{painting} – Page 175 – { feuilleton }

The art of Ryan Martin

To Live and Die in LA.

I really like Ryan Martin’s beautiful paintings of fey youths in vibrant, vaguely surreal scenarios. Those familiar with the work of Leonardo da Vinci may recognise Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want as being based on The Lady with an Ermine (1490). There isn’t a great deal of Martin’s work around since he’s only just starting out but you can see more of it at Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art.

Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want.

Cupid de Locke.

Surreal case of the Dalí images and a battle over artistic licence

The art of Maxwell Armfield, 1881–1972

De Profundis.

I’ve known Maxwell Armfield’s work in the past mainly for the appearance of his paintings in books of late Victorian or even Pre-Raphaelite art. His depiction of Faustine (1904), which illustrates a Swinburne poem, is probably the most popular of these, with a subject resembling Rossetti’s portraits of Jane Morris. So it’s a surprise to find his illustration work using a very different, more open style based on Ancient Greek art and (possibly) Classical enthusiasts such as John Flaxman. Among the online examples, the redoubtable Internet Archive has a few book downloads available including a volume of Armfield’s rather tepid poetry, The Hanging Garden, and other verse (1914), which nonetheless includes the fine illustrations shown here. In addition there’s a curious fable by Vernon Lee, The Ballet of the Nations; a Present-day Morality (1915) in which Death stages a ballet (aka another war) to decimate humanity, and a short book Rhythmic Shape; A Text-book of Design (1920), Armfield’s guide to art and design theory.