Sunday 31 December 2017

Masturbating Venuses by Albert Marquet



These simple but sensual  line drawings are by the French artist Albert Marquet (1875-1947), so they entered the public domain yesterday.  Born in Bordeaux, he moved to Paris at the age of fifteen, to attend the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, where he was a roommate of Matisse, with whom he became a lifelong friend.   




Although usually called a Fauvist. his paintings were less violent in colour and more naturalistic.  Based in Paris, he travelled widely to North Africa, Italy and Northern Europe, painting his favourite subject; rivers and coastal scenes.




He also painted some nudes and produced a number of erotic sketches, such as these masturbating girls and the girl spreading her thighs.  We will look at his other erotic work on The Seduction of Venus another time.





In the top picture and the one immediately above, Marquet's lady is well into the throes of passion here, her delicate frigging causing her to cover her eyes in ecstasy.



Saturday 23 December 2017

Festive Venus by Raphael Kirchner





Well, it is the first Christmas for my reincarnated Venus Observations blog, so it is back just over a hundred years for this festive filly with her load of mistletoe by Austrian artist Raphael Kirchner (1876-1917).  Kirchner produced some of the earliest pin up paintings, many of which were produced as postcards and were popular with troops during the Great War.  He was a direct influence on Alberto Vargas who went on to produce famous pinups for Esquire and Playboy.

I will look at some more of Kirchner's elegant ladies in the new year.  Thanks to all those readers who have followed me here and I hope you all get some Christmas kisses!

Wednesday 20 December 2017

Swedish Venus: Model Writing Postcards by Carl Larsson


Model Writing Postcards (1906)


Here is a lovely watercolour by influential Swedish painter Carl Larsson.  It is a lovely image of a model taking a break from posing to write some postcards (the emails of the day - Europeans sent huge numbers of postcards to each other at the beginning of the twentieth century).


The Model on the Table (1906)



In the foreground can be seen another painting by Larsson, Model on the Table, which depicts a real (perhaps the same) model posing on a table with a couple of mannequins.



Reclining Nude on Blue Sofa


Carl Larsson (1853-1919) was brought up in a very poor family and his scholarship from a special poor school to the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts provided him with a real escape from an unsettled and unpleasant childhood.  While studying in Stockholm he also worked as a caricaturist and graphic artist for several  Swedish newspapers, earning enough to support his destitute parents.


Nude with grapes (1872)


Larsson had already developed a facility for drawing the nude and earned a medal from the Academy for his nude drawing.  This example, done when he was nineteen, shows an idealised classical style, so different from his later, realistic, illustrative style.


Karin Larsson



After several years working as a book illustrator, he moved to Paris but did not get on with the French artistic scene. In 1882 he moved to Grez-sur-Loing, a Scandinavian artists' colony outside Paris and developed his distinctive watercolour style.  It was there that he met his future wife, another artist,  the beautiful and talented, Karin Bergöö. They got married the following year and their first child (of eight) was born the year after that.  


Leontine, Bare Backed Sitting in the Studio (1902)


Leontine standing (1902)


They returned to Sweden and, luckily for them, Karin's father was a wealthy businessman who bought them a cottage in the village of Sundborn, where her father had been born..  The couple decorated it themselves in a mixture of British Arts and Crafts style (they subscribed to The Studio, the movement's magazine), Swedish folk design and Japanese style, influenced by the popular prints of the time.  The biggest influence, however, was Karin who employed her artistic skills to design and weave fabrics for the house.  She also designed furniture, working with local craftsmen.  Eschewing the usual gloomy, dark Swedish style of the time they created a home full of light and colour.  


Rose and Back






Lisa with Flower Pot (1910)


My Wife


The English style, wild garden was becoming popular in Sweden at the time and gardens became places to relax and enjoy the outdoors rather than just somewhere to grow vegetables. Karin loved her garden and her flower arrangements often appear in Carl's paintings (as in the right of Model Reading Postcards).


