"Art Now and Then" does not mean art occasionally. It means art NOW as opposed to art THEN. It means art in 2019 as compared to art many years ago...sometimes many, many, MANY years ago. It is an attempt to make that art relevant now, letting artists back then speak to us now in the hope that we may better understand them, and in so doing, better understand ourselves and the art produced today.
I've always had a deep respect for an artist who can make me laugh. I like to laugh. In my own work, I've always tried to inject an element of humor when it's appropriate. Seldom is it a "rolling on the floor laughing" type of humor. Sometimes it doesn't even amount to an actual laugh but a subtle, knowing "been there, done that" type of humorous identification with the figure or scene depicted. Sometimes the humor is more "funny" than humorous, designed more to evoke a simple smile than a laugh. That's why I immediately identified with a mid-19th-century German painter named Carl Spitzweg. He's often classed as a Romanticist, a landscape artist, genre painter, illustrator, or satirist. Actually, he was all of the above.
The Violinist on the Roof, 1845, Carl Spitzweg
The Drunkard, 1836, Carl Spitzweg
One of the hallmarks of Spitzweg's paintings is his penchant for poking fun at amateur enthusiasts. His family of hikers depicted in Sunday Stroll (top), painted in 1841, certainly does not depict veteran hikers. The same could be said for his Sunday Hunter (above, right) from 1845. I guess that was in the days before camouflage outfits were popular. Similarly, Spitzweg's 1845 Violinist on the Roof (above) makes up for his apparent musical ineptitude with amorous good intentions. I wonder if this painting inspired the musical, Fiddler on the Roof. However, Spitzweg's 1836 depiction of The Drunkard (left) is not the image of an amateur. His imbiber seems to be quite adept and experienced in his calling. Although some of Spitzweg's humor gets lost in the passing of the years and in translation from German to other cultures, this one would appear to be timeless.
Spitzweg appears to have been a "Sunday" portrait painter.
Carl Spitzweg was born in 1808, the second of three sons of a wealthy merchant. Don't worry about the name of his birthplace, you couldn't pronounce it if I told you. Suffice to say it was in southern Germany. Spitzweg had a special affinity for amateurs in that he had once been very much an amateur artist. His father forced him into training as a pharmacist. However, during a period of illness, Spitzweg began to paint. He is an amazing example of what a determined artist can attain while being totally self-taught. In 1833, Spitzweg's father died, leaving him a substantial inheritance which he used to gain his independence as an artist. He began by studying the Flemish masters then traveled to Prague, Venice, Paris, London, and Belgium studying the works of various classical artists in refining his technique and style.
The Poor Poet, 1839, Carl Spitzweg
The Painter in a Forest Glade under One Umbrella Lying, 1850, Carl Spitzweg
Besides painting amateurs doing what they know least, Spitzweg was also fascinated with eccentric characters around him, perhaps because he seems to have been one himself. He also considered himself something of a poet so his most famous work, The Poor Poet (above) from 1839, is especially knowing as he depicts a doddering old man, resting beneath an umbrella and a leaky attic roof, counting syllables using his fingers. Spitzweg also provides us a peek into his life as an artist as well, not to mention his own foibles. In his The Painter in a Forest Glade under One Umbrella Lying, (left) from 1850, Carl Spitzweg presents us with what may be something of a self-portrait of an artist so overwhelmed by the beauty of nature he lacks the energy to try to capturing it in his chosen medium. Or, perhaps, just getting to this lovely site may have left him too exhausted to paint. In any case, again and again, we see in Spitzweg's paintings his adoring love for the deep Bavarian forests near where he grew up.
The Portrait Painter, 1855, Carl Spitzweg. Judging from the glasses and the artist's stature, this would definitely seem to be a self-portrait.
