, horses, and livestock being driven to market. Crossing a major street became a life-threatening undertaking.

In general, the Roman people, even the lower classes, tended to be relatively clean. And if the center of the city was the forum, the central focal point of the forum was the bath. In terms of our modern-day understanding, they were basically athletic clubs featuring gyms, changing rooms, saunas, and most importantly, two or three "swimming pools" of different temperatures--cold (the frigidarium), medium (the tepidarium), and hot (the calidarium). The water feeding these sometimes giantic public swimming pools (swimming was not common skill at the time) came from the massive aqueducts which fed the city. And, though not particularly hygienic by modern standards, they were far better than not bathing at all. Water was heated using giant fire-pit furnaces beneath the pools of water. Contrary to popular belief, the Roman baths were not over decorated dens of sexual promiscuity. Though they were nude, men and women bathed at separate times of the day or separate days of the week.

The size and architectural grandeur of a city's baths reflected
the size and affluence of its population.

Roman architecture also reflected the "form follows function" mantra of modern art, as applied to entertainment venues. For chariot racing stone bleacher were arrayed on two sides of a long, shallow valley. There was no extended curvilinear track like we'd see today in Formula racing, but instead two long straightaways with hairpin turns at each end. Although the chariots theoretically boasted only four to six "horsepower," speed was a major part of the thrill in following the sport, as was the ruthless disregard on the part of the drivers (often slaves) for any theoretical "rules" regarding competition. Such drivers, though highly honored and admired, would also have found it difficult to acquire life insurance. Rome's famous Circus Maximus was the epitome of chariot racing prestige at the time.

Once a hotbed of thrills, death, and destruction, the Circus Maximus area is now a long, grassy urban park often filled with picnickers.

On a slightly (but only slightly) more genteel note, the Roman architects have also passed down to us the open-air theater and the sports arena (amphitheaters), which are basically two of their theaters arranged facing one another to form an oval arena. The famous Coliseum in Rome, architecturally speaking, is technically an amphitheater. The original, semi-circular outdoor theater is an architecture hand-me-down from the Greeks (in some cases quite literally). The amphitheater, however, is a purely Roman invention. As for the entertainment each venue featured...well, let's just say, you wouldn't want to bring along young children.

The Roman amphitheater raised showmanship and mechanical
stagecraft to levels not seen again until the opening of the Paris
Opera House more than a thousand years later.

Architecture is not a static art, despite the relative permanence of the structures it provides for the culture, comfort, and wellbeing of humanity. It moves on. Engineering improves, tastes change, needs change, and in the case of the Romans, Christianity changed the underlying morality and way of life of an entire civilization. Though they were highly evolved architectural wonders, the Roman civilization became...well, civilized. Their gigantic arenas became convenient stone quarries as Roman's replaced (or remodeled) their pagan temples into Christian church (as in the case of the Pantheon). As the church became the chief employer of architects, the Roman style evolved into what we've come to call the Romanesque (or Roman-like) style of architecture. The new style was structurally adopted and adapted from the old Roman basilica. With its grand arches, soaring domes, and barrel-vault ceilings, the Romanesque style was one ideally suited to the grandiosity of newly-built churches on virtually every street corner in Rome.

Depending upon the region, the Romanesque style evolved into the Gothic or the Baroque architecture of the Medieval and Post-Renaissance eras.

In case you were wondering...

 

Robert Bevan

Mare and Foal, 1917, Robert Bevan

There are probably other traits about as bad, but one of the worst tendencies an artist can possess in terms of his or her career, is reticence. That is, an innate inability or unwillingness to rise above the immense crowd of other, similarly talented, artists to make ones work stand apart from that of the others. I and others have, at times, referred to this extremely essential need as "shameless self-promotion." It ranges from the old idea that, for an artist, there is no such thing as bad publicity. (Even the drawings of Adolph Hitler sell for thousands of dollars, and his publicity was about as bad as any artist has ever faced.) On the opposite extreme are artists such as Thomas Kinkade and the like, who, whether their work rates it or not, do little else but self-promotion. They're masters at that, if nothing else. Yet, if you were to ask most artists what part of being an artist they hate (or dislike) most, it would be the constant demands (and uncertainties) of self-promotional salesmanship. In short, they love to create the product, but hate to sell it (and themselves). Of course that's when the sharp, agonizing bite of agent and gallery commissions are felt. The British urban landscape artist, Robert Bevan, knew the trait of reticence well. It dogged him virtually all his life.

