Monday Morning Art Completes

Thanks for following the Monday Morning Art posts here, and the Twitter tweets with the associated hashtag.

With the end of the 2015 calendar year, and 20 posts under my belt, I'll stop here for now.  It's been fun digging into the details of a bunch of artists, some well-known, others not so much.  It has also been fun to expound on their works, influences and their evolution as artists over their lifetimes.

Alfred J Casson "White Village" (1938)

My analyses carry no weight beyond that of just-another-observer.  If you disagreed with me or found a comment annoying - that's great.  (This one really pissed people off for a while here in Ottawa.) 

That is what art is for - invoking opinions and debate about ideas, images, and perspectives. Warm thoughts and happy sighs are just part of the opinion/experience spectrum.  I hope there was a little bit of all-of-the-above here for you.

Jackson Pollack's "Lucifer" (1947)

If a comment or two helped someone look at a piece a little bit differently, or introduced someone to a work or artist they didn't know before, that is reward enough.

Maurits Cornelis Escher's Cat (1919)

Monday Morning Art #20: Edvard Munch

This week's Monday Morning Art extravaganza comes by request.  As the artist behind one of the most recognizable paintings of the past 150years, Edvard Munch was certainly on the radar for future attention, but with the request of Melissa (aka @eastcoastknits) I've bumped him up to debut on this pre-Xmas twitter-art episode today.

Before he produced his pivotal piece(s) in the final decade of the 19th century, Munch plied his craft through the usual processes of realism that matures into more personalized expression.  There are often interesting hints of what is to come in such early works.

The Norwegian artist explored his style under the influence of his contemporaries or course, and later some influential time in Paris. At times his pieces drift into echoes of Renoir (Sick Child), Pissaro (River at St. Cloud) or Manet.

This early (1883) portrait of a young woman kindling a fire is a nice piece that could as easily be an Andrew Wyeth from 80 years later.  He captures the figure lovingly and freezes the moment very well, with the hint of orange warmth radiating out from the growing fire in the stove.





There is an on-going interest in the bold diagonal element to his compositions, sometimes evocative of Degas.  Indeed his portrait of Writer Hans Jaeger is quite evocative of the famous "Glass of Absinthe."  A look over many of Munch's works show the dominant diagonal to guide the viewer's eye.



But soon Munch layers his representational semi-impressionist compositions with a surrealist edge and a despair that creates a deeper level of interest.





His self portrait as a young man of 22 in 1886 reveals a more visceral quality.  The contrasts and the expression captured are of a combined defiance and ambition.






In the 1890s Munch is in his prime as an artist, producing many notable pieces.  Sure, a few sunsets - this one appearing very much like a Monet sketch, but other pieces hint at troubled times.


He approaches the pivotal year of 1893 when is likely troubled by mental illness difficulties and will reflect that in a few pivotal pieces.

The bridge over a fjord serves as a backdrop for many Munch pieces. One must consider the symbolism in the bridge - perhaps stretching between normality and despair, positive and negative, humanity and nature.

His painting "Despair" touches on what is to come the next year.  It likely depicts the same incident he describes later as the situation of his 'Scream" work. He says he was unspeakably tired under a red sky, stopping on the bridge over the fjord. In a feeling of desperation, and as his friends continued to walk on he saw the vibrant sunset and the blue waters, and felt that nature itself was screaming out to him.









In 1893 he creates his first version of "The Scream" in a pastel drawing.

He recreates the piece in 1895 as a pastel again, and then in various other media over the coming years.   The 1893 version is shown here.   The '95 was sold recently for almost $120M.  The rest of the versions remain in Norwegian museums where they are apparently periodically stolen, with minor damage.

While Munch later describes himself as "quite mad" for several years after this period, he still manages to produce interesting pieces.  This landscape of is from 1899 and is very evocative of a Monet sunset.

He has some exhibit success and positive regard from his shows.  He lives in Paris in the late 1890s - how could that not but have a positive affect on an artist? What a time to be alive, and what a place to be.  He returns to Norway, and travels to Italy, and has a somewhat stable relationship. Spoiler alert - it doesn't last, ends badly, with rivalries, gunshots and and injured fingers, apparently, in the process.

But still some interesting work. Isn't it always the way with troubled artists.  His portrait of a Fisherman in 1902 is an interesting work. The colours and light are quite engaging.