One of the easiest comparisons to make in studying the work of Carl Spitzweg, is to the work of the American artist, Norman Rockwell. Their humor is very much the same, subtle, warm, and clever. Their painting style is quite comparable, allowing for differences in period and differing nationalities. Even their physical appearances are similar. Rockwell was professionally trained, of course, whereas Spitzweg was not, which may, in fact make his work all the more remarkable. These comparisons are especially noticeable when you look at their similar, yet distinctly different handling of a single title, The Bookworm (below) seen on the right as done by Spitzweg in 1850, and in the lower-left image by Rockwell (painted as a 1926 Post cover).
The Bookworms. Notice the subtles of humor--Rockwell's bookworm wears two different
colored shoes while Spitzweg bibliophile clutches a book precariously between his knees.
The Intercepted Love Letter, 1860, Carl Spitzweg
In Spitzweg's Susanna in the Bath and the Altos (below) we glimpse Spitzweg, the practical joker, as the two "dirty old men" creep up on the lovely bathing beauty only to discover, to their immense despair, that upon closer inspection, she is, in fact, "sinfully" ugly. In a similar vein, and this time in a ruse worthy of Rockwell himself, we see The Intercepted Love Letter (left), from 1860. Look carefully, you'll see the letter in questioned being "lifted" from its intended recipient by the nosey neighbor upstairs. With a slightly wider format and the Post masthead across the top, the two artists; work would be virtually identical. This leads me to wonder if Rockwell may have gotten a few ideas, or at least a few laughs from the work of Carl Spitzweg.
Christ Preaching at the Cookham Regatta, (Unfinished), 1959, Stanley Spencer
In searching through the work of literally thousands of artist for which to write about, one of the factors which makes it simpler where British artists are concerned is finding one who bears the title "Sir" before his name. The fact that the Queen of England has seen fit to so honor a living artist takes the onus of evaluating his work and his place in art history off my shoulders, transferring it to the Royal Academy or whoever recommends such individuals to the monarchy. My research has shown approximately fifteen British painters having received such an honor. One of the most interesting and most deserving of these was a eccentric little man from the small town of Cookham, Berkshire, England. Cookham is located in south-central England, on the shores of the Thames some thirty-two miles west of London and roughly nine miles northwest of Windsor Castle. Cookham's major claim to fame seems to be that it was there, in 1891, that the painter, Stanley Spencer was born and where he lived most of his life. It was there, too, where Sir Stanley Spencer died in 1959 leaving behind a major, unfinished work, Christ Preaching at the Cookham Regatta (top). High Street in Cookham is also, where you will find the Stanley Spencer Gallery, located in a former Methodist Church (below). It features more than a hundred of Spencer's paintings and probably more than you'd ever want to know about this illustrious British artist.
Copyright Jim Lane
Stanley Spencer Gallery in the church where he once worshipped. His unfinished painting is front and center in this 360-degree view.
Stanley Spencer's Christ Preaching at the Cookham Regatta is more than simply his "deathbed" work of art. It's just one of a series in which Spencer brought Christ to Cookham. That is to say, he depicted scenes from the life of Christ set in his hometown among the residents of the village. So far as I know, no other artist has ever taken that route in relating the stories of Christ to modern life. And beyond that, Spencer painted some simply stunning scenes and details of life in and around his hometown. It would seem Stanley Spencer spent most of his life putting Cookham "on the map."
Copyright, Jim Lane
Stanley Spencer as seen by Stanley Spencer. The 1959 self-portrait was done just five months before his death.
As you might guess by he number of self-portraits (above) Spencer painted over the course of his fifty-year career, besides his hometown, he was also intent in putting himself on the map. There are at least a half-dozen others I've not included in the montage above, including perhaps the strangest, and in his case, the most famous of his self-portraits, Self-Portrait with Patricia Preece (below), dating from 1936. (He was still married to his first wife at the time). Just as famous, or perhaps more so, was Spencer's infamous "Leg of Mutton" nude double-portrait of himself and (by that time) his second wife. Unfortunately, it's too sexually explicit to display here. Spencer's marriage to Preece was never consummated. She turned out to be a lesbian. Spencer remained on friendly terms with his first wife, Hilda, despite the fact she had divorced him. Preece refused him a divorce.
