What's
New
What's
New Page Spring 2002
April 7, 2002
Paintings
Added:
Daisy,
Princess of Pless Constance, Dutchess of Westmister
Undated
April 30, 2002
Paintings
Added:
I have struggled for the longest
time on how to best present Sargent's work at the Boston Public Library.
The following is my working thesis, you might say. There is more that needs
to be added in the way of explanation but here it is so far: The
Boston Public Library Murals
April 29, 2002
Paintings
Added:
Hercules
Constellation in Juxtaposition
April 25, 2002
Essay: Lady
Astor
Jill
Mullins ask about Portrait of Léon Delafosse's hands
April 24, 2002
My modus operandi
seems to be that I get bored working on something and then I just let it
sit for a while. The problem with this, of course, is nothing ever gets
done. One hell of a way to run a railroad.
There is a
lot of new over this month. I've been busy on some essays which
were fun. I'm not sure I even remember them all. But a few of the major
ones are
The real rewarding
things for me is hearing from other people. A sample of some are
Nicholas
F. Warner who is related to Boldini's Lady Decies. I think you will
enjoy his letter.
Matt
Davies wrote about Grace Elvina
Stephanie sent
me heads up about a Mark Borghi Fine Art featuring some Sargent work (listed
below)
And Wendy
& Gordon Hawksley who have been busy little beavers getting all manner
of information together for us. They sent me word about a Boldini
painting of JSS. I have never seen this image so this was wonderful.
They personally have an interest in a painter William
Bruce Ellis Ranken and they've found information that links him to
Sargent, they have also sent me a number of "Mug" portraits (more to come).
If you haven't noticed I'm trying to do breif bios of his close friends
etc.
Speaking of
other artists. I've added additionally William
Orpen (1878-1931) Irish painter and Alfred
William Parsons (1847-1920)
I apologies,
there is just a ton of stuff I'm leaving out but my feeble brain can't
remember them all. Anyway I need to get rolling. It's a beautiful spring
day out there
Everyone be
well.
Paintings
Added:
March 14, 2002
Paintings
Added:
March 12, 2002
"It's
all in how you look at things. You might say it's silly to go digging in
the graveyards of the internet for parts to use for some greater good.
You might think that nothing has changed, not one inch as moved in like
. . .. well, . .. forever. But you must have faith"
Natasha slumped against the chair.
The weight of fatigue pushed down on her tired shoulders. In a moment of
silence you heard the wolves howling outside.
"As I see it," she began anew, "it
is constantly growing project that just devours huge chucks of my time,
munching and gobbling as things are evolving, forming and growing. You'll
see . . . . . you'll see." The back of her hand lifted to her forehead
and her eyes closed slowly.
Suddenly she started upright, as
if by some fear of something forgotten, waving off some unfinished question
and turned to inspect her notes. Only minutes later did she resume
by looking up. "It has sent me frantically on one venture after another.
I can't tell you where and how far yet. You won't understand . . ..and
I want you to understand. You see that, don't you?"
Lightning struck the castle piercing
the darkness in a flash of blinding light followed by a booming clap. Natasha
turned and hunched over the keyboard typing furiously. Her white lab coat
soiled from trips out into the darkness and back again with always something
hidden in a box. Her hair tussled, unkept from countless times she's pulled
on it in frustration. Another sudden bolt ripped down into the lab making
you jump and sending the metal poles from high above, zapping, and sizzling
in huge arcing volts over the motionless lump on the table that was covered
by a sheet.
"So much to do," she yelled out over
the noise, "and so little time to do it in. I've pushed the what's new
entry back so far trying to finish just one major project." She pointed
aloft, "Just one project. That's all I wanted to finish -- Just one. But
I can't -- it's all so intricately linked to yet other paintings and yet
other personalities which you simply MUST know about in order for the original
project to be complete. Excuse me--"
She pushed past you, over to the
table and began pulling on the chain that slowly ratcheted the motionless
lump and table up towards the opening in the stormy sky above. The flashes
came quicker now and more violent, ripping across the sky. You heared the
wind churning the trees outside and loose papers flew off nearby tables
into little whirlwinds at your feet.