He had both popular and financial success with pieces depicting a sick child as well.











I also enjoyed this landscape from 1903 of "The Forest" where he seems to feel something akin to what Emily Carr puts into her work in the decade that follows.











Following this are even more troubled years for the artist, with heavy drinking and brawling a part of his life, and continued descriptions of paranoia, but finally some concerted attention to therapy as well. There are somewhat positive results with treatment in Munich and a return to Norway in '09 sees an improvement in his ability to work.

Edvard Munch continues to interweave works of despair and angst in works like "Nude I" in 1913 and "The Murderer" of 1910 with more pastoral scenes of workers in a forest (The Lumberjack 1913) and "History" from 1911.

The first war is difficult for him, with mixed loyalties between his love for France and friends in Germany.   He contracts, but survives the pandemic Spanish Flu of 1918. 

I like his work "The Wave" from 1921 particularly.  He captures still sometime malevolent in a strong onshore wind, but also the dazzling colour of the landscape.


Munch lives to 1944 and dies in

Monday Morning Art #19 - Emily Carr

I wonder what it would've been like to pop into Emily Carr's home in Victoria in the late 1930s?  I suspect she was a curmudgeonly old lady.  Born in 1871 (her birthday by wild coincidence was yesterday).   Then again, as her health waned, and her effort turned to writing, the results were very sensitive and thoughtful pieces, so perhaps she was a kindly old soul.

Regardless, the works she created were never devoid of emotion and power.   Working through the end of Post Impressionist influences into a modernist, at times surrealist feel, she holds a valued place in Canadian art.  Usually 'Monday Morning Art' starts with a bit of mystery, and a 'can you guess this artist' query.   Not much challenge at guessing this artist.

To launch the tweet stream under that hashtag, I led with perhaps her most Van Gogh-esque piece to throw the viewers off a little bit.

This image at left is her "Above the Gravel Pit" from 1937. A bit strange that this piece is so similar to a Vincent work, that late in her painting career.  Would have expected that much earlier, perhaps while she studied in France?

Getting ahead of myself, perhaps.  Let's look at her life in painting.

 Carr really has two periods of painting in her life.  In her early years, after some time studying art in San Francisco as a teen,  she went off to live in England for 8 years, and a couple of years painting in France as well.  The influence of Cezanne was strong in her Parisian circle of friends.  Perhaps not a surprise in this Breton Church piece (1906).

Carr returns to Canada permanently in 1911.

Her early work had already turned to depicting scenes from aboriginal villages and vestiges in the British Columbian province of her home.   

An interesting element of her depictions of the aboriginal presence in the landscape is how the totem poles and villages appear to fit into their environs.  There's a sense of harmony, for example in this piece " Totem Walk at Sitka" (1907) where the totem poles alternate with tree trunks along the forest path.

The totem poles among a village at "Gitwangak, Queen Charlotte Islands" (1912) depicts the figures of the carved totems in harmony with the residents of the space, under a living sky, in vibrant colours clearly influenced by the post impressionist perspective.  







Indian Church, 1929 shows another perspective. The western church sits in a foreboding and over-powering forest.  One gets the sense that the building exists almost ephemerally in its landscape and overpowered by the rain forest, which could erase it at its slightest whim.












When people showed little enthusiasm for her modernist-leaning pieces, she mostly gave up painting for a time, between about 1913 and 1927.

But, perhaps my favourite work from Emily Carr comes from during that time. Her "Arbutus Tree" (1922) captures a great sense of the unique BC landscape, arching over the tiny elements of the local humans.

When I visited the province it was the arbutus tree that was one of my memorable moments, seeing the orange-fleshed forms along the road in the sunlight was a special part of the experience.

When encouraged to start showing again in 1927, she had a bigger impact than she had earlier experienced. This was especially so when she gained attention of the National Gallery in an exhibit of west-coast art.  Making contact with Lawren Harris and others in the  Group of Seven Canadian artists was also a big influence.   

Perhaps it was Harris' influence that had her gradually evolve into broader landscape subjects, and there is certainly some cross-fertilization evident in the work in this latter period of her life.

One British analyst considering a recent prominent exhibit in London had an interesting point to make.  She is not a pretty artist, was his point.  True, there is a malevolence in some of this work that almost makes more sense with our modern perspective of humanity's impact on the natural environment.

