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Paintings of 1924: 2 Narrative and miscellaneous

By: hoakley
19 December 2024 at 20:30

This second collection of paintings that were made one hundred years ago, in 1924, opens with some narrative works, followed by a couple of interiors, miscellaneous works, and ends with an early sporting painting.

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Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), The Trojan Horse (1924), oil on canvas, 105 × 135 cm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin. Wikimedia Commons.

Lovis Corinth’s Trojan Horse proved to be his last major painting from classical myth, showing the wooden horse made by the Greeks to gain access to the city of Troy so they could destroy it. The city is seen in the background, with its lofty towers and impregnable walls. The select group of Greek soldiers who undertook this commando raid are already concealed inside the horse, and those around it are probably Trojans sent from the city to check it out.

Although there are suggestions of an allegorical relationship between this painting and the First World War, Troy had been a hot topic in Berlin since the excavations at Hisarlık in Turkey in the late nineteenth century by Heinrich Schliemann and Wilhelm Dörpfeld.

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Ker-Xavier Roussel (1867–1944), The Sleeping Diana (c 1924), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA. Wikimedia Commons.

Ker-Xavier Roussel’s Sleeping Diana uses a simpler motif of the goddess asleep under the watchful eye of one of her devotees, as a deer comes to drink at the pool between them.

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Kazimierz Sichulski (1879–1942), Bachanale (1924), tempera on cardboard, 69 x 98 cm, Lviv National Art Gallery, Lviv, Ukraine. Wikimedia Commons.

Kazimierz Sichulski’s Bacchanal shows three naked bacchantes cavorting with Bacchus. This is set during the grape harvest, with bowls of the fruit and a couple of donkeys laden with buckets for the crop.

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Mykola Ivasyuk (1865–1937), Riders on the Steppe (1924), oil on panel, 46.5 x 36.7 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Mykola Ivasyuk’s Riders on the Steppe is one of this Ukrainian artist’s late Cossack paintings. Two years later, Ivasyuk was appointed professor at the Kyiv Art Institute, but started to fall out of favour and was transferred to Odesa, where criticism became more serious. In the autumn of 1937, he was arrested, imprisoned, convicted of being a terrorist on the basis of his art, and was shot by a firing squad in Kyiv on 25 November 1937. Much of his art was confiscated or destroyed, and it wasn’t until 1980 that he was rehabilitated and his surviving paintings could be seen again.

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Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940), Reading in the Dining Room, Vaucresson (1924), oil on board, 39.5 x 55 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

In Édouard Vuillard’s Reading in the Dining Room, Vaucresson, Lucy Hessel has already left her husband Jos reading the newspaper at the breakfast table, and gone to busy herself in the next room. Behind this mundane domestic scene is deeper complexity: Jos and Lucy Hessel were close friends of the artist, so close that at the time of this painting Vuillard, then in his mid-fifties, and Lucy were lovers.

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Þórarinn B. Þorláksson (1867-1924), The Artist’s Home (1924), media not known, 35 x 25 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Until relatively recently, Icelandic society remained strongly traditional, and homes in its capital Reykjavik were still decorated in older style. Þórarinn Þorláksson’s glimpse into The Artist’s Home shows this well.

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Henri Le Sidaner (1862–1939), White Garden at Dusk (1924), oil on canvas, 60 x 73.8 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

I believe that Henri Le Sidaner’s White Garden at Dusk shows a corner of the artist’s garden in the old village of Gerberoy.

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Bruno Liljefors (1860–1939), Sea Eagles Chasing an Eider (1924), oil on canvas, 125 × 160 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

The pioneer Swedish natural history painter Bruno Liljefors never lost his fascination for the relationship between predators and prey, as seen in his Sea Eagles Chasing an Eider.

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Heinrich Zille (1858–1929), Circus Games (1924), coloured lithograph, dimensions and location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

By the early years of the twentieth century, circuses were an established if itinerant part of society. Children in neighbourhoods engaged in circus games, as shown so delightfully in Heinrich Zille’s lithograph Circus Games.

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Charles Demuth (1883-1935), Fruit and Sunflowers (c 1924-25), watercolour over graphite on white wove paper, 45.7 x 29.7 cm, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum (Louise E. Bettens Fund), Cambridge, MA. Courtesy of Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum.

When Charles Demuth was unwell as a result of his diabetes he sought solace in floral paintings, such as these exquisite Fruit and Sunflowers.

