Venus with a dog 1: By Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Young woman playing with dog (La Gimblette) (1765-1772)

We have had a few pictures featuring ladies with dogs before.  There is one in our post on Mario Tauzin and another in our post on Chéri Hérouard. Artists have quite often included dogs in erotic art, not necessarily because of any desire to depict women in intimate congress with them but more, we would suggest, to imply something of the smell of a woman; particularly their nether regions, as we will see in the future.

Here we have two definitely erotic, but also delicate, works by the French artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806).  Fragonard was born in the world capital of perfume, Grasse.  Originally destined to be a notary his artistic talent was spotted, as an eighteen year old, by François Boucher and his progress was so rapid that he won the Prix de Rome even before he enrolled in the Academy.  After studying in Rome he became a favourite of the court of Louis XIV, producing a number of erotic works for private consumption.  The French Revolution deprived him of his wealthy patrons and he himself felt it sensible to leave Paris for the country where he continued to paint, contributing to his total of over 550 completed paintings. However, by the time he returned to Paris, a few years before his death, he had been totally forgotten and remained so for many decades.  Now he has been rehabilitated as one of the great masters of French painting and a precursor of the Impressionists.

Girl with Dog (1768)

Fragonard's approach to this small but distinct genre includes these two paintings which rely for their erotic effect on conveying a strong tactile sense as well as similar poses revealing the backs of the subjects' thighs.

The one above, Girl with Dog,  is on display in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.  The contact between the dog's fluffy tail and the girl's inner thighs are, no doubt, the cause of her sweet smile although it is painted in such a way to (just) allow for a more innocent explanation.

The same can be said of the top painting, Young Woman Playing with Dog.  The dog is in the shadow whereas the light in the painting is focussed on that shadowed area between her thighs.  Sometimes known as La Gimblette (a sort of pastry) Fragonard produced several versions, some now lost, where the girl is depicted as offering a pastry to the dog.  Considered very risque at the time, engravings of it were marked "not for display".

Claude Michele Clodion (1738-1814) produced a number of sculptures inspired by these pictures.

Bacchic Venuses: Maenads in a Wood by Gustave Doré

Maenads in a Wood (1879)

We have looked at the work of Gustave Doré (1832-1883) before with his painting of Andromeda. Doré was better known for his engravings, of course, but later in his comparatively short life he took up sculpture.  He first started sculpting in 1871 but didn't exhibit his first work until 1877; two years before this work.

This plaster relief was inspired by his own painting of the same year The Death of Orpheus.  In the plaster relief Orpheus is absent and we just have this splendid pile of sinuous, naked Maenads.  The Maenads were female followers of Dionysus (Bacchus in Roman mythology, hence the followers were known as Bacchantes).  Traditionally, they would get into a frenzied state through wild dancing and drinking (Maenads literally means "raving ones").  They also possessed poisoned talons and it was group of Maenads who killed Orpheus for having rejected Dionysus in favour of Apollo.

Bacchantes (the Roman term was more popular) were popular subjects with nineteenth century artists, no doubt because of the opportunity to depict wild, abandoned women or those posed in attitudes of post-frenzy sprawl.  The fact that Maenads were also believed to have engendered uncontrollable sexual frenzy amongst those they came into contact with also played well to the Victorian idea of sexual woman as predatory beast.

Triple P took this picture of the piece in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where it is exhibited, last summer.

Venuses in Red Chalk by Mihaly von Zichy

Here are some fine nudes by the Hungarian/Russian painter and illustrator Mihaly von Zichy (1827-1906).  Zichy was born in Austro-Hungary and studied in Budapest before moving to St Petersburg in 1847.

He stayed in the city and made a name for himself there as an artist and illustrator.  He was the most fantastic draftsman, as these pictures show.  Many of his works focus on the life of the Russian court.  He moved to Paris in 1874 and lived there for three years before travelling back to Hungary then to Vienna and Venice. Following a trip to the Caucasus he resettled in St Petersburg in 1883.

These days he is most famous for his strikingly animated erotic works, many of  which were issued as sets of lithographs at around the turn of the century.  It is probably fair to say that these are some of the best erotic drawings ever produced and we will look at some of them over on our The Seduction of Venus blog shortly.

Agent Triple P always preferred red chalk or Conte crayon for his own figure work in the past.  The warm red tones, especially on coloured paper, work particularly well for nudes.

Engaged Venus: The Betrothed by John William Godward

The Betrothed (1892)

As it's Valentine's Day today we thought we would go for a nice, romantic image.  Agent Triple P attended an event at the Guidhall Art Gallery last night where they have a small but significant collection of Pre-Raphaelite and classicist paintings.  Latterly most of these have been buried in the basement but we were pleased to see that they have now been restored to the main floor once more.

