{painting} – Page 169 – { feuilleton }

The real Basil Hallwards

Well, two of them anyway… Discussion with commenter Noel in one of my old (and rather scant) posts about Albert Lewin’s 1945 film of The Picture of Dorian Gray touched on the fate of the original version of Dorian’s portrait (above). For some reason I’d always assumed this to have been produced by MGM’s art department despite a clear credit at the opening of the film for artist Henrique Medina (1901–1988). I no doubt miss this since my eyes always go to the credit for Ivan Albright (1897–1983), the artist responsible for the famous deteriorated final state of the picture (below). That painting is so splendidly grotesque its presence almost overpowers the entire film but its power would be lessened without the contrast of Medina’s elegant original. Examples of Medina’s other portrait works show a distinct similarity.

Noel pointed the way to photos from the LIFE magazine archives which show Ivan Albright and his identical twin brother, Malvin, at work on the portrait. (Another here.) Fascinating not only to see an early stage of the painting but also a dummy of the decayed Dorian they were using as a model.

Albright’s dissolute masterpiece can be seen at the Art Institute of Chicago, together with a number of his other works. Noel notes that Medina’s picture was bought at auction for $25,000 but its current whereabouts and ownership remain a mystery. If anyone knows more about this, please leave a comment.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Oscar Wilde archive

The art of Elihu Vedder, 1836–1923

The Last Man (1886–1891).

Vedder was one of the principal American Symbolists, possibly the leading one although there wasn’t the same degree of competition in the United States as there was in Europe. Last time I was casting around the web for his work he wasn’t so visible but that’s changed recently with a dedicated website. Vedder’s 1884 edition of the The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is highly-regarded and at least one of those drawings—The Cup of Death—was reworked as a painting. Compared to his Continental contemporaries he’s a particularly gloomy artist, with sombre subjects rendered in a sombre palette. The Last Man is typical as well as being curiously inexplicable; is the serpent there a Satanic presence? And why is there a dead (?) angel boy at the feet of the Last Man?

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has a set of the Rubáiyát illustrations.

Soul in Bondage (1891–1892).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Angels 5: Angels of Death

If Paintings Had Voices, Francis Bacon’s Would Shriek

If Paintings Had Voices, Francis Bacon’s Would Shriek | A centenary retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Jerry by Paul Cadmus

Jerry (1931).

A few weeks too early for Bloomsday, this painting by Paul Cadmus was in the news this week after being acquired by the Toledo Museum of Art. The subject is Jerry French, one of the artist’s regular models and also his lover during this period. I hadn’t seen this picture before and wonder whether this is the first painted representation of Joyce’s Ulysses, a book which at the time was still banned in the USA. The ban was overturned in 1933 following some enlightened deliberation by Judge John M Woolsey.

Jerry takes its place as part of the Toledo Museum’s permanent collection next month. Via Towleroad.

• Paul Cadmus gallery at Ten Dreams

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Paul Cadmus, 1904–1999

The Robing of The Birds

Yet another of those curious Eastern European film posters which, to our Hollywood-colonised eyes, seem to violate all the conventions of cinema marketing. This example is a painting by Josef Vyletal for a 1970 Czech release of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Surrealist art enthusiasts will immediately identify the floating figures as being cut loose from Max Ernst’s The Robing of the Bride (1940). Compared to some Czech and Polish posters, the associations here aren’t so surprising; Ernst identified his alter-ego as a bird-headed individual named Loplop. Birds and bird-headed humans recur throughout his work. Hitchcock, meanwhile, famously commissioned Salvador Dalí to design the dream sequences in Spellbound (1945). One of Ernst’s few appearances as an actor is in Hans Richter’s Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947) a very Surrealist film which also features scenes informed by Ernst’s work. It’s a shame more directors didn’t take the opportunity to employ these talents while they were still alive.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ballard and the painters
• Franciszek Starowieyski, 1930–2009
• Czech film posters
• Hitchcock on film
• Judex, from Feuillade to Franju
• Impressions de la Haute Mongolie revisited
• Dalí and Film