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Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), Königsberger Marzipantorte (Royal Marzipan Cake) (1924), oil on panel, 55.5 × 71 cm, Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

Lovis Corinth sometimes painted purely for fun: this superb depiction of a Königsberger Marzipantorte (Royal Marzipan Cake) must have been completed at speed before his family consumed the model.

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George Bellows (1882–1925), Dempsey and Firpo (1924), oil on canvas, 129.5 × 160.7 cm, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

The American artist George Bellows is perhaps best-known for his paintings and prints of boxing matches, many of them clandestine. Dempsey and Firpo, though, shows a famous historic boxing match between the heavyweights Jack Dempsey, world champion since 1919, and Luis Ángel Firpo, an Argentinian challenger. This took place in the Polo Grounds of New York City on 14 September 1923.

From the start of the first round, the fight was gripping in excitement, with Dempsey knocking Firpo down seven times. Towards the end of the first round, Dempsey was trapped against the ropes, and Firpo knocked him out of the ring, the moment shown here. Dempsey finally knocked Firpo out late in the second round. This was made from contemporary press photographs.

Paintings of 1924: 1 Portraits and figures

By: hoakley
12 December 2024 at 20:30

At the end of each year I trawl through images of paintings that are thought to have been created a century ago. Together they show how rich and varied art was at a time when most histories are devoted to accounts of the rise of modernism. Today’s collection of work from 1924 consists of portraits, self-portraits and other figurative paintings.

Although the great majority of paintings seen in galleries and collections are made in oils, or watercolours, my first two works were both created in pastels by specialists in that medium.

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Firmin Baes (1874–1943), Two Brothers (1924), pastel, 99 x 79 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Firmin Baes’s double portrait of Two Brothers was painted using pastels, in the studio against a backdrop perhaps showing their home in the countryside.

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Ants Laikmaa (1866–1942), Portrait of Fr. R. Kreutzwald (also “In the Distance I See Home Thriving”) (1924), pastel on paper, dimensions not known, Private collection. Image courtesy of Enn Kunila, via Wikimedia Commons.

Ants Laikmaa was another accomplished pastellist who painted many fine portraits. Among them is this posthumous Portrait of Fr. R. Kreutzwald, also known as In the Distance I See Home Thriving. Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803-1882) is the father of Estonian national literature, and in addition to being a distinguished physician, he is the author of the national epic Kalevipoeg which is closely related to the Finnish epic, the Kalevala.

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Léon Bakst (1866–1924), Portrait of Rachel Strong, future Countess Henri de Buazhelen (1924), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Léon Bakst is best known for his designs for Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, but in the years following the 1917 Revolution he painted portraits. He completed this Portrait of Rachel Strong, future Countess Henri de Buazhelen against a background that could have been one of his stage sets.

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Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), Carmencita, Portrait of Charlotte Berend-Corinth in Spanish Dress (1924), oil, 130 x 90 cm, Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

Lovis Corinth was nearing the end of his life when he painted his wife in Carmencita, Portrait of Charlotte Berend-Corinth in Spanish Dress. She was an artist in her own right, and had continued painting in the early twentieth century, joining the Berlin Secession in 1912. She also painted actively when at their chalet. In 1933, after her husband’s death, she emigrated to the USA, where she produced the first catalogue raisonné of his paintings.

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Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), Wilhelmine in a Yellow Hat (1924), oil on canvas, 85 × 65 cm, Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Lübeck, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

Corinth painted other members of his family at this time. His Wilhelmine in a Yellow Hat shows their shy daughter starting to develop her mother’s vivacity.

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Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), Large Self-portrait in Front of Walchensee (1924), oil on canvas, 135.7 × 107 cm, Neue Pinakothek, Munich. Wikimedia Commons.

His Large Self-portrait in Front of Walchensee illustrates his race against time before he died the following year.

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Christian Krohg (1852–1925), Five to Twelve (c 1924), oil on paperboard, 79 x 33 cm, Nasjonalmuseet (purchased 1990), Oslo, Norway. Courtesy of Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo.

Five to Twelve was one of Christian Krohg’s last paintings, showing the artist with a long white beard, and almost bald, asleep in a chair underneath a pendulum clock. The face of the clock is completely blank, but the title tells us the time: it’s ten minutes to midnight, very late in his life. The following year Krohg retired as the director of the State Academy of Art, and died in Oslo a few months later.

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Emily Carr (1871–1945), Self-portrait (1924-25), oil on paperboard, 39.4 x 44.9 cm, Emily Carr Trust. Wikimedia Commons.