Natasha raised her voice to almost
a scream, the veins in her neck pressing out, her hair blew into her face
which she had to pull back. Still, you leaned forward to hear. "So, as
I was working one footnote begat another and before I knew it, here
it was two months later,"
Crash! Another lightning bolt.
"And there is such a mess of unfinished
webpages strung out that there is no way I can safely navigate back to
January." She stopped and thought, "In other words, I have no idea
what's new. . . . ."
"Wait! . . . Look!"
Crash!
A bolt sent the chains holding the
table shivering in convulsions all the way down to the cold wet stone floor.
Rain began pouring through the opening in the roof. Natasha jumped, with
the energy of a child over to the control panel to examine the blinking
lights and gages that fluttered madly. Long cylinder tubes filled with
gelatinous fluid began gurgling.
From high above you heared it, an
unholy moan emitting from the lump on the table. Natasha whirled around,
her eyes red and crazed. She grabbed your arm and pointed skyward towards
the ungodly thing (the website). You tried to see, but your face was pelted
by rain and couldn't.
"It's alive!" She
cried, her face wet and pasty white, "The Website lives, I
tell you!"
* * * *
Well, . . . .It didn't exactly
happen that way, but you get the idea. Here are some highlights of my rampage
across the internet.
Enjoy.
Paintings
Added:
Two
Girls on a Lawn 1889
Lady
Astor 1909
Duke
of Marlborough Family 1905
Brenva
Glacier, Purtud 1905
Sunset
at Cairo 1890-1891
John
Alfred Parsons Millet 1892-1893
Study
of A Nude Male 1899
Torsos
of Two Male Nudes 1919
Study
of a figure for Hell 1919
Reclining
Nude Figure 1919
Study
for a devil and victim in Judgement
1919
Study
for the fall of Gog and Magog
1915-1916
Bivouac
1911
Louis
de Fourcaud (1851-1914) 1883-1884
Mrs.
Katharine Moore 1883-1884
Jean
Guy de Poilloue, Vicomte de Saint Perier (Viscount of Saint Perier 1845-1885)
1883-1884
The
Viscountess of Poilloue of Saint-Perier (1850-1897)
1883-1884
Vespers
1909
Portrait
of Léon Delafosse 1899
Artist
Added:
Sargent's closest friend Paul
César Helleu (1859–1927) French drypoint etcher and painter.
The text is nowhere even close to being done.
And some more paintings added to
Giovanni
Boldini.
Forum
entries:
Linda
Hollander writes about her love affair with Dr. Samuel Jean Pozzi at
Home . . . .Did I just say that? I meant her love affair about researching
Dr. Samuel Jean Pozzi at Home.
Arthur
Saltzman writes about the painter Charles S. Hopkinson
William
Forward will be our . . . "forward" correspondent in Paris this
summer.
James
Tennison asks: when will "Late Portraits" be published?
Theodore
Frangulescu writes about his relations to Mrs. Louis E. Raphael
A
great Grandson writes about Ruth Sears Bacon
Geneva
Pepper writes about a possible connection to a painter James Thomas
Platt,
Deborah
Davis is writing a book on Madame X if you know anything let her know.
Shay writes about the Portrait
of Anita Thorne Corse Smith
Janice
Hingston sends her regards from Brookwood Cemetary
Last
but not least. . .
Theodore
Roosevelt The bully pulpit bullies Sargent -- natasha's
essay.
January 14, 2002
If you
are reading this, then I assume you made it into the New Year. That's not
a small accomplishment given the horrible events of the past year. But
2002 is going to be GREAT! As for myself and my site, the progress continues
on transferring files to my new website under JSSGallery.org -- MAN is
this taking a long time; and I've cleaned up a lot of broken links to my
thumbnail section; but enough of that. . . . . Borrrrrrrrrring!
The first order of business is to
let you know that if you currently have my site inform you of any changes
to the "What's New" page, you need to re-log your request because this
is a new "What's New" page.