 

Add caption

Robert Bevan was born in 1865, the fourth of six children, into the Quaker family of the wealthy banker, Richard Alexander Bevan and his wife, Laura. The family had been associated with the Barclays Bank for several generations. Although biographers don't particularly emphasize the young Bevan's youthful personality, I'm guessing, being one of six siblings with some talent for drawing, the boy retreated within himself where he relied on his art for what little self-esteem he may have had. He appears to have been at least twenty years old before he began to pursue any formal art instruction (privately, of course). Eventually he made the move to the Academie Julian in Paris. There he came to know fellow students Paul Sérusier, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis.

The Forge Pont Aven, ca. 1894, Robert Bevan

In 1890, as a member of a well-to-do British family, Bevan made the most of his position with his first visit to Brittany accompanied by a fellow student, Eric Forbes-Robertson. They stayed at the Villa Julia, in Pont-Aven. He made a second visit in the autumn of the following year before getting up the never to travel to Morocco by way of Madrid where he could study the work of Velasquez and Goya first hand. Apparently becoming something of a playboy, Bevans appears to have done more fox-hunting in Tangier than drawing. He was Master of the Tangier Hunt in his second season there.

The Little Villa, ca. 1895, Robert Bevan

Although there is no evidence that Bevan ever met Vincent van Gogh, it's quite obvious that he knew his work as seen in the swirling trees and landscape of his Breton works (above). However, it's almost certain that Bevan knew Paul Gauguin, who gave him several prints. Bevan also received encouragement from Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who apparently given him lessons in how to draw horses. Upon his return to England in 1894, Bevan lived on Exmoor where he was able to combine his two favorite pastimes, painting with hunting. It would appear that, even at the age of twenty-nine, Bevan had yet to sell his first painting. It must be nice to have rich parents.

A Courtyard at Szeliwy, 1904, Robert Bevan

During the summer of 1897 Bevan met the Polish painter Stanisława de Karłowska at the wedding of a friend in Jersey. By the end of the year Bevan and de Karłowska were also married. Her father owned a considerable amount of land in central Poland and for the remainder of their married life they would make long summer visits there. In 1900 the Bevans settled in London where their daughter was born. A son, Robert Alexander Bevans was born the following year. The next few years the family spent their summers in Poland where Bevan produced some of his most colorful work. It's not hard to see the influence of Gauguin as Bevan developed his use of pure color which led him to a premature Fauvism in 1904. His Courtyard at Szeliwy (above) of that year has been described as, “one of the first exercises in the expressive use of pure color." However Bevan's first one-man exhibition in 1905, which contained probably the most radical paintings by a British artist at that time, was not a commercial success and was largely ignored by the critics. Bevan's second exhibition, in 1908, of mostly Sussex scenes included the first of his paintings in the divisionist or pointillist style of which one of the best examples is Ploughing on the Downs (below).

Plowing on the Downs, 1907, Robert Bevan

Having worked largely in isolation since returning from Pont-Aven, Bevan’s paintings were noticed by Harold Gilman and Spencer Gore, who invited to join Walter Sickert’s Fitzroy Street Group. Sickert encouraged Bevan to paint what really interested him while taking notice of the beauty of everyday things. Thus began a series of paintings recording the decline of the horse cab trade. In May 1911 a new exhibiting society was formed from the ranks of the Fitzroy Street Group, calling themselves the Camden Town Group. By the end of that year Bevan had moved away from the cab yards to the London horse sales at Tattersalls, Aldridges, the Barbican, and Wards as seen in his Horse Sale at the Barbican with its preliminary drawing (below).