When the Children Have Gone to Bed (1895)


It was also Karin who gave Carl the idea of doing paintings of the interiors of their house and these pictures were released as prints and in books.  The first of these, Ett Hem (A home), published in 1898, is still in print today. It was the technological developments in colour printing, from 1890, which enabled Larsson to produce prints and albums of his work, enhancing his reputation, considerably.









In 1909 a German publisher produced another book of his work called Das Haus in der Sonne featuring Larsson's drawings and paintings of  their house.  It sold 40,000 copies in three months and since then has been reprinted more than 40 times.  It showcased the Larsson's ideas about interior decoration to the world.



Larsson's House in the Sun


The Larsson's house, Lilla Hyttnäs, today (the part of the house in the painting is at the far left)


This book created the new 'Swedish Style' which has been so influential on interior designers ever since.  Every time you see painted old furniture or blue or green pastel painted wooden walls in someone's house it is because of the Larssons. The Larsson's house became so famous that people came to visit it as tourists.  Their home, preserved as it was, in still owned by their family and is now open to the public in the summer.  It receives about 60,000 visitors a year.


Girl crouching (1911)




Apart from his nudes and interior studies Larsson was a wonderful portraitist, often using his children as subjects.  He also produced book illustrations, landscapes and other pictures of the village and countryside where he lived.





Midvinterblot (1914)




Despite the popularity of his domestic interior watercolours, Larsson believed that his own best works were his large murals.  He had produced three of these for the Swedish National Museum's interior but the final one, which he considered his masterpiece, Midvinterblot (Midsummer Sacrifice), was rejected by the museum's board.  The controversy split the Swedish art establishment and even the government became involved.  The rejection of the picture hit Larsson hard and he suffered from bouts of depression.  The historical subject was considered not appropriate for Sweden's new modern view of itself at the time. Eventually, it was sold to a Japanese collector in 1987 who then lent it back to the National Museum where it became rehabilitated in the eyes of the Swedish public.  Eventually, the museum raised the money to buy it back and it was installed in the place it was designed for.










During the time he was painting Midvinterblot, Larsson started to suffer with eye problems and headaches. He concentrated on finishing his memoirs and died in February 1919.  In his posthumously published memoirs he acknowledged that his domestic pictures were really the ultimate expression of his personality and his love for his family.



In front of the Mirror (1898)




The copyright on his published pictures expired in 1969 and from this point his pictures were distributed widely, building his and Karin's reputation and that of Swedish Style, to where it is today.  Now you can buy Carl Larsson colouring books and calendars.



Carl and Karin Larsson

Tuesday 12 December 2017

Three vintage Venuses



Although I am continuing to repopulate the new Venus Observations with recovered art and early photography posts from the past, it is nice to be able to pop in a new one once in a while.  This photograph of three enticing ladies probably dates back to around the mid nineteen twenties, when short hair became the fashion (although in the early part of the decade women risked social opprobrium by cutting their hair).  The middle lady has her fingers under the other girls' groins but there is no contact.

Sunday 10 December 2017

Venus by the sea: In the Water by Eugene de Blaas




 In the Water (1914)


Here is a nice one-off nude by Italian-born, Austrian painter Eugene de Blaas (1843-1932).  Blaas was born in Albano, near Rome, but spent much of his life in Venice where his father, who was also his original art tutor, was a professor at the Venice Academy.  Tourists visiting Venice wanted pictures of Venetian life and Blaas soon found a niche supplying pictures of gondoliers, fishermen and, above all, Venetian beauties in traditional costume.  His work was so popular in England two of the top art dealers of the time battled it out to represent him.


The Water Carrier (1908)



Sadly, this elegant nude, treading carefully in the shallows as a small shoal of fish darts past her legs, seems to be the only one that he did.  In all his other paintings, despite often displaying a smouldering Italian sensuality, his girls are clothed.  A lost opportunity, but perhaps for Blaas, a very commercial artist, sex didn't sell at the beginning of the last century.'