Of these, Triple P's favourite is The Betrothed by John William Godward which was painted in 1892 whilst he was living in Chelsea; one of sixteen paintings he produced that year.

A typically langorous Godward girl contemplates her engagement ring in an equally typical marble-ous Mediterranean setting.  This painting marks the first appearance in one of Godward's paintings, of the spotted stola around her hips.  It would appear in many more of his pictures, which makes you wonder whether it was an actual piece of costume from his studio.

Sir Harry Vanderpant

 

This was also the first of Godward's paintings that ended up in a major gallery. It was bought by Sir Harry Sheil Elster Vanderpant (1866-1955), later the Lord Mayor of Westminster, who gave it to the Guildhall Art Gallery in 1916.

It's quite a small painting, just 24 inches across, but confers the idea that she is thinking about her man extremely well.  Godward has rendered the leopard skin superbly in this.

Roman Bathing Venus 2: In the Tepidarium by John William Godward

In the Tepidarium (1913)

The classicist painter John William Godward didn't paint many nudes; largely relying on form fitting drapery to provide sensuous effect.  We looked at one of his earlier pictures, Venus Binding her Hair (1897) in a previous post and explored his life until that point.  In the Tepidarium was painted sixteen years later in Rome, rather than Chelsea, and is altogether a less monumental piece than the 90" tall Venus; this painting being around 40" tall.

Godward was driven away from his house, in 1905, due to the noise from the construction of the new Chelsea Football Club ground at Stamford Bridge.  He took the opportunity to travel to Italy for the first time. Godward stayed in Capri but travelled around southern Italy, sketching. 

In the Tepidarium pencil sketch (1913)

In the period 1910 to 1912 Godward moved to Rome more permanently and lived there, off and on, for a decade.  Godward was finding that London was becoming  hostile to his style of painting, as more modernist art held sway.  He hoped that Rome might be more appreciative of his style.  In addition, it seems that he left London to run off with his model, an Italian beauty.  It was said that his mother never forgave him for this unseemly behaviour, especially as she had never wanted him to become an artist in the first place.

Godward acquired a studio at the Villa Strohl-Fern in Parioli (now a very smart suburb of Rome, full of ambassadors' residences) at the edge of the Borghese Gardens (where Triple P used to go running and to the Roman Sport Centre gym, built underneath them).  Alfred Strohl-Fern (1847-1926) was an Alsatian who built the villa  in 1879.  The property had extensive wooded grounds which Strohl-Fern filled with classical statuary, grotoes and follies. By 1882 he had added nine artists studios and it soon became a creative colony, attracting painters, sculptors and musicians.  One of the first artists to visit, thirty years before Godward, was Arnold Böcklin, the Swiss painter of The Isle of the Dead which inspired Rachmaninov's symphonic poem of the same name. 

Godward's studio at the Villa Strohl-Fern

Godward's studio was at no 2 Villa Strohl-Fern and he spent every waking hour painting there.  In the Tepidarium was painted there in 1913; a good year for Godward, as he had won the gold medal at the Rome International Exhibition with The Belvedere.  This must have been a major filip for a painter who was feeling increasingly rejected at home.

Study for In the Tepidarium (1913)

There is an oil study for this painting  which has the figure lightly clad in a diaphonous gown.  Godward often changed his pictures from the original drawings or sketches and in this case we can see that he has moved the rather dominating curtain from in front of the figure to behind her in the final painting.  He then counters this block of colour with another drape on the other side of the figure, whose brighter colour provides more balance than the darker example in the sketch.  This sketch was sold by Christies in New York for $8,000 in 1994. 

The draperies in the finished picture, which was sold for £25,000 in 1984, are perhaps not Godward's best and he always struggled with the nude figure but what is marvellous in this painting is his treatment of the interior decoration.  At this point, perhaps inspired by the warmer weather in Rome, nearly all of Godward's paintings had an exterior setting so this was a rare incursion indoors.  His handling of the marble in this painting (especially that of the square column, back centre) is superb.  Even this pales in comparison to his rendering of the tesserae on the floor. Each one individually painted but shaded in such a way that the depressions in the floor can be seen by the alignment of the individual tiles. This must have been based on something he had seen in Rome, we suspect.

Venus as mistress: Early Morning by Sir William Orpen

Early Morning (1922)

This is an affectionate portrait of Yvonne Aubicque, the mistress of its painter, Irish artist Sir William Orpen (1878-1931), who has several fascinating stories connected to her which we will examine in this post.  Called, Early Morning it is a wonderful evocation of the pleasures of a mistress, as she sits surrounded by domestic detrius that indicates no great desire to leave her bed anytime soon.