Horse Sale at the Barbican, 1912, Robert Bevan

The Camden Town Group lasted only three short years and three financially unsuccessful exhibitions at the Carfax Gallery, after which the owner refused to hold any more. However he still promoted individual members including Bevan who had his third one-man show there in 1913. It was that year that The Cabyard, Night, (below) became the only painting by Bevan purchased for a public collection during his lifetime. It was bought by the Contemporary Art Society for the nation lest a more discerning collector buy first.

The Cabyard, Night, 1910, Robert Bevan

Until the First World War Bevan spent most of his summers painting at family homes in Poland or Sussex. However, when the war came, he was invited to the Blackdown Hills on the Devon-Somerset border as a guest of the amateur artist, Harold Harrison. Until the end of his life Bevan continued to paint in the Bolham valley where his angular style worked well with the strong patterning of the landscape. His London street scenes such as Houses in Sunlight (below), from 1915, were generally more favorably received than his brightly colored landscapes.

Houses in Sunlight, 1915, Robert Bevan

George Bevan died in July of 1925, following an operation for stomach cancer.
Despite memorial shows in 1926 and some thirty years later in 1956, Bevan's contribution to British art was not widely recognized until 1965, the one-hundredth anniversary of his birth. In that year the artist's son published his memoir and organized a series of exhibitions. Bevan’s modesty and reticence coupled with his almost complete inability to promote himself or his work ensured that most of his paintings went unsold, going to his wife upon his death. In turn, Stanislawa Bevan left her estate to be divided equally between her son, R.A. Bevan, and daughter, Mrs. Charles Baty. In their donating numerous pieces to museums and organizing retrospective exhibitions, they were not as reticent in promoting their father's work as he had been.


 

George Biddle

Society Freed through Justice, /em>Department of Justice
mural, 1936, George Biddle

It doesn't happen often, but from time to time an artist will have a greater impact on history in general than on art history. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, became an outstanding early American architect, but was an even more outstanding third President of the United States. British wartime Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill was superb amateur painter, but there was nothing amateur in the way he shepherded England through WW II. Samuel Morse was far removed from being an amateur painter, yet he had his greatest impact in the early science of telecommunications. George Biddle was another such artist. As a painter of murals during the first half of the 20th-century he would hardly have been more than a cipher the vast, convoluted history of art. However, during the desperate days of the Great Depression, George Biddle not only made a name for himself as a muralist, but managed to directly or indirectly lift hundreds of other painters like himself out of poverty, having major role in establishing the Federal Art Project (1935–43), which employed artists under the Works Progress Administration.

 

From Philadelphia lawyer to wartime art correspondent for Life
magazine, to muralist and presidential advisor to FDR, Biddle's
impact on history, and certainly art history cannot be overstated.

There's an old saying, "It's not what you know but who you know that counts in life." George Biddle was born into an upper-class family in 1885. He grew up in Philadelphia then attended the elite Groton School where he just happened to be a classmate of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Biddle completed his undergraduate studies and later earned a law degree from Harvard. A short time later, he passed his bar examination and was well on his way to becoming the proverbial Philadelphia lawyer. How much of his life's course at this point was imposed upon him by his socially conscious family is hard to say, but the smell of turpentine and linseed oil proved to be much more appealing than the dust of legal tomes. In 1911, Biddle booked passage to France, never to crack a law book again.

 

The Convalescent, 1916, George Biddle

Biddle started at the famous Académie Julian in Paris but during the next two years he also studied at his hometown Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before returning to Europe in 1914. Biddle spent time in Munich where he copied Rubens and in Madrid, where he copied Velasquez while also picking up printmaking skills. He then traveled to Paris again and took up French Impressionism, cubism, futurism, and the old masters. In short, Biddle absorbed the wet paint of a wide variety of art styles and eras like a dry sponge. His Convalescent (above) from 1916, displays the influence of Biddle's friend and fellow Philadelphian, Mary Cassatt.