For Emily Carr 1924 was a crucial year, in which she met with Seattle artists, most importantly Mark Tobey, who helped rebuild her confidence in her art. Her Self-portrait shows her still suffering from her earlier rejection, as she faces away from the viewer, and is working on a painting that is unrecognisably vague and formless.

Meanwhile, Pierre Bonnard’s life in the Midi was coming to something of a crisis.

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Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Signac and his Friends Sailing (1924), oil on canvas, 124 x 139 cm, Kunsthaus, Zurich, Switzerland. The Athenaeum.

Several of the artists who had moved to the French Mediterranean coast around the turn of the century were keen yachtsmen. Here Bonnard shows Paul Signac on board his yacht, in Signac and his Friends Sailing.

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Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Before Dinner (1924), oil on canvas, 90.2 x 106.7 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. The Athenaeum.

Bonnard’s private life hadn’t found the same fair winds, though. In Before Dinner, there are two places laid at the table, and two women behind. One at the left has her back towards the other, who stands by the table as if waiting for something to happen. A dog is just emerging from behind the chair at the left, and looks up the standing woman. The following year Bonnard finally married his longstanding partner Marthe in a quiet civil ceremony in Paris, in August. None of their friends attended that wedding, and within a month his former lover Renée Monchaty shot herself in the chest, as she lay in a bath of white roses.

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Paul Sérusier (1864–1927), Tapestry (Five Weavers) (1924), oil on canvas, dimensions and location not known. Image by Bastenbas, via Wikimedia Commons.

Late in his career, the radical artist Paul Sérusier drew more heavily again on early modern painting, including that of the late Middle Ages in paintings such as Tapestry (Five Weavers). So much for modernism.

Reading visual art: 167 View from the balcony

By: hoakley
16 October 2024 at 19:30

In the first of these two articles looking at the reading of balconies in paintings, I looked at views of balconies from the outside; today we get to join the rich and famous and look out and down on the world below. Before cheap and easy travel became available in the late nineteenth century, standing on a balcony was probably one of the more elevating experiences for most of the population.

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Vittore Carpaccio (1465–1526), Two Venetian Ladies (c 1490), oil on panel, 94 x 64 cm, Museo Correr, Venice, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

There has been speculation as to whether Carpaccio’s Two Venetian Ladies from about 1490 were bored upper class wives, or courtesans in between gigs, although opinion currently favours their nobility. They sit amid a menagerie of peacock, doves and two dogs, staring into the blank distance.

Views from the balcony came of age in the early nineteenth century, with the arrival of paintings of figures standing in front of windows. These developed most obviously in German painting, in Caspar David Friedrich’s Woman at the Window of 1822, further elaborated two years later by his friend and follower Carl Gustav Carus.

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Carl Gustav Carus (1789–1869), Woman on the Balcony (1824), oil on canvas, 42 x 32 cm, Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

First came Carus’ Friedrichian Woman on the Balcony from 1824. High above the rolling wooded countryside of central Germany, a young woman dressed in black sits contemplating the view and facing away from the viewer. The artist tells us where he painted this view from, and adds some foreground detail to help mystify the viewer.

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Carl Gustav Carus (1789–1869), Balcony Room with a View of the Bay of Naples (via Santa Lucia and the Castel dell’Ovo) (c 1829-30), oil on canvas, 28.4 x 21.3 cm, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

When Carus visited Naples in about 1829-30, he stayed close to Castel dell’Ovo, and framed a view in his Balcony Room with a View of the Bay of Naples (via Santa Lucia and the Castel dell’Ovo). Instead of a figure, there’s a musical instrument, presumably to reinforce that this is Italy. The interior is mainly used for its framing and repoussoir effect.

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Berthe Morisot (1841–1895), Woman and Child on a Balcony (1872), oil on canvas, 61 x 50 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

After Manet’s The Balcony (1868-69), Berthe Morisot, who modelled for that and was soon to become his sister-in-law, painted her own Woman and Child on a Balcony in 1872. She uses the balcony primarily to combine full-length portraits of the two figures with an aerial landscape of Paris. The pillar and flowerpot at the right steer the eye from immediate foreground in a zigzag past the figures to end in the far distance. On the skyline just to the left of the woman is the dark mass of Notre Dame.

It was Gustave Caillebotte who recast and modernised the precursors of Friedrich and Carus for his painting of his brother René, the Young Man at His Window, in 1875.

