Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Individual Painted Likenesses 1900-1910

Thérèse Schwartze
Portrait of Mrs A.G.M. van Ogtrop-Hanlo and her five children
1906
oil on canvas
Centraal Museum, Utrecht

The eldest daughter above has, like mother, graduated to the display of imposing headwear, while the younger ones evidently can be left unencumbered until they grow a bit. It is no longer altogether possible to reconstruct the functioning web of social custom that regulated the shape and size and disposition of hats at the turn of the 20th century  the rules varied by age and gender and region and class. Everyone understood them at the time, yet no one could fully explain then or now why they carried such weighty significance. It was less a matter of fashion than a matter of morality, that much is clear. Decent or Indecent  those were the words that attached themselves to people who did or did not wear the proper hat in the proper way at the proper time in the proper place.

Edmund Charles Tarbell
Preparing for the Matinee
1907
oil on canvas
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Hugh Ramsay
Self-portrait in white jacket
1901-02
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Helen Margaret Spanton
Portrait of a Lady
ca. 1900-1910
oil on canvas
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Richard Gerstl
Portrait of Henryka Cohn
1908
oil on canvas
Leopold Museum, Vienna

George Bellows
Frankie the Organ Boy
1907
oil on canvas
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

Thomas Eakins
Monsignor James P. Turner
1906
oil on canvas
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

William Sergeant Kendall
An Interlude
1907
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum

Lovis Corinth
Family of the painter Fritz Rumpf
1901
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Seven large figures lighted from behind, plus the traditional object of interest in the composition's lower right corner (a parrot). Eight beings, each occupying ample space for a completed personality. Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) remains a vastly underrated master. In 1958-59 on the centenary of his birth there was a retrospective at Tate Britain. Musée d'Orsay staged a similar show on the 150th birthday in 2008, yet outside Germany the name still generally fails to resonate.  

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Portrait of Madame Marthe X―Bordeaux
1900
oil on canvas
Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, Japan

Édouard Vuillard
Knitting woman in pink dress
ca. 1900-1905
oil on cardboard
Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Alexei von Jawlensky
Portrait of a girl
1909
oil on cardboard
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Max Slevogt
Portrait of dancer Marietta di Rigardo
1904
oil on canvas
Galerie Neue Meister, Dresden

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Czardas Dancers
ca. 1908
oil on canvas
Gemeentemuseum, The Hague