Self-Portrait with Patricia Preece, 1936, Stanley Spencer
As fascinating as Spencer's self-portraits and his peculiar personal life may have been, there were several other equally interesting aspects of Spencer's life and the effect they had upon his work. With the outbreak of World War I hostilities in Europe, Spencer wanted to join the army, but because of his frail physique, his mother persuaded him to join the Royal Army Medical Corps as an orderly. After thirteen months serving at a homeland hospital, Spencer was transferred to Macedonia where he was assigned to an ambulance unit. There he spent two and a half years on the front lines facing both German and Bulgarian troops. Sometime during 1918, he was sent home, having contracted malaria. His survival of the torment that killed so many of his friends, including his elder brother Sydney, indelibly marked Spencer's attitude as to life and death. Such psychological pain came through time and again in his subsequent works.
Sandham Memorial Chapel, entrance, 1927-32, Stanley Spencer
Sandham Memorial Chapel altar, Stanley Spencer
In 1923 Spencer spent the summer in Poole, Dorset, where he worked on sketch designs for a possible war memorial. These designs con-vinced two early patrons of Spencer's work, Louis and Mary Behrend, to commission a group of paintings as a memorial to Mary's brother, Lieutenant Henry Willoughby Sandham, who had died in the war. The Behrends planned to build a chapel in the village of Burghclere in Berkshire to house the paintings. The Sand-ham Memorial Chapel (above) was a colossal undertaking. Spencer's paintings cover a twenty-one foot high, seven-teen-foot wide end wall; eight seven-foot-high lunettes, each above a predella, with two twenty-eight feet long irregularly shaped strips between the lunettes and the ceiling.
Sandham Memorial Chapel, left side (in facing the altar), Stanley Spencer. (Note: These are extremely high-resolution images which may take a while to load but will allow you to zoom in to a great degree in studying each painting individually.)
Sandham Memorial Chapel Apse, Resurrection of the Soldiers, 1929, Stanley Spencer
The Behrends were exceptionally generous patrons who not only paid for the chapel to be built to Spencer's specifications, but also paid the rent on the London studio, and built a house for Spencer and Hilda to live nearby while he was painting the chapel. This artistic freedom and financial support resulted in a spectacular work of art and an unusual and extremely moving war memorial. The sixteen paintings in the chapel begins with a lunette depicting shell-shocked troops arriving at the gates of Beaufort, then continues with a scene of kit inspection at the RAMC Training Depot in Hampshire, which is followed by scenes of Macedonia. Spencer did not depict heroism and sacrifice, but rather in panels such as Scrubbing the Floor, Bed Making, Filling Tea Urns and Sorting and Moving Kit Bags, the unremarkable everyday facts of daily hospital life. They convey a sense of human companionship rarely found in civilian life as he remembered events from Beaufort, Macedonia, and other locales Spencer encountered during his war years.
Sandham Memorial Chapel, right side (in facing the altar), Stanley Spencer. (Zoom in to see details)
By 1932 Spencer was back in Cookham with his two daughters and Hilda living in a large house just off the High Street. Here Spencer painted observational studies of his surroundings and other landscapes, which would become the major themes of his work over the following years. During 1932 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy and exhibited ten works at the Venice Biennale. Spencer's Turk's Boatyard Cookham (below, left) from around 1931, and his The Blacksmith's Yard, Cookham (below, right), from 1932 are excellent examples of his work from this period. And while they are technically landscapes, they have all the exquisite attention to detail of an exceptional still-life as well.
Turk's Boatyard Cookham ca.1931, Stanley Spencer
The Blacksmith's Yard, Cookham, 1932, Stanley Spencer
Although these scenes from Cookham are just a few of the hundreds of paintings and murals Spencer produced during his exceptionally long and productive career, many of which are far more important in an overall appraisal of his life's work; I can't help but admire most his many local garden scenes so lovingly rendered during these years. Spencer's From the Artist's Studio (below), from 1938, is probably my favorite, though his Flowers in a Window, Cookham (bottom), also from 1938, would run it a very close second.