 

Having just returned from Mexico, the Latino influence is very much
apparent in these prints dating from 1928.

With the sudden outbreak of war in Europe in 1917, Biddle hustled back home where he enlisted in the army. After the war, during the early interwar years, Biddle continued his studies in such exotic locations such as Tahiti, before returning to France in 1924. In 1928 he went on a sketching trip through Mexico with Diego Rivera from whom he caught the mural painting fever. In returning to the United States, Biddle established a print shop in New York City where he explore the variety and richness of technique and expressionism possible in lithography (above), a medium which he hoped would popularize American art by making it better known to the public.

 

Tenement Mural Study, Dept. of Justice Bldg., George Biddle

Impressed by the passion as well as the political and social awareness of the Mexican muralists, Biddle decided to devote his own art to the contemporary American scene and to paint the social, economic, and political issues facing America. In the 1930s, he became an activist for social art and strongly advocated government funding for artistic endeavors. His correspondence with his former classmate and newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt contributed to the establishment of the Federal Art Project, an arm of the Works Progress Administration that produced several hundred thousand pieces of publicly funded art. Biddle himself completed a mural titled The Tenement (above) for the Justice Department building in Washington, D.C. while also making sketches of the opera, Porgy and Bess during its late 1930s tour.

 

Industrial Scene, 1930, George Biddle, a relatively
small, easel painting in an expressionistic mode.

George Biddle executed his first mural in 1933 for the Chicago World's Fair; then in 1936 he also created a larger triptych mural for the Department of Justice, in Washington, D.C. titled Society Freed Through Justice (top). Incidentally, the mural occupies three adjoining walls of a single room. In coping with the perspective elements of two separate photos of the hard to photograph image, stitching them together gives the unavoidable appearance of a protruding corner (which does not exist) in the middle of the center wall unit.

 

Dead Civilians, 1940s, George Biddle

With the coming of WW II, Biddle was appointed chairman of the United States Department of War's Art Advisory Committee, serving to recruit artists to that body. Biddle also traveled through Algeria, Tunisia, Sicily, and Italy with the 3rd Infantry Division producing works documenting that unit's achievements. He wrote a book on his war travels: Artist at War Tunisia-Sicily-Italy, in 1944. When the Art Advisory Committee was disbanded, he began producing combat art for Life magazine. George Biddle was married three times, twice for only brief periods of three or four years then in 1930 he married Helene Sardeau , a sculptor from Antwerp, Belgium with whom he had one son. George Biddle died at his home at Croton-on-Hudson, New York, in 1973. He was seventy-eight years of age.

 

Portrait of Fletcher Martin, (a fellow
combat artist), George Biddle.

Jean Beraud

Symphony in Red and Gold, 1894, Jean Beraud. It's a gorgeous
piece of work, but what does it mean? How does it fit into art history?

Those who study, write, and archive the history of art tend to have a streak of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I guess, in their case, it's probably a valuable personality trait in that it more or less "goes with the territory." They become OCD in becoming art historians, and they wouldn't be very good ones if they didn't. Having a place for everything and everything in its place enables them to minutely classify art and artist, suggesting ways for the rest of us to approach, study, and remember art history. However, what must drive such scholars crazy is when they encounter an artist who "straddles the fence," so to speak--who paints in more than one style, often even during the same period of his or her lifetime. When this occurs, critics can either pound a square peg in a round hole, or, as more often happens, simply toss the peg aside as to inconsequential to contend with. That's largely what happened to the Russian-born painter, Jean Beraud.

 

Entrance to the Exposition Universelle, 1889, Jean Beraud,
back when the Eiffel Tower was brand new.