Young Italian Beauty (1932)

Saturday 2 December 2017

Japanese Venus: Woman after the bath by Goyo Hashiguchi



Woman after the bath (1920)


If there is one artist who has been more influential than any other on Agent Triple P’s pen and ink figure work it is Goyo Hashiguchi (1880-1921). His restrained use of colour as a way to give his delicate line figures a solid presence on the paper are a model for subtle printmaking and demonstrate the extraordinary lengths he went to to produce the highest quality image.


Woman washing her face (1920)



Calling himself Goyo (real name Hashiguchi Kiyoshi), he was the son of a samurai from Kagoshima. His father taught him traditional Kano painting but eventually Goyo went to Tokyo where he studied Western art and graduated top of the class at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1905.  After graduating he was really more of a scholar than a practising artist although he did some book illustration. In 1911 he got his first big break: to design a ukiyo-e style poster for the Mitsukoshi department store.


Bathing (1915)


He came to the attention of publisher Watanabe Shozaburo who was looking for artists with European training to produce what he called shin hanga (new prints). These were modern prints but produced in a traditional style aimed at the valuable new Western market. Watanabe had also adoped the fairly new tradition from the west of limited edition numbered prints which could realise higher prices than the traditional non-limited edition. Watanbe realised that Goyo, with his Western style training, could be a valuable addition to his team. Goyo did produce one print, a masterpiece named Bathing (1915), for Watanabe but he was a perfectionist and felt that Watanabe’s standard of printmaking wasn’t high enough and never worked with him again. Also, having been trained in the Western method, Goyo may have appreciated more independence than Watanabe’s set up gave him; he was not the only artist to leave the publisher’s stable.

Nevertheless, his experience with Watanabe had got him interested in printmaking and he went on to supervise the production of a 12 volume book of reproductions of classical Japanese ukiyo-e prints which increased his knowledge of the printmaking process. From 1918, until his death at the age of 41, he produced 13 more prints, mainly of women (bijing-a).


Woman at a hot spring hotel (1921)


Goyo suffered from ill health most of his life (he had beri beri) and died of meningitis. Nevertheless, he managed to supervise his last print, Woman at a hot spring hotel (1921) from his death bed. His total output was only 14 prints (four landscapes, one picture of ducks and nine of beautiful women) during his lifetime, although after his death his brother and nephew worked to produce more prints from his sketches. As a result of his low output and small print runs (often less than 80 copies) his prints fetch fabulous sums these days.


Beautiful woman (1918)


Nudes had never really been a feature of Japanese art and even the most erotic Shunga art, produced by masters such as Utamaro or Hokusai (with the exception, which we will explore another time, of fisher girls), featured women who are invariably dressed. Goyo, however had learned to draw from life (as with this graphite drawing above) and his pictures can be regarded as the first successful nudes in Japanese art; perfectly pulling together the European and classical Japanese traditions.


Woman washing her hair (1920)



In our final picture, Goyo has sensuously depicted the woman’s long hair; something that would only usually be seen by a member of her family, as hair was always worn up in several buns at this time.  It adds an intimate and slightly voyeuristic quality to this beautifully composed print.

Saturday 4 November 2017

African Venus by Frank Buchser


Naked Slave with Tambourine (1880)

Agent Triple P is off to Africa for a week, tomorrow, so here is a painting of an African slave girl by Swiss artist Frank (born Franz) Buchser (1828-1890).  Buchser was born near Solothurn and at the age of eighteen was apprenticed to a piano builder, until he was discovered in bed with the piano builder's daughter.  He remained a  great womaniser.


He left Switzerland for Rome where he served as a Swiss Guard at the Vatican to fund his art studies.  He briefly served in Garibaldi's army in 1848.   In the next five years he studied art in Paris, Antwerp and Spain, where his art was really appreciated for the first time.