From the Artist's Studio, 1938. Stanley Spencer
Flowers in a Window, Cookham, 1938. Stanley Spencer
Christ Carrying the Cross, 1920, Stanley Spencer. It's hard to believe the same artist painted this as painted all the works seen above.
Click below for details on Spencer's Sandham Memorial Chapel--
James K. Polk Official White House Portrait, 1858, George P.A. Healy
As promised yesterday, the second President of the United States to be born in November 2nd, James K. Polk. Read that line carefully; don't be confused; he was not the second President of the United States, but the eleventh man to hold that office. Polk was born on November 2, 1795. Yesterday would have been his 220th birthday...had he lived this long. Actually, he died just 120 days after leaving office in March of 1849. Ironically, just four years before, when he took office, he was in robust health. The job of President took a devastating toll on him physicallly. Polk's Official White House Portrait (above) by George P.A. Healy, painted in 1858, some twelve years after Polk died, is pleasantly dignified, in the long tradition of Healy presidential portraits, giving little indication any weakness or ill health.
James K. Polk, 1849, Matthew Brady photograph (restored)
James K. Polk, 1840, Miner Kellogg, National Portrait Gallery
Polk's National Portrait Gallery painting by Miner Kellogg (left), was done in 1840, a full four years before Polk became president, yet he appears older than in Healy's posthumous portrait. This weath-ering away is all the more noticeable when we compare most of the portraits of Polk, which tend to be fairly flattering, to the photo of the president made in 1849 by the famed Civil War photographer, Matthew Brady (above). Given the date, it would appear to be shortly before Polk died. It goes without saying that Healy would have presented the former President in a posthumous portrait at his best. And Kellogg's earlier, dour, version can largely be chalked up to simple ineptitude. However the important thing to keep in mind is that virtually all of the subsequent portraits of James K. Polk were based in part or in whole on either Healy's or Brady's images. What really adds an extra element to this discourse is that Healy had earlier painted a portrait of Polk (below), presumably from life, about the same time as Brady's photo. The variation between the two says quite a lot about Healy's ability to capture an honest likeness while at the same time discreetly flattering his subject.
James K. Polk, 1846, George P.A. Healy
Brady's photograph of Polk was only the second of a president taken while still in office (Polk's predecessor, John Tyler was the first). And inasmuch as Polk died so soon after entering retirement, only George Healy (discounting Kellogg's feeble attempt) seems to have been the only artist to have painted Polk from life. Historians for several generations tended to minimize Polk's presidency as merely a compromise between the political forces of the North and the South during the tenuous years before the Civil War. He was not a favorite for posthumous portraits. In more recent years, Polk biographers have sized up the magnitude of his achievements and his legacy. “There are three key reasons why James K. Polk deserves recognition as a significant and influential American president,” Walter Borneman wrote. “First, Polk accomplished the objectives of his presidential term as he defined them; second, he was the most decisive chief executive before the Civil War; and third, he greatly expanded the executive power of the presidency, particularly its war powers, its role as commander-in-chief, and its oversight of the executive branch." President Harry S. Truman summarized this view by saying that Polk was "...a great president. Said what he intended to do and did it." Thus most portraits of Polk have been done in recent years.
James Knox Polk, Chowdhury Gopal
President James K. Polk, Madame Tussaud's
One of the better recent portraits, is by an artist from India named Chowdhury Gopal (above, left). While obviously based on Healy's 1858 White House portrait, Gopal presents us with a color clarity that marks the work as distinctly modern yet maintaining a careful relationship to the past. And as with several other presidents, the work of the artists at Washington's Madame Tussaud's (above, right) have almost miraculously captured the man three dimensionally, allowing present day photographers to create their own portraits of the former president. The portrait of First Lady Sarah Childress Polk is not her official White House portrait (which apparently doesn't exist), but one by Healy and a subsequent copy (lower-right corner) by Mayna Treanor Avent based upon Healy's work, which may, in fact, be an improvement. In any case, the Healy portrait appears to be badly in need of cleaning and restoration. At the bottom are three contemporary images of Polk, one half-decent, the others...not so much.