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Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894), Young Man at His Window (1875), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Strictly speaking, Caillebotte’s younger brother René isn’t on a balcony here, merely standing in front of a balustraded window in the family apartment on the rue de Miromesnil in Paris. But the artist has here realised the interplay between the rich red upholstery of the interior and the bright exterior with its pale buildings and trees. Between those two worlds is a substantial stone balustrade. Caillebotte gives his figures the mysterious anonymity of facing away from us too.

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Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894), Man on a Balcony, Boulevard Haussmann (1880), oil on canvas, 116.5 x 89.5 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Five years later, Caillebotte embarked on a series of paintings from the balconies of his apartment, of which the best-known is Man on a Balcony, Boulevard Haussmann (1880). The interior has been replaced by intermediate details: a trough of flowers, the ornate iron balustrade, and a colourful awning.

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Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894), A Balcony (1880), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Less well-known are two views looking along the length of A Balcony (1880), above, and another Man on a Balcony (1880), below. Both are revelatory in showing the faces of their figures who are looking across our direction of view, down at the exterior world below. Both are strongly projected to a vanishing point close to one edge of the canvas, and the view above places the head of one of its two figures at that focal point.

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Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894), Man on a Balcony (2) (1880), oil on canvas, 116 × 97 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Caillebotte went on to paint a couple of tightly-cropped images showing small sections of balustrade with the trees and buildings below. Finally in 1884, he bought Manet’s The Balcony for his private collection.

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Hans Heyerdahl (1857–1913), At the Window (1881), oil on panel, 46 x 37 cm, Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo, Norway. Wikimedia Commons.

The Norwegian painter Hans Heyerdahl, who was living in Paris at the time, responded with his close-cropped At the Window in 1881 (above), and the following year his compatriot Christian Krohg painted his Portrait of the Swedish Painter Karl Nordström (below) using the same artistic device. Krohg didn’t paint this in Paris, but as he neared the end of his time in France in the artists’ colony of Grez-sur-Loing, in the Spring of 1882.

Heyerdahl engages deeply in the interplay between the woman’s interior world, with a half-open book on her lap, and her distant gaze towards the bright exterior.

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Christian Krohg (1852–1925), Portrait of the Swedish Painter Karl Nordström (1882), oil on canvas, 61 x 46.5 cm, Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo, Norway. Wikimedia Commons.

Prior to this development of the themes of Friedrich and Carus, balconies had often played minor roles in portrait paintings. Maybe the sitter leaned on a section of balustrade, or a flowerpot cascaded its blooms from a pillar. In the late nineteenth century, balconies acquired greater prominence in a wide range of portraits and figurative paintings. Some of that was undoubtedly the result of their increasing availability: with the growth of cities, balconies became popular features of upmarket city apartments, particularly those in Paris.

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Maximilien Luce (1858–1941), Madame Luce on the Balcony (1893), oil on canvas, 81 × 65 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

This portrait of Maximilien Luce’s then unmarried partner and model Ambroisine ‘Simone’ Bouin, Madame Luce on the Balcony from 1893, is an example with objects from its interior set out in the outside sunshine.

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Richard Bergh (1858–1919), Nordic Summer’s Evening (1899-1900), oil on canvas, 170 x 223.5 cm, Göteborgs konstmuseum, Gothenburg, Sweden. Wikimedia Commons.

Richard Bergh’s Nordic Summer’s Evening (1899-1900) features two distinguished models, Prince Eugen, Duke of Närke, and the singer Karin Pyk, who were both close friends of the artist. In fact, it’s a wonderful composite: the pillars shown were borrowed from the floor below, where they supported this balcony, and Pyk was actually painted when she was in Assisi in Italy. Their figures look not at one another, but their gazes cross paths as they stare at the still parkland beyond, lit by the low sun.

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Isaak Brodsky (1883–1939), Self-portrait with Daughter (1911), oil on canvas, dimensions and location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

We can only imagine the ‘cheating’ that Isaak Brodsky must have contrived to paint this marvellous Self-portrait with Daughter in 1911. Here, the balcony is an integral part of an aerial precinct in the town; there is no sight of ground level. Brodsky’s world exists a couple of stories above.

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Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), Balcony Scene in Bordighera (1912), oil on canvas, 83.5 × 105 cm, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

Lovis Corinth painted this Balcony Scene in Bordighera in 1912 early during his convalescence in the Midi after his stroke the previous year.