Spanish gypsy girl with mirror

.In 1858 he travelled to Morocco; a visit which would inspire him to paint some orientalist paintings like the African slave as well as some more conventional scenes where, as ever, he was particularly good at capturing light,

The sadness of Ireland

He spent some time in England and from 1866 to 1879 lived in America, when the Swiss government commissioned him to paint a memorial painting on the subject of the American Civil War (Switzerland had also recently had a civil war).  The painting was never completed but he painted portraits of Grant, Sherman and the last painting done from life of Robert E Lee.   He also painted some striking pictures of the American plains.
This African Slave now hangs in the Kunstmuseum in his home town of Solothurn, along with 80 of his other paintings.

More posts when I return...

Tuesday 31 October 2017

Halloween Venuses: Witches by Luis Ricardo Falero


Witches going to their Sabbath (1878)


This painting by the Andalusian artist Luis Ricardo Falero (1851-1896) is, without doubt, the greatest painting of witches!  Not only does it feature some of the most voluptuously gorgeous witches ever (the witch in the foreground could raise the dead) but it has bats, flying monsters, ghouls and a goat.


Witches going to their Sabbath, study


Falero studied in Paris (having walked there from Spain) giving up a position in the Spanish Navy.  He eventually settled in London and died there at the young age of forty-five.  


Study of a witch


Falero's painting almost always contained naked or near naked women and often in a fantastical way as with his witches.  Ignoring, on the whole, the wizened crones of earlier times, Falero's witches were all curvaceous, gorgeous women.


Festival of the Witches (1880)


Two points on broom etiquette can be noted in the two paintings above.  Firstly, the witches' brooms are shown as flying brush first, which was the normal way before the more recent rocket-like brush at the rear depiction.  Secondly, his witches avoid any tasteless, sitting astride the broomstick, poses.   In fact this witch is decorously riding side-saddle!

Sunday 22 October 2017

Venus as mistress: Yvonne Aubicque

Early Morning (1922)


This is an affectionate portrait of Yvonne Aubicque, the mistress of its Irish painter, Sir William Orpen (1878-1931), who has several fascinating stories connected to her.   Called, Early Morning it is a wonderful evocation of the pleasures of a mistress, as she sits surrounded by domestic detritus that indicates no great desire to leave her bed anytime soon.


William Orpen


William Orpen was born in Dublin and attended the Metropolitan School of Art there, to which he was admitted at the age of eleven, such was his natural skill. At the age of seventeen he moved to London to attend the  Slade School of Art.   Catching the attention of John Singer Sargent he rapidly became one of the country's top portrait painters.  Although he married and had three children he had a string of mistresses, many of whom modelled for him, despite constant worries about his own unattractiveness (caused, it is said, by overhearing his parents asking themselves why he was so ugly and their other children so attractive!).  



The Spy/ The Refugee I (1918)


In 1916, Orpen was appointed as an official war artist and carried on in this role after the war, where he was was the official painter of the Versailles treaty signing.  While in France, he fell head over heels for Yvonne Aubicque, the daughter of the Mayor of Lille, who he mat met in hospital, when suffering with blood poisoning, where she was working as a Red Cross volunteer.  He painted two portraits of her during the war but when he sent the paintings back to Britain he found himself in hot water, as official war artists were only supposed to paint pictures of military subjects. 


The Spy/The Refugee II (1917)


Even worse, he had called his pictures of her "The Spy" and claimed she was a German spy who had been executed by the French, no doubt in order to give it an acceptable "military" provenance.  However, the subject of female spies was sensitive at this period as English nurse Edith Cavell had been shot by the Germans for helping allied soldiers to escape and Mata Hari had also just been executed by the French.  Orpen found himself facing a court martial and had to confess that the paintings were of his mistress. One of Orpen's friends was Lord Beaverbrook, who was instrumental in preventing the court martial, although Orpen was severely reprimanded and only just hung on to his official war artist role.  Orpen changed the name of the pictures to The Refugee and, like his war paintings, they now belong to the Imperial War Museum in London.