Her "The Mountain" from 1933 captures a bit of this.  With the tiny village below the looming mass of the landscape.  This one makes me think a bit of the "Frank Slide" of 1903, and how the planet can erase the presence of humans with the slightest shrug.



Her health waned with heart attacks in '37 and '39, and strokes shortly thereafter.  Carr's efforts turned to writing in the early '40s, with several well-regarded works produced both then and posthumously.  (Carr's "Book of Small" for example.)

Emily Carr died in 1945 at the age of 73.

Well known and respected across Canada in the late 20th century and beyond, recent sales of her works command millions of dollars at auction.

Monday Morning Art #18 - Paul Klee

The early 20th century is such a dramatic time for art. Perhaps the most change-filled era in the entire history of art.  All the rules are broken. Indeed, pushing the boundaries of what is art and what are the boundaries seems to be at the core of the change.  Surely the two World Wars are pivotal in that.   The inter-war period is full of agony at the losses of the first war, hope for the future, then foreboding of what was yet to come.

In this era Swiss-German painter Paul Klee emerges.  Originally pushed towards music, by his music-teacher father, and singer mother, the compulsively sketching youth evolves into a pivotal figure in visual art.

He's 21 at the turn of the century, just completing a fine arts degree in Munich, and then moves off with friends to study the old masters in Italy.

After a few years of carousing he marries, and then fails at being a magazine illustrator.  Said to struggle with successful use of colour, Klee will later have a pivotal experience to suddenly make it work for him.   "The Artist at the Window" is a 1909 self-portrait I quite like from his early work.  It's recognizably him, but has layer of distortion and focuses on the interplay of dark and light more than the forms.

When he joins another publication, he there meets Wassily Kandinsky and a key piece of the Klee future is in place.  Kandinsky's strength in abstraction, and pushing the boundaries of art, is influential on many artists, let alone those close to him.

Klee delves further into the abstract. Remember we're at the end of the impressionist era, and moving parallel to the more broadly pleasing and populist Art Nouveau that emerged from the commercial art of the time

In 1914 Klee has a pivotal trip to Tunis and is inspired by the light and colour of the place that quickly takes over his life. 

"Color has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it, I know that it has hold of me forever... Color and I are one. I am a painter." - a pithy quote attributed to the artist, gleaned from Wikipedia.

His piece "In the style of Kairouan" is the first that comes out of that experience.

In the first war he is conscripted into the German infantry, but his work continues to explore the abstract.

A well known piece of his emerges in his military years - this one is "The death of the Idea" from 1915.   Interesting too, is that while Klee avoids combat, he is involved in painting camouflage on airplanes.  Another influence, perhaps, on his style?


I wonder too about the influence of Klee's sense of identity on his art.  Even though born in Switzerland he isn't granted citizenship until after his death.  In his genre, not too far removed from what we'd today sometimes call "outsider art," one wonders if that disconnection with one's homeland is a key element.




He works at the famous Bauhaus school with Kandinsky for a decade, and there works with bookbinding, stained glass, and mural workshops. 

The stained-glass connection is one I see constantly in his work.  From the vibrant light-infused colours to the heavy contours. 

His "Woman in a Peasant Dress" at right, is a 1940 work, the last year of his life, but is very indicative of his stained-glass-like pieces. 






And the prescient Klee creates a piece called "The Twittering Machine" from 1922.   How can I help but post this picture to Twitter?   Turn the crank and we tweet, retweet and like?



Klee was experimental with his media as well. Using both watercolours and oils in a single piece, but also things like jute, and wallpaper paste and newsprint.

His sense of exploration and capturing child-like simplicity while layering in profound ideas of life, death and society are often commented upon in analyses.  At the end of the day though, abstract art, and naive art in particular is in the eye of the beholder.  It is, for some, easy to dismiss an abstract piece as simplistic, but this is the perennial criticism of work that is fundamental and game-changing. 

Once it has been created, it seems obvious and (on the surface) even trivial. However the ability of the artist to conceive the work, and present it to us, and the fact that nobody had previous had 'that' to say, is where the depth and talent is embodied.