Sarah Childress Polk is one of a half-dozen or so First Ladies not represented in the White House portrait collection.
James K. Polk--artist unknown, based on the Brady photo.
James K. Polk--artist unknown, based on the 1846 Healy portrait.
Polk, based (very loosely) on the Matthew Brady photograph.
Warren G. Harding Official White House Portrait, 1922, Edmund Hodgson Smart
Edmund Hodgson Smart with his portrait of the president.
When I started this series dealing with portraits of the President of the United States, I did not anticipate that two of them might have been born on the same day of the month. However, that seems to be the case with Presidents, Warren G. Harding and James K. Polk. Both were born on the second day of November some seventy years apart. I've decided that the solution to this would be to take them in alphabetical order, dealing with Harding today and Polk tomorrow. Sorry if this seems like presidential overkill, but stand by; later this month we find that two presidents were born on two consecutive days of the month (November 23rd and 24th). Warren G. Harding was born on this date in 1865. He was the 29th president, his term running from March, 1921, until his death from a heart sudden heart attack in August, 1923. His official White House portrait (above) is by the British paint-er, Edmund Hodgson Smart (left), dating from 1922.
Warren G. Harding, Margaret Lindsey Williams, 1923, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Warren G. Harding has sometimes been referred to as the "worst president ever." I'll not get into a protracted discussion of ineptitude, dirty politics, or presidential scandals, but suffice to say that just below the surface, and carefully concealed until after Harding's death, there was plenty of each. It was the 1920s, remember. Of course, Smart's dark, staid, dignified portrait re-veals none of the above, presenting a very "presidential" personage that this former Marion, Ohio, newspaperman was not prepared to fill. Likewise, Harding's portrait by Margaret Lindsay Williams (right), now in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., is no more revealing, though somewhat warmer in tone. Both portraits present a presidential image, as did Harding himself, but one in which the man was never comfortable. He came to the presidency as a dark horse compromise, a former governor and former senator, but a man ill-equipped to confront the corruption and political turmoil swirling around him following his landslide victory in the general election of 1920.
Margaret Lindsay Williams' painting of Warren G. Harding
The Welsh portrait artist, Margaret Lindsay Williams (above) is the first woman artist to see her work in Washington, D.C.'s National Portrait Gallery of Presidents and one of only three women artist to be represented there (along with Greta Kempton and Elaine de Kooning). Her portrait of Harding (for which I could not find a decent high-resolution image) would seem, in my judgment, to equal or even surpass that of her fellow Brit whose painting of President Harding now hangs in the White House. Inasmuch as Harding died having served less than half his term, and most unofficial portraits of a president are painted after he leaves office, there are few of those to pick from. One of the better ones is a drawing by Walter Tittle (below, left) dating from around 1921-22. Perhaps the best likeness of the 29th president is neither a painting nor drawing, but the life size wax portrayal (below, right) by the folks at Madame Tussaud's at their Washington, D.C. museum.
President Warren G. Harding, 1921-22, Walter Tittle
The Warren G. Harding found at Madame Tussaud's.
The portrait of First Lady Florence Harding (below), which hangs in the White House, is unique in that it is by an unknown artist. Likewise, the amateur unofficial portrait of her husband (bottom) is also by an unknowns artist...as well it should be.
Florence Harding, 1923, unknown artist
An unofficial presidential portrait of Warren G. Harding by an unknown artist. (There's something about the jaw that's not quite right.)
Bus Passengers, Raphael Soyer--the Depression depression.
I was born some five to ten years after the worst of the Great Depression. I came into a world of United Nations hope for peace, relative prosperity, countered against the angst of nuclear weapons, McCarthyism, and a "cold" war that sometimes got pretty hot. But in general, it was a period now referred to by many as the "good old days" of the 1950s. Of course, how "good" they were depended largely on ones geography, skin color, and the number of numbers on your paycheck. Though I was never a victim of the Great Depression my parents were. I didn't notice it as a child but in later years, I came to realize what a profound impression the Depression left in their minds--their way of thinking, especially where money was concerned. No one I knew referred to the 1930s as the "good old days." Two artists from the Depression era were very adept at capturing the social psyche of this period. One we know well, Edward Hopper. The other, Raphael Soyer...not so much.