The Beaverbrooke copy on the Antiques Roadshow


There is an interesting coda to this story.  In 2013 a man brought a picture along to the filming of the BBC show Antiques Roadshow, where members of the public bring along items and a panel of experts tell them about them.  It was a copy of Orpen's The Refugee I.  The owner had taken it to the Imperial War Musem who had said it was just a standard copy. He was not convinced, however, and was puzzled by the high quality of the picture and the fact it was signed Nepro Mailliw (William Orpen written backwards).  He discovered that in 1920 Orpen had gone back to France and painted another version of the painting for Lord Beaverbrook as a thank you for helping him escape the court martial.  The expert on the show confirmed that the picture was indeed a copy but was made by Orpen himself and was the long lost Beaverbrook version.  Much to the owner's shock, he valued it at £250,000.


Yvonne Aubicque in 1918


What happened to the lovely Yvonne?  She remained as Orpen's mistress for more than ten years; although he usually ran more than one mistress simultaneously.  When in France, after the war, he had bought a black Rolls-Royce and hired a sixteen year old called William Grover as his chauffeur.  Grover was the son of an English father and a French mother but had been born in France. He immediately took a fancy to Yvonne and she him.  You might expect all sorts of problems to follow but when Yvonne stopped being Orpen's mistress he gave her his Rolls-Royce and a large house in Paris.  Grover and Yvonne married in 1929.  Grover had always been keen on cars and motorcycles and had started to race motorcycles at the age of fifteen.  Worried about what his father might think, he used the pseudonym W Williams when he started to race. By 1926 he had graduated to car racing.  In 1928 he won the French Grand Prix and in 1929, in a British Racing Green Bugatti, he won the inaugural Monaco Grand Prix.  Now known as Grover-Williams he retired from racing to concentrate on business, including working for Bugatti and running a kennel where Yvonne bred Highland Terriers which she successfully showed at Crufts dog show, eventually becoming a judge there. They were a wealthy couple and, apparently, good dancers, winning several competitions.


Grover Williams leading the 1929 Monaco Grand Prix


With the German invasion of France Grover-Williams fled to Britain where, because of his fluency in both French and English, he was recruited into the Special Operations Executive where he was trained at their wartime base, the home of Lord Montague, Beaulieu in Hampshire, now, coincidentally, the site of the National Motor Museum.  Grover-Williams was dropped into France, with no contacts or support on the ground, and was instructed to set up a new resistance network in Paris, as the previous one had been compromised. Yvonne moved back to Paris as well, although she lived in their house in Rue Weber while he lived in a separate apartment.  He recruited two former fellow racing drivers and they began sabotage work, principally at the Citroen factory.  In August 1943 Grover-Williams was captured by the Germans as their network had been compromised and it was believed that he was interrogated by the Gestapo and shot almost immediately.


Reclining Woman.  Yvonne Aubicque by William Orpen


However, in the 1990's a different story emerged.  It looked as if Grover-Williams survived and was taken to a prison camp in Poland.  It then appears that he joined MI6 after the war.  Even more strangely, in 1948 a man called George Tambal turned up at Yvonne's house in Evreux and moved in with her. She introduced him as her cousin but the locals thought they acted more like lovers.  He claimed to have arrived from America via Uganda, bringing animals for the depleted zoos of Europe. Grover-Williams, it should be noted, had family in America and a sister in Uganda. Also, amazingly, Tambal's date of birth was exactly the same as Grover-Willams'. Tambal was very knowledgeable about motor cars and bore the scars of a beating around the head. 

No-one has ever proved it conclusively but it looks like Grover-Williams survived the war, joined MI6 (MI6 have admitted they know what happened to Grover-Willams but they won't say what) and then rejoined his wife in Evreux.  She died in 1973 and Tambal/Grover-Williams was killed in 1983, at the age of eighty, having been knocked off his bicycle by a car, ironically, driven by a German tourist.




Elements of this remarkable story were used by Robert Ryan in his novel Early One Morning in which a fictionalised version of Yvonne Aubicque appears as Eve Aubique.

Sir William Orpen died in Kensington in 1931, possibly from complications arising from syphilis, and at the time was probably the most famous artist in Britain.