In the lead up to WWII, experimental and abstract art is not well received by Hitler's minions. With the rise of Nazis power, Klee's art is branded "degenerate" by the ever-tolerant and pleasant powers that be.  More than 100 of his works were siezed by the Nazis. 


The three-panel piece in vibrant oranges and earth tones is "Temple Gardens" from 1920.  The landscape elements and buildings are only hinted at here.  It's colour and geometry that take centre stage.  The colours are again vibrant and probably representative of the setting sun's light.   The colours too might remind one of a Cezanne landscape or Gaugain's depictions of sunlit scenes in Tahiti.





Perhaps my favourite piece from Klee is his "Characters in Yellow" (1937) shown a the left.

These look to me like Japanese characters and in that the work is rather suggests to the European audience anyway - look, here is something that is using a new vocabulary.

It's a visual vocabulary of colour and shape. Or at least the building blocks of a vocabulary, like the letters which build a word or a phrase.  The palette of warm oranges and yellows contrasting with the black lines (more stained-glass influences?) and say something different than if he used another part of the colour spectrum, and chose other characters. What the colours say to you, and what the characters say to someone else, each viewer is different, and brings a different set of experience, culture and knowledge to a situation.



 
Clothing manufacturers for years have borrowed from the Klee body of work. Probably almost as much as they do from Mondrian.


The other, related, thing that keeps striking me is that his art should be adopted by a quilt manufacturer.   Indeed, modern quilt makers are often rather decent artists in their own genre.  The colour, abstraction and geometry used by Klee a century ago must surely appeal to people that work in that art form.

There are many examples I'd like to pull up around my ears on a cold night.  At left is "Red Balloon" from 1922


Klee dies in 1940, from an degenerative tissue disease that gradually saps his strength and ends his life.  He still creates some important pieces in his final year.   His music-teacher father also died that year, I notice, though I don't see any detail about the timing between the two events.

Paul Klee's  "Chosen Site" from 1940 is another strong piece from his final year.  A landscape composed of the sorts of forms and colours he explored in earlier years and a heavy red sun at the end of the day perhaps.  His colours are much more muted here, from those years of glowing vibrant stained-glass-like compositions.

Klee leaves an amazing legacy - a large number of completed pieces and a style that continually evolved.  One has the sense of flood of inspiration that he would never manage to get through exploring before time ran out.

Monday Morning Art #17 - Jackson Pollack

Over a short, energy-filled career, Jackson Pollack evolved quickly from swirling representational creations into abstract explosions of colour and texture.  Through the late 40s and the first couple of years of the next decade, he created works that are quickly recognizable as his, even by those with only a passing familiarity with his work.

 His 1935 piece "Going West" is a swirling mid-ground between a Van Gogh and an Elvis-on-Black-Velvet.  The range of values is interesting, though, from very dark blacks to the glowing moon, and highlights on the horses. We'll see elements of this later.




 He also does some work that shows influences perhaps of Kandinsky and Klee. This piece is called "Blue Moby Dick" (1943).

His style here has elements of naive, surrealist and abstract.  Here's an untitled Kandinsky from about 1910, for an interesting comparison.










But the exploration - or perhaps evolution - of style continues. This untitled piece as well is an interesting one.  The palette, the shapes, and movement.  


 While I'm playing this-looks-like-that, I'll note that that one reminds me of Marcell Duchamp's Sad Young Man on a Train, shown below, on the right:





 











Pollack gets into a full-on rejection of careful brush strokes on an easel-mounted canvas, and gets into his energetic, full-contact painting method.  Canvases on the floor and paint flying, he creates works with depth, and motion and colour that manage to engage and appeal.

The piece above is his "Lucifer" from 1947.  Best seen large (click on it for bigger) and in-person, but even at this on-screen version you can see some of the depth and malevolence in the spider-web-like black and the tendrils of plant-like green.

He gradually abandons naming in favour of numbering. An understandable position as he lets the viewer decide what is represented.

Here is his Number 5, from 1948.  Again, a very small reproduction here. Hopefully it looks pretty good on your screen.

















There are a bunch of more pieces I'd love to share here, but doing them justice requires making them rather large, so perhaps I'll not get too carried away.

It's worth searching your favourite image search engine for more pieces, or click a few of the links here for some of my favourites, like his "Convergence" or "Full Fathom Five" or "Shimmering Substance."