Edouard Manet was a good friend of Beraud's. And, had Manet not been such an important kingpin in the transition from the stale monotony of Academicism to the vibrant freshness of Impressionism, he would likely have suffered the same fate as Beraud. But Manet was too big to ignore. Beraud, on the other hand, was merely a transplanted Russian who, in some ways, was more "French" than Manet, and perhaps a little too popular with the French bourgeois for the critics' tastes. He was popular with the bourgeois (middle class) because he painted the middle-class and their daily lives. Moreover, beyond that, during much of his career Beraud painted them with Academic Realism utilizing a loose, somewhat Impressionist style. His Entrance to the Exposition Universelle (above), from 1889 illustrates what I mean. How the hell do you classify someone like that?

A law student turned artist.

Jean Beraud (pronounced ber-ROW) was born in Saint Petersburg in 1848. His father was a sculptor working on the decoration of St. Isaac's Cathedral at the time. Beraud's father died around 1865. His mother then moved the family back to Paris. The younger Beraud took up the study of law, at least until the tragic occupation of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. After the war, Beraud became a student of Léon Bonnat. He first exhibited paintings at the Salon in 1872 though nobody much noticed his work until 1876, when he exhibited his On the Way Back from the Funeral. He also exhibited with the Society of French Watercolorists at Paris' 1889 World's Fair.

Mary Magdalene in the house of Simon the Pharisee, 1891, Jean Beraud

Beraud's paintings often included truth-based humor and mockery of late 19th-century Parisian life, along with frequent appearances of biblical characters in then contemporary situations (another reason critics were none too fond of his work). Paintings such as Mary Magdalene in the House of the Pharisees (above) aroused controversy when exhibited, because of these themes. The painting is staunchly Academic in style and technically quite good (no criticism there). Beraud derived his subject from an event in Luke 7:36-50, but moved it into the then-modern world. Only the figure of Jesus is clothed in timeless biblical attire. All the others, including the startled maid at far right, are in modern dress. The anachronistic painting was controversial because people suspected that Beraud was trying to make them uncomfortable by confronting them with their own failings and their own hypocrisy. They were right about that. Many of the well-heeled men in the painting would have had mistresses. Beraud presented them with the reality of raw human suffering, which they did not particularly like.

Beraud found the spectacle of French ladies battling the elements
on the streets of Paris in their confining, turn-of-the-century
finery both fascinating and amusing.

Beraud's painting style gradually shifted from Academicism towards Impressionism, though at times he was painting in both styles, even in the same painting. However, while the major Impressionists fled the chaos of Paris to paint landscapes of the surrounding areas, Beraud, like his friends Édouard Manet, and Degas chose to depicted the urban life. Impressionism was not born in Paris but in the suburbs, along the Normandy coast, and the rural Barbizon woodlands. Only in later years, as it matured and painters began to recognize the limitations of both the style and content of their early work did they begin to discover the broad, colorful boulevards and raunchy nightlife of Paris. As an overview of Beraud's work indicates, the Russian-born Frenchman no one quite knew how to pigeonhole, was way ahead of them. Jean Beraud never married and had no children. He died in Paris in 1935 at the age of eighty-seven.

Though they worked at roughly the same time, and probably knew each
other, the nightlife depicted by Beraud was a far cry from the seedy
immorality depicted (and enjoyed) by fellow artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.

This photo-montage centered on Beraud's The Boulevard des Capucines and the Vaudeville Theatre, from 1889, presents a stark contrast to the streets of Paris now, as compared to what Beraud painted.

Beraud's Portrait of a Dandy would
suggest that the fashion attire of the
well-dressed Frenchman during the
so-called "la belle époque" has
changed as much, or more,
than the streets of Paris.