William Orpen

William Orpen was born in Dublin and attended the Metropolitan School of Art there to which he was admitted at the age of eleven, such was his natural skill. At the age of seventeen he moved to London to attend the  Slade School of Art.   Catching the attention of John Singer Sargent he rapidly became one of the country's top portrait painters.  Although he married and had three children he had a string of mistresses, many of whom modelled for him, despite constant worries about his unattractiveness (caused, it is said, by overhearing his parents asking themselves why he was so ugly and their other children so attractive!).  We will look at some of his other fine nudes another time but now we just want to concentrate on one of his model/mistresses, Yvonne Aubicque.

The Spy/The Refugee I (1918)

In 1916 Orpen was appointed as an official war artist and carried on in this role after the war where he was was the offical painter of the Versailles treaty signing.  While in France he fell head over heels for Yvonne Aubicque, the daughter of the Mayor of Lille.  He painted two portraits of her during the war but when he sent the paintings back to Britain he found himself in hot water, as official war artists were only supposed to paint pictures of military subjects. 

The Spy/The Refugee II (1917)

Even worse, he had called his pictures of her "The Spy" and claimed she was a German spy who had been executed by the French, no doubt in order to give it an acceptable "military" provenance.  However, the subject of female spies was sensitive at this period as English nurse Edith Cavell had been shot by the Germans for helping allied soldiers to escape and Mata Hari had also just been executed.  Orpen found himself facing a court martial and had to confess that the paintings were of his mistress. One of Orpen's friends was Lord Beaverbrook who was instrumental in preventing the court martial, although Orpen was severely reprimanded and only just hung on to his official war artist role.  Orpen changed the name of the pictures to The Refugee and, like his war paintings, they now belong to the Imperial War Museum in London.

The Beaverbrooke copy on the Antiques Roadshow

There is an interesting coda to this story.  Last year a man brought a picture along to the filming of the BBC show Antiques Roadshow, where members of the public bring along items and a panel of experts tell them about them.  It was a copy of Orpen's The Refugee I.  The owner had taken it to the Imperial War Musem who had said it was just a standard copy. He was not convinced, however, and was puzzled by the high quality of the picture and the fact it was signed Nepro Mailliw (William Orpen written backwards).  He discovered that in 1920 Orpen had gone back to France and painted another version of the painting for Lord Beaverbrook as a thank you for helping him escape a court martial.  The expert on the show confirmed that the picture was indeed a copy but was made by Orpen himself and was the long lost Beaverbrook version.  Much to the owner's shock, he valued it at £250,000.

Yvonne Aubicque in 1918

What happened to the lovely Yvonne?  She remained as Orpen's mistress for more than ten years; although he usually ran more than one simultaneously.  When in France, after the war, he had bought a black Rolls-Royce and hired a sixteen year old called William Grover as his chauffeur.  Grover was the son of an English father and a French mother but had been born in France. He immediately took a fancy to Yvonne and she him.  You might expect all sorts of problems to follow but when Yvonne stopped being Orpen's mistress he gave her his Rolls-Royce and a large house in Paris.  Grover and Yvonne married in 1929.  Grover had always been keen on cars and motorcycles and started to race motorcycles at the age of fifteen.  Worried about what his father might think he used the pseudonym W Williams when he started to race. By 1926 he had graduated to car racing.  In 1928 he won the French Grand Prix and in 1929, in a British Racing Green Bugatti, he won the inaugural Monaco Grand Prix.  Now known as Grover-Williams he retired from racing to concentrate on business, including working for Bugatti and running a kennel where Yvonne bred Highland Terriers which she successfully showed at Crufts dog show, eventually becoming a judge there. They were a wealthy couple and, apparently, good dancers, winning several competitions.

Grover Williams leading the 1929 Monaco Grand Prix

With the German invasion of France Grover-Williams fled to Britain where, because of his fluency in both French and English, he was recruited into the Special Operations Executive where he was trained at their wartime base, the home of Lord Montague, Beaulieu in Hampshire, now, ironically, the site of the National Motor Museum.  Grover-Williams was dropped into France, with no contacts or support on the ground, and was instructed to set up a new resistance network in Paris, as the previous one had been compromised. Yvonne moved back to Paris as well although she lived in their house in Rue Weber while he lived in a seperate apartment.  He recruited two former fellow racing drivers and they began sabotage work, principally at the Citroen factory.  In August 1943 Grover-Williams was captured by the Germans as their network had been compromised and it was believed that he was interrogated by the Gestapo and shot almost immediately.