A late work, his "Portrait and a Dream" is also notable in that it signals perhaps the beginning of another phase in the artists direction. One that sadly wouldn't have time to develop before his exit.

That late piece "Portrait and a Dream" was finished in - 1953.  Here's an (NPR) photo of the artist, and painter Lee Krasner (also an artist), and a guy with a pipe, looking at the finished work.

Also interesting, and tragic, is that Pollack had been exploring sculpture as a medium in the mid 50s as he approached his tragic end.  He was only 44 years old when he foolishly lost it all by driving drunk, killing himself and a friend in the process.  A mistress survived the one-car accident and (at last notice) was still alive in 2015.

I'll wrap up with perhaps my favourite piece, his "The Deep" from 1953.   For me, it's a look through  frosted pine trees or perhaps into a deep glacial crevasse.

Monday Morning Art #16 - René Magritte

"Everything we see hides another thing." -René Magritte

Quickly moving through Impressionism to Cubism in his early years, Belgian artist René Magritte is an icon of the Surrealist movement.

Magritte comes from a troubled childhood, with the suicide of his mother when he was 12, and then the First World War in his mid-teens. These troubled years feed into his work for the rest of his life, questioning reality, how we see the world, how people interact, and the very meaning of art and painting.

Drawing a lot as a child, it becomes his vocation. After serving in the post-WWI infantry, he becomes a draughtsman in a wallpaper factory in his early twenties, and works later designing advertising and posters.

This very cubist influenced work here, is from 1923, entitled 'Youth.'  This was created shortly after his military service.

Magritte's commercial art origin is not unusual for iconic artists, it seems. The demands of commercial work seem to do something to focus the artist's composition, and teach them to pack a lot of content into simply structured images, that can make an impression quickly.

An important skill in a successful artist is when they can depict that a depth beyond a first impressions.  A work becomes even more impactful when it challenges us to question what we see in the painting and even the 'ordinary' world around us.

This piece at the left is entitled "Modern" and places a figure in an abstracted urban scene.  A somewhat unsettled pose seems understandable from a twenty-something finding his way in the inter-war period in Belgium.

His work continues to explore what reality is. Deconstructing the perceived veneers of the world around us.   From layers of reality stripped away, as shown below. Other pieces depict foreboding eagle shapes in enormous looming mountains in his late 1930s work.





This piece from 1926 is called "Popular Panorama" and depicts cutaway layers of reality that illustrate a separation of peaceful - yet somewhat ominous - natural environments separated from the modern world in which we all live.

By the 1930s Magritte has mostly found his trade-mark style. Crisp realist, somewhat flat, portrayals of reality, with a twist to make us question how we look at the world.

He plays with our perception of how art fits into our lives and what purpose it serves for us.  He finds that a landscape devoid of figures can ask us as much about how we live in our environs as another asks with a figure placed prominently within it.



Magritte's 1933 work called "The Human Condition" considers how we look at the world through art.  He has a number of pieces that depict a pastoral view recreated in a realistic painting, yet situated in the very environment in which it was created.  Perhaps a bit of a jab at landscape painters and realists?  Was that view edited perhaps? Are we really seeing reality, just because it seems like a faithful reproduction?

"Why do we choose to capture the world on a canvas as it actually is, rather than just look at it in real life?" he seems to ask.  Where is the challenge? How are we examining the human condition when our art is just pastoral landscapes?

As early as 1927, Magritte begins with his questioning of what we see and feel. In his "Interpretation of Dreams" piece he seems to do that.

I disagree with some reviewers' claims that he was exploring how objects connect with disparate things in our lives.  I see this piece instead making a jab at pop-psychology and psychoanalysis.  These random items, with their incongruous labels,  as if in a museum display case, evoke a disbelief somewhat similar to that a skeptic feels hearing about Freudian dream interpretation.   

You dreamt about a leaf perhaps? Well that represents a table in your life. A briefcase? That's the sky.  A sponge? Well that's just a sponge.  Wasn't it Freud that said "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar?"

As war approaches, the foreboding creeps into his work.  In one piece, that gets later recreated in many variant forms, large, oppressive mountains loom over the scene, with small eggs or other objects sitting on a building ledge in the foreground.



Perhaps his most foreboding piece is "Black Flag" created in 1937.  Somewhat referencing the Futurism of the early 20th century, but hinting too at dark days to come.