 

Alexandre Benois

Fountains of Peterhof, 1901, Alexamdre Benois

It's kind of startling to discover that some artist from the past has painted something quite similar to your own work. It would be in terms of style, or content, or location but it's nonetheless an a fascinating surprise. It happened to me today as I was perusing the work of the Russian painter, Alexandre Benois. The painting was his Fountains of the Peterhof (above), which Benois painted more than a century ago in 1901. From all I can tell, the Peterhof, despite two world wars, the second of which left the Czarist Romanov family estate in ruins, the place hasn't changed much. Benois even chose much the same location except the opposite angle as I did. Although I admire his handling of the water, In some ways I prefer my own version to his.

 

Copyright, Jim Lane

The Peterhof Cascade, 2013, Jim Lane

As his title suggests, Benois emphasized the water while I, being an architectural enthusiast, placed more, or at least equal, emphasis on the palace (though the Baroque, especially Russian Baroque, is far from my favorite style of architecture). Also, being a Postmodernist, I took the opportunity to let my cascade...uhh, cascade right out over the edge of the frame (I keep a mop handy next to the painting). Benois' point of view was about a hundred feet from mine and so close to the fountain as to seem as if he may have gotten a little wet while painting it. From all appearances the 1901 czarist government put considerably more water over the cascade than does that of the present day Russian Federation. Or, perhaps Benois simply took some liberties in rendering the volume of water.

 

Benois' various portrait depictions (his own, and others) seems
almost to suggest he was one man, inhabiting several different bodies.

Though Alexandre Benois was an outstanding painter in the Impressionist mode of his day, he was not, in fact, primarily a painter of pretty pictures, but an art critic, historian, preservationist, and founding member of Mir iskusstva (World of Art), an art movement and magazine. Perhaps more importantly, Benois was a designer for the of sets and costumes for the Ballet Russes under the direction of Sergei Diaghilev. Alexandre was born in 1870. He grew up in St. Petersburg a member of a family in which virtually everyone was deeply immersed in the fine arts, all notable painters, architects, composers, and intellectuals as often as not.

A sampling Benois' later work designing for the ballet.

Venice, Bridge of Sighs,
Alexandre Benois

As so often happens with extremely intelligent and talented individuals, Benois did not plan a career in the arts. Instead he graduated from Saint Petersburg Imperial University, in 1894 with a law degree. On a visit to Versailles some three years later, Benois took with him a set of watercolors. Visually, Versailles is one of the most inspiring places on earth. Benois painted a series of watercolors depicting the last days of Louis XIV. Upon his return to Russia, they were immediately co-opted for display by the leg-endary art dealer and collector, Pavel Tretyakov, in 1897. Although Benois continued to edit, write, and publish (most notably an self-illustrated children's alphabet book), he also found time to begin working with the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, home of the Imperial Russian Ballet, as scenic director.

Benois Costume Designs for the ballet Le Rossignol, from 1914.
There's nothing subtle about Russian ballet costumes...at least
not back then.

Alexandre Benois moved to Paris in 1905 and thereafter devoted most of his time to stage design and decoration. During the next few years, his work with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes was revolutionary. His sets and costumes for the productions of Les Sylphides in 1909, Giselle in1910, and Petrushka in 1911, were among his greatest creative triumphs. Although Benois worked primarily with the Ballet Russes, he also collaborated with the Moscow Art Theatre and several other notable theaters in Europe. As a member of the Russian intelligentsia, Benois easily survived the tumultuous Russian Revolution of 1917, as he went on to achieved recognition for his fine arts scholarship, eventually assuming the position as curator of the gallery of Old Masters in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad (St. Petersburg before and after the Soviet era), where he served from 1918 to 1926. The highlight of his career was in managing to obtain for the museum his brother's Leonardo da Vinci painting of the Madonna. It has since become known as the Madonna Benois.

Water ballet?

In 1927 Benois left Russia, settling permanently in Paris where he worked primarily as a set designer until his death in 1960 at the age of ninety.

At the German Quarter, 1911, Alexandre Benois

Promenade of the Empress Elizabeth
through the Noble Streets of St.
Petersburg 1903, Alexandre Benois.