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Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky (1868-1945), Lady on a Balcony. Koreiz. Portrait of I.A. Yusupova (1914), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

The scene in Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky’s Lady on a Balcony appears more relaxed. His sitter, I.A. Yusupova, looks to be enjoying the fine summer weather in Koreiz, not far from Yalta, on the northern coast of the Black Sea. At about this time, the Balkans had been plunged into crisis following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and by the end of July the Great War had begun. During its closing stages, the Crimean Peninsula was swept up in the Russian Civil War, and changed hands every few months, with tens of thousands being massacred during the chaos.

The last artist whose paintings I show here had a lasting fascination for painting views through windows, extending to the balconies he had added to his homes: Pierre Bonnard.

The Window 1925 by Pierre Bonnard 1867-1947
Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), La Fenêtre (The Window) (1925), oil on canvas, 108.6 x 88.6 cm, The Tate Gallery (Presented by Lord Ivor Spencer Churchill through the Contemporary Art Society 1930), London. Photographic Rights © Tate 2018, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bonnard-the-window-n04494

In La Fenêtre (The Window) from 1925, Bonnard frames the view from his villa in Le Cannet looking inland, and includes part of the all-important balcony.

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Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), The French Windows with Dog (1927), oil on canvas, 107.3 x 63.2 cm, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

One of Bonnard’s fullest views of a balcony comes in The French Windows with Dog from 1927, where our gaze is led from its interior, out through the French windows, over the decking and wooden balustrade, to the palms and town of Le Cannet beyond.

The view from the balcony is a journey through life.

Reading visual art: 165 Group portraits B

By: hoakley
9 October 2024 at 19:30

Following the conundrums of the group portraits of the first of these two articles, this shows some that appear more straightforward, although they still need to be approached by asking who, where and when.

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Raphael (1483–1520), Portrait of Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de’ Medici and Luigi Rossi (1517-19), oil on panel, 155.5 x 119.5 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

Raphael’s Portrait of Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de’ Medici and Luigi Rossi (1517-19) groups its three figures closely together. The Pope sits not on a throne, but more informally, a magnificent illuminated book (thought to be the ‘Hamilton’ Bible from about 1350) open in front of him and a magnifying glass in his left hand.

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Augustin Théodule Ribot (1823–1891), Breton Fishermen and Their Families (c 1880-85), oil on canvas, 55.2 x 46.4 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

Augustin Théodule Ribot’s Breton Fishermen and Their Families (c 1880-85) is a gritty collection of nameless faces from the coast of the north-west of France. Their features are as hard as the weather that they must have faced.

Peder Severin Krøyer, Hip Hip Hurrah! (1888), oil on canvas, 134.5 x 165.5 cm, Gothenburg Museum of Art, Sweden. WikiArt. From L: M Johansen, V Johansen, C Krohg, PS Krøyer, D Brøndum, M Ancher, O Björck, T Niss, H Christensen, A Ancher, H Ancher.
Peder Severin Krøyer (1851-1909), Hip Hip Hurrah! (1888), oil on canvas, 134.5 x 165.5 cm, Gothenburg Museum of Art, Sweden. WikiArt. From L: M Johansen, V Johansen, C Krohg, PS Krøyer, D Brøndum, M Ancher, O Björck, T Niss, H Christensen, A Ancher, H Ancher.

Moving towards the end of the nineteenth century, and to the artist’s colony of Skagen at the northern tip of Jutland in Denmark, we come to PS Krøyer’s magnificent group portrait of many of the Nordic Impressionists who gathered there each summer. From the left, moving around the table, this shows: Martha Møller Johansen, Viggo Johansen, Christian Krohg, PS Krøyer, Degn Brøndum, Michael Ancher, Oscar Björck, Thorvald Niss, Helene Christensen, Anna Ancher, and Helga Ancher. While this may appear a spontaneous record of an actual event, in fact it was over four years in the painting, and it seems unlikely that this group ever met in these circumstances.

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Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret (1852–1929), Une noce chez le photographe (A Wedding at the Photographer’s) (1879), oil on canvas, 120 x 81.9 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, France. Wikimedia Commons.

The French Naturalist artist Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret was technically one of the most brilliant of all Cabanel’s students. He could achieve realism of photographic quality, as shown appropriately in this Wedding at the Photographer’s from 1879. Here is a painted group portrait of a couple and their family being photographed for their group portrait.

Many of the greatest portrait painters also created fine group portraits.

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Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723), The Harvey Family (1721), oil on canvas, 283.8 x 234.8 cm, The Tate Gallery, London. Wikimedia Commons.

Some of Sir Godfrey Kneller’s many portraits of the British gentry include children or groups, such as The Harvey Family, painted in 1721.