Magritte remains in Nazi-occupied Brussels during WWII, evolving his work into somewhat less attention-drawing period sometimes dubbed his "Renoir" period, with some very similarly styled pieces, yet still with that surrealist edge.

A theme in many of his war-period pieces is the use of birds.  Owls are depicted, as are doves in flight. The imagery in those subjects is suggestive - quiet watchful waiting;  the yearning to be free. An optimism even, particularly in the late war years.

In the post war period Magritte seems to pick up where he left off, making us question reality. Asking too, perhaps, why do we believe what we are fed in the art and media around us.  For an advertising/poster guy living through a propaganda-filled period, this question must be a dominant topic during the war.

One of Magritte's most discussed messages is embodied in his famous "This is not a pipe" statement, with a crisp depiction of a pipe.

But that's absurd, his audience exclaimed, it's clearly a pipe.  When pressed with that, his reply was simply, "well try to put some tobacco into it."  

Again he challenges us with the question of what is reality. What are these things we call paintings, and why do we choose to depict the things we do.  More importantly, why do we accept the things we are told in various media to be true or real at all?

Magritte continues to place figures in his views of our world, and continues to obscure the faces.  Not only does this create mystery about identity but allows us to perhaps put ourselves into the image.  We ask who are we, and how do we fit into this (on the surface) familiar world.  "Everything we see hides some other thing," he says.



Perhaps Magritte's most iconic artistic element, or device, is his man-in-the-bowler-hat.  It seems he first appears around 1951, with the piece "Pandora's Box" where the figure crosses an urban bridge, with a the lure of a perfect white rose just in front of him.  The title suggests that what he will find on the other side of the bridge is not what he might expect.

Many depictions of our bowler-hatted friend appear in subsequent years.  Turned the other way, or with his face obscured by flowers or fruit, he shows up time and again.  Clearly a device that resonated with Magritte and his public.  Most exhibitions to this day feature this element.

This piece is "Decalcomania" from 1966. 

René Magritte died in his native Belgium at 68 years old, in 1967.

Monday Morning Art #15 - Ivan Kramskoy

During the mid-to-late 19th century there was a portraitist of prodigious skill.  Perhaps 100 years before his time, or maybe a Russian Vermeer?  Ivan Kramskoy was part of the group known as the Itinerants, intellectual, activist artists who valued realism in their work, and achieved a high level of proficiency.

Kramskoy's portraits really shine, but he depicted some people in the natural environment as well.  This view of a lady named Vera Tretyakov walking a forest path is an interesting picture to lead with.  It is, in someways, a contrast to the portraiture for which Kramskoy really shines. But there are some parallel skills shown here. The ability to capture the light and atmosphere of the space under the vegetation with an economy of strokes, for example.  If the artist had been more taken with landscape as his focus, it would have been interesting to see where it would lead.

Indeed in the Itinerants group, several members feature figures in the landscape, though the figures are usually more dominant centres of attention, and the landscapes, while faithfully rendered, are not as atmospheric or 'magical' as Kramskoy's. 


The subjects in his landscape settings somehow capture subtle a sense of movement, too.  You almost expect an arm to lift or a head to turn.



His colour palette is usually consistent as well.  The translucent green of sun-through-leaves appears to be a favourite.

This piece, a couple On Balcony at Siverskaya (1883) not only captures the summer's day well, it reminds me that the mowed-lawn is much more of a modern obsession.  They are people living in the landscape rather than dominating it.




Looking at the other members of the Itinerants for a moment, there are many who deserve attention.  One notable is the artist Ilia Repin who did large, slightly over-the-top, Cecil B. DeMillesque tableaux.   Moments in history, migrating peasants, labouring hoards, that sort of thing.  Quite pleasant to look at and note the complex, multitudes each with their own expression and activity.


There's also, the engaging Valentin Serov who was a skilled portraitist in his own right. Serov perhaps even incorporates more personality in his works, embracing the free feeling of a quick sketch into his finished works.  Certainly he captured a wider range of emotions, often joyous ones too, if not an equal depth to that Kramskoy captured. (A future Monday Morning feature?) But one cannot deny the striking gravitas of a Kramskoy portrait over all others.