New Years
brings old friends
It's nice to hear from old contacts
from time to time. A very quick public wave to Jennifer Savagdis whom I
haven't heard from in so very long! <soft hugs>
In March of 2000, Colette Illarde
was one of the early people to write me about my Sargent site. After such
a long time I heard back from her and she is this month's featured artist
-- see column left
 Speaking
of the American
Art magazine (as I did in my letter to Colette) this past fall the
magazine featured Madame X as their cover story called "Painting
Skin: John Singer Sargent's Madame X" by Susan Sidlauskas
In the Spring issue of 2001, there
was another article on Sargent entitled: "Man
Screaming by John Singer Sargent." by Trevor Fairbrother.
Natasha Goes Surfing
Tom
Richardson has got to be one of the shyest men on the planet earth but
this guy has managed to compile one of the most significant resources of
links and images I have ever seen on the art of the human figure,
drawing, portraiture and the nude. I just spent hours joyfully surfing
link after link to no end of articles, discussions, and images -- both
of his art and others. The funny thing about all of this was it took me
hours of sleuthing (though admittedly I kept getting sidetracked by one
fascinating webpage after another) before I figured out who the webmaster
of this incredible site was. It seems this wall flower of an artist, for
he is an artist himself, does in fact paint wall flowers . . . in
a manner of speaking. Tom Richardson is a Lead Scenic Artist for
the film industry and is also a talented artist of the human figure.
But it's not about Tom that makes
this site so incredible -- at least not entirely about Tom. What makes
it so remarkable is that he has taken an issue --the human figure and the
nude -- and has exhaustively compiled links beyond his own work that would
appeal to any artist as well as any fan of the art form. He has resisted
the temptation to fragment his focus (believe me I know the temptation
to do that), and the result is it stands up as one of the most important
web sites for links on Figure
Drawings.
The envelope please . . . . . .Gosh,
I should have brought my glasses (they always say something like that)
. . . .
:: clearing throat
And the Coveted Natasha Thumb goes
to . . . (is the suspense killing you?) . . . Tom Richardson for his work
on Figure Drawings.
PS in a rare instance, Tom has managed
to find me before I've had the oportunity to anounce his site as a winner.
he wrote:
Date: Mon, 14 Jan
Hi, I just noticed a link to
my site (figuredrawings.com) on yours. Thanks. I'll add a link to yours
I guess on the links-paintings page, unless you have a better idea.
Nice work on your site. By
the way I just saw a fantastic little Sargent portrait of just a head of
a lady in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a great example of what
he can do with a few deliberate brushstrokes, when you look up close it
is all brushstrokes but step back just a few feet and all the forms resolve.
-Tom
tompaintr@netscape.net
Mmmmmm so true, Tom. Wow, you sure move
fast. I hope you enjoy your distinguished award.
Speaking
of keeping focused. okay, so I can't practice what I preach. I admit, from
time to time I get lost on some tangent that has nothing to do with Sargent
nor the 19th century. But as much as I hate to admit it (not really but
it must seem so from a 3rd party point of view) I do in fact live in the
20th . . . . . I mean 21st century.
There is some cool stuff done with
commercial art and design -- more so all the time, and it's neat that some
of it is meshed with web design. Here is a fun eye candy store for people
that have WAY to much
money.
Moss
The envelope please . . . . . .
Ooops, not this time. It's still
a fun surf though.
Architecture,
the interaction of people, a community that's felt by those that share
in a common space, a sense of place. What really defines a sense of place?
Why are some cities more appealing than others? Why do some places have
a very strong identity of what they are? All of these questions have fascinated
me for various reasons. It's a complex question, even after having taken
a collage course on this very subject its not an easy thing to answer.
J.H. Crawford has spent a far amount
of time on this subject. he claims that the automobile is the source of
most of our ills. "The car," he says, "brought with it major unanticipated
consequences for urban life and has become a serious cause of environmental,
social, and aesthetic problems in cities."
To heap it all on the automobile
may be a bit simplistic, but the car has, with out a doubt, profoundly
effected the way we all interact with our built environment. Crawford has
felt so strongly on this subject that he published a book called "Carfree
Cities" with excerpts available on the net. The site appears to not be
fully complete but his treatment of Venice is superb. I spent a lot of
time here and I enjoyed every bit of it.
Take a look at Carfree
Cities and in particular "Venice,
the largest carfree city"
There is so much more, Sargent related
that i haven't got time to get up online yet, more to come soon.
What's
New Page Summer/Fall 2001 |