A career lasting more than fifty years.
Raphael Soyer and his twin brother, Moses, were born in 1899. They came from a family of Russian Jews straight out of Fiddler on the Roof, though considerably more intellectual. The two boys had four siblings. Their father was a Hebrew scholar who encouraged academic and artistic achievement. As with Tevye and his family in Fiddler, the Abraham Soyer family was forced by the Russian government in 1912 to leave their land. They emigrated to the United States settling into the Russian colony in the Bronx. Living in New York allowed young Raphael to attend the free schools of the Cooper Union, later the National Academy of Design and, subsequently, the Art Students League. Raphael Soyer (above) was a slender, gaunt, bespectacled man. Anyone making a movie about Soyer today, the only actor to fill the lead roll would be Woody Allen.
Employment Agency, Raphael Soyer
Consolation, Raphael Soyer
If you were an artist living in New York during the 1920s and 30s, Social Realism was the way to go. Soyer fell in with the Fourteenth Street School of painters including such names as Reginald Marsh, Isabel Bishop, Kenneth Hayes Miller, Peggy Bacon and, his teacher, Guy Pene du Bois. Soyer's painted content included female nudes, portraits of friends and family, the city itself, and, especially, its people. In essence, Soyer painted the Great Depression--up close and personal. Whereas Edward Hopper's work from the same era always seemed cool and detached, Soyer's paintings have a depressing, "gritty" quality to them seldom seen in the work of other artists of the time. His Bus Passengers (top) from this era is an excellent example. Still more disturbing is the desperation and boredom see in the faces of Soyer's Employment Agency (above). Neither have an exact date but the apparel would seem to place both works in the midst of the 1930s. Soyer's Consolation (right), captures the same feeling but in a more intimate moment.
Study for How Long Since You Wrote to Mother, 1943, Raphael Soyer.
The Train Station, Raphael Soyer
Despite showing regularly during the 1930s, in the large annual and biennial American exhibitions of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Carnegie Institute, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Academy of Design, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, it was the WPA Federal Arts Project which put Soyer in daily contact with the rejected and dejected whom he painted. His humorously titled, How Long Since You Wrote Mother? (above), is one such example. Additional income came from teaching stints at the John Reed Club, New York, the Art Students League, the New School for Social Research and the National Academy. Later, during the war years, Soyer turned his attention to capturing the tender moments of separation from loved ones he saw daily all about him. Soyer's The Train Station (left) is about as iconic a depiction of the 1940s to be found in the realm of Social Realism.
Soyer was fortunate to survive the 1930s and 40s, continuing to paint well into the 1980s. He flatly rejected the New York school of Abstract Expressionism which arose in the 1950s, insisting, "I choose to be a realist and a humanist in art." His poignant double portrait of his parents at the dining room table seems almost the quintessential Depression painting. Once dubbed the “East Side Degas,” Soyer depicted ordinary men and women in contemporary settings. He was heavily influenced by the Ashcan School’s faithful representations of daily life in New York City’s poorer precincts. In sympathetic renderings of the unemployed during and after the great economic crash of 1929, many of Soyer’s paintings came to embody the Depression, as in the drawn, weary face and soft eyes that gaze out from his portrait of The Artist's Parents (below) from 1932. Soyer also painted women in large numbers and various forms throughout his career, including nudes (above), shop-girls (right), prostitutes, and pedestrians, displaying a fascination with the many faces of humanity. Soyer's Imaginary Wall in My Studio (bottom) is evidence of this element in his work. As the number of self portraits he left behind upon his death in 1987 at the age of eighty-seven would seem to indicate, he had a fascination with his own face too.
The Artist's Parents, 1932, Raphael Soyer
Imaginary Wall in My Studio, Raphael Soyer. (The upper left face is a self-portrait.