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Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), Lady Elizabeth Delmé and Her Children (1777-9), oil on canvas, 238.4 x 147.2 cm, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Wikimedia Commons.

In Sir Joshua Reynolds’ portrait of Lady Elizabeth Delmé and Her Children (1777-9) his brushwork becomes painterly for their clothes and in the background.

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Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842), Marie-Antoinette de Lorraine-Habsbourg, Queen of France, and Her Children (1787), oil on canvas, 195 x 271 cm, Château de Versailles, Versailles, France. Wikimedia Commons.

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun painted more than thirty portraits of Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), wife of King Louis XVI, who was guillotined on 16 October 1793 during the French Revolution. This family portrait from 1787 shows Marie-Antoinette de Lorraine-Habsbourg, Queen of France, and Her Children. Vigée Le Brun started work on this on 9 July 1786, her sitter choosing a red dress fit for a queen. With her are Marie-Thérèse, the Duchess of Angoulême, Louis-Charles, who was to become Louis XVII of France, and Louis-Joseph, who became the Dauphin. The empty cradle was for Marie-Sophie-Béatrice, who died on 19 June, shortly before she would have been one.

My final paintings are all by artists of their families.

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Benjamin West (1738–1820), The Artist and His Family (c 1772), oil on canvas, 52.1 x 66.7 cm, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven, CT. Courtesy of the Yale Center for British Art.

Benjamin West’s group portrait of The Artist and His Family from about 1772 gives insight into his peculiar circumstances. It shows, from the left, the Wests’ older son, Benjamin West’s wife Betsy, cradling their newborn second son in her lap, Benjamin West’s brother Thomas, and father John (who had been born in England), and standing in his lavender gown, holding palette and maulstick, is the artist himself.

Often compared with a traditional Nativity scene, it was described at the time as a “neat little scene of domestic happiness”. But looking at the directions of gaze, and the extraordinary detachment of Thomas and John West, who are staring into the distance, domestic happiness seems far away.

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Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810), We Three (1805), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, formerly Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany, destroyed by fire in 1931. Wikimedia Commons.

The short-lived Philipp Otto Runge painted this group portrait of We Three in 1805, the year after he had finished his Academy training, and shortly after his marriage. This shows his older brother Johann Daniel on the left, with the artist and his bride Pauline. This may have been painted after the couple had moved back to Hamburg later that year, although they soon returned to live with his parents in Wolgast.

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Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870), Portraits of the *** Family (The Family Gathering) (1868), oil on canvas, 152 x 230 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

During the summer of 1867, Frédéric Bazille started work on Portraits of the *** Family also known as The Family Gathering, which he didn’t complete until January 1868. This seems to have been one of his most carefully composed paintings, and he devoted a series of sketches to getting the arrangement of the figures and the terrace just right.

The figures include the artist, squeezed in last at the extreme left, an uncle, Bazille’s parents seated on the bench, Bazille’s cousin Pauline des Hours and her husband standing, an aunt and Thérèse des Hours (model for The Pink Dress) seated at the table, his brother Marc and his partner, and at the right Camille, the youngest of the des Hours sisters. This painting marked a special version of a regular summer meeting, as Pauline des Hours and Bazille’s brother Marc married the partners shown in the late summer of 1867.

At the time, such group portraits were exceptional in French art. It was exhibited at the Salon in 1868, and remains one of Bazille’s finest and most innovative works.

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Michael Peter Ancher (1849–1927), Christmas Day 1900 (1902), oil on canvas, 142 x 221 cm, Skagens Museum, Skagen, Denmark. Wikimedia Commons.

By contrast, Michael Peter Ancher’s family portrait on Christmas Day 1900, completed in 1902, looks funereal. A family bible is open on the table as they gaze grimly away from the magnificent triptych of waves behind them. I believe that the woman at the far right is Anna Ancher, then aged 40; she wears a distinctive necklace with an anchor, the Danish for which is anker.

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Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), The Artist and his Family (1909), oil on canvas, 175 × 166 cm, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover, Hanover, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

One of Lovis Corinth’s most popular paintings from the early years of the twentieth century is this group portrait of The Artist and his Family (1909). All dressed up for what may have been intended to be a more formal group portrait, the artist’s wife Charlotte sits calmly cradling their daughter Wilhelmine, then just five months old, as the artist is struggling to paint them. Their son Thomas, aged five years, stands on a desk so that he can rest his hand on mother’s shoulder.

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