Reading Venus by Delphin Enjolras

The lovely and talented author, Scarlett Knight, has made an excellent resolution to read a proper book (not from a screen) for an hour a day. I am as guilty as most, these days, of reading things on my Kindle and although it is very useful, especially when travelling, I do sometime feel guilty about possessing such a characterless digital device. I sometimes used to travel in the company of a senior banker from one of the UK’s major banks, and he always was reading from a vintage hardback edition of something. I was most impressed by this!  

There really is no substitute for a physical book and recently I bought the first three volumes of Ian Fleming's James Bond books, in lovely editions by The Folio Society, who still produce properly made and beautiful books.  Hopefully, they will do all of Fleming's Bond books with illustrations by retro-style English artist Fay Dalton. 

Delphin Enjolras (1857-1945) originally started as a landscape painter before focussing almost exclusively on his favourite subject of women, usually depicted naked and lit in interesting ways. When I read Scarlett's post this picture of a woman reading, her light draped in a red transparent fabric, lolling naked except for a flimsy wrap on a polar bear skin, sprang immediately to mind!  More of Enjolras' work another time.

Reading Vemus: La Liseuse by Jean-Jacques Henner

Here is nice reading Venus in the delightfully redheaded form of La Liseuse ( The reader) by French painter Jean-Jacques Henner (1829-1905). We don't know exactly when he painted this but it was some time between 1880 and 1890. It is a lot looser and more informal than his earlier academic nudes. Henner was a great teacher and set up a special school for women painters in 1874, as they were not permitted to join the École des Beaux-Arts until 1897. Some of these women painters became his models. One of these was Dorothy Tennant, a talented painter in her own right, who had also studied under Edward Poynter. She later married the explorer Henry Morton Stanley and became Lady Stanley when he was knighted in 1899.