However, in the 1990's a different story emerged.  It looked as if Grover-Williams survived and was taken to a prison camp in Poland.  It then appears that he joined MI6 after the war.  Even more strangely, in 1948 a man called George Tambal turned up at Yvonne's house in Evreux and moved in with her. She introduced him as her cousin but the locals thought they acted more like lovers.  He claimed to have arrived from America via Uganda, bringing animals for the depleted zoos of Europe. Grover-Williams, it should be noted, had family in America and a sister in Uganda. Also, amazingly, Tambal's date of birth was exactly the same as Grover-Willams. Tambal was very knowlegeable about motor cars and bore the scars of a beating around the head. 

No-one has ever proved it conclusively but it looks like Grover-Williams survived the war, joined MI6 (MI6 have admitted they know what happened to Grover-Willams but they won't say what) and then rejoined his wife in Evreux.  She died in 1973 and Tambal/Grover-Williams was killed in 1983, at the age of eighty, having been knocked off his bicycle by a car driven by a German tourist.

Elements of this remarkable story were used by Robert Ryan in his novel Early One Morning in which a fictionalised version of Yvonne Aubique appears as Eve Aubique.

Sir William Orpen died in Kensington 1931, possibly from complications arising from syphillis, and at the time was probably the most famous artist in Britain.

More ladies by Leone Frollo

We have shown a few pictures by Italian artist Leone Frollo over on our Seduction of Venus blog.  This week we watched the Tinto Brass directed film Così fan tutte (1992) (we will feature it in Films of the Week over on our Adventures of Triple P blog shortly) which is, like most of his films a hymn to womens' posteriors.

Whilst watching it we were reminded of Frollo's approach to erotic art which shows a similar fascination for the female rear.

This is a fascination, we have to admit, which Triple P shares and it is interesting to note that our particular friend B (who provides quite a lot of input and suggestions for this site) ventured to us, in Istanbul recently, that she was surprised that there weren't more bottoms here!

Like Signor Brass and Signor Frollo (presumably) Agent Triple P has spent a lot of time interacting with Italian girls over the years (not so much now, sadly) and admits to finding their posteriors particularly splendid (Ilaria, Paola, Beatrice, Tiziana, Carola, Maria Fernanda and some, sadly, whose names we have forgotten).

Is it an Italian thing?  Is it the pasta?  Is it the way that they walk?  Who knows?  We now need more Italian ladies on this site; especially shown from the rear!

Swedish Venuses by Ivar Kamke

 Eftermiddagsdopp (Afternoon dip)

Agent Triple P likes a strapping Swedish girl (one in particular!) perhaps because of his genetic origins and so we thought it would be a good idea to present a few solid Swedish beauties by Ivar Kamke.

 Women bathing in coastal lanscape (1914)

Kamke (1882-1936) was a Swedish painter and graphic artist but, other than that, we haven't been able to find out much about him.  There was a book published about him in Sweden in 1931 but that seems to have been it.

His paintings are very reminiscent of his slightly older contemporary compatriot Anders Zorn featuring, as they do, realistic and non-idealised nudes by the shore and in interiors.

 Den unge pige efter badet (1919)

Like Zorn he lived close to the water but whilst Zorn was based inland in Dalecarlia, with his featured shoreline being on Lake Siljin, Kamke spent a good portion of his active life in Storängen in Nacka, about three miles south east of the centre of Stockholm.  Whilst he had a lake nearby he was also close to the coast so his ladies by the water may have been salt water or fresh water nymphs.

 Nude models (1918)

Storängen, where Kamke lived with his wife Käthe, was an area where a lot of large villas had been built around the turn of the century.  The one Kamke lived in was designed by the famous Swedish architect Carl Westman, who designed Stockholm City Hall.  Today many of these villas survive in what is a very leafy and upmarket suburb of the city.

 Nude 1916

Apart from his nudes Kamke also painted portraits and landscapes and street scenes, especially of Dutch, North African and Italian subjects.  All his work demonstrates a wonderful sense of light and colour.

Unlike Zorn, whose paintings now sell for upwards of half a million dollars, you can still pick up a  Kamke for around €4000 which seems a bargain.  After all, who wouldn't want to surround themselves with lush Swedish bathing beauties?

Ivar Kamke

 

Thanks to Triple P's own Swedish bathing beauty, A, for her help with this post.

Written to the music of Lars Erk Larsen's Dagens Stunder and Symphony No 1.

Venus in a hammock: sculpture by Antonio Frilli

Scarlett Knight has commented that she was not aware of composer, Andre Lloyd-Webber's art collecting habit.  Here, as an example of his taste, which centres very much around the nineteenth century, is Antonio Frilli's magnificent Nude Reclining