This portrait of Dr Rauhfus (1887) is one that perhaps has some of the feel of Serov, in its contrast of roughly sketched, and precisely completed elements. (Or maybe it was just unfinished ;)





In the 20th century there was the Photorealism movement, born out of Pop Art in which Kramskoy and Repin and some of their Itinerant contemporaries would have felt at home.


I don't have a good sense of Kramskoy's biography. It's clear he spent some formative years in France, as he has a handful of landscapes around Paris. The 18th and 19th century Russian love affair with all things French can easily explain that.  The influence on his work comes through clearly though as well.

The French landscape painters of the mid 19th century were still doing classical pieces full of mythology and religion, but would lay the groundwork for impressionists like Cezanne, Seurat and Monet.  Kramskoy seems to have picked up on some of that. And while his portraits are near photo realistic, his landscapes have an ethereal quality, and interpretation that his people do not.  They look to my eye like he may have been on to something, but didn't really develop it, as portraiture consumed him.

Now on to his portraits. There are two very arresting pieces that first brought my attention to Kramskoy.  First was his self-portrait of 1867.  Many his self-portraits are very good.  He may be, at least to my taste, among the greatest self-portraitists in history.

In this piece of the artist at thirty years old, one can easily imagine him as a contemporary figure.  Here, as in all his male portraits, Kramskoy shows a mastery of hair.  The big bushy beards of peasants and working class (see further below) are always meticulously and captured. I find it interesting that he could master such a photo-realistic approach to beards and tousled hair, yet works with such an economy of strokes and an impressionist feel with vegetation.  Both are surely of equal complexity.  The latter, I suppose, is more forgiving in terms of criticism by the viewer?




Oh the second of his most arresting portraits on my list,  among his best, are two 1883 portraits of the same unknown woman shown below. 












This first one seems to be more of a sketch for a later finished work, which I've also included here, below.  The expression in the sketch is a bit more natural and sympathetic. There is a more natural colour in her cheeks from the cold, and her hair pulled up out of the way, but there doesn't seem to be a hat involved.

A different facial expression now. Similar, but now a little more haughty. Her makeup a bit more powdered and formal, and clothing more dressy as well.  She's headed for the opera, perhaps?  The setting and face seem rather French to me, but who knows.  Could just be that on-going obsession with Parisien culture.

Let's go extra-large for this formatting, and let it spill over the template a bit so we can enjoy the misty setting more easily.

A smattering of other portraits to include now to convey Kramskoy's best.  Two other stand-outs are these that follow, depicting the lower-echelons of Russian society.   As an activist artist and intellectual, born into humble means, he shows an affinity to the common people.  We all know where the outrage at the plight of poor Russian peasants leads in the next couple of generations. 

The Peasant from 1868 gives us a humble looking fellow with a prodigious beard.  His hair looks like he may just have taken a moment to wet his hand and flatten out the unruly locks before the painting was 'snapped.'  The beard belies his years, the coarse clothing his station and facing the difficult elements.

There's colour in his lower face from working in the sun and wind, and a bright forehead from a heavy hat.

His eyes look at us, but glaze a bit as he waits for the painting work to be finished.  His mind wanders, we can see a little bit into his soul.

 The Miller from 1873 shows an older fellow. He doesn't look at us, but rather gazes off across the room.

His rough coat is still cinched up tight over his girth.  He didn't get a lot of sleep last night. He's getting on in years and the heavy work of the mill is probably wearing on his old bones.

This and the previous subject with their rough hair, the scraggly beards, and rudimentary clothing, are Kramskoy's forté.  You can feel the connection with these people that are part of his activist nature.



A final piece with a similar ability to capture expression and depth.  May I introduce you to Ekatarina Kornilova, or at least as she appeared in 1880.

Kramskoy is in his early forties at this point.  Ekatarina seems a little nonplussed at sitting so long for her portrait.  She's putting on a brave smile occasionally, but mostly a bit tired of the chair.  Kramskoy captures her 'in-between' face, showing us a bit of the fatigue, and eyes that are at one moment meeting ours, then at the next drifting down slightly to our right.



Kramskoy only lives to be 49 years old. Perhaps not unusual for the mid 19th century.  He dies in St. Petersburg in 1887.  He leaves a lot of crisp, engaging portraits that are as good as any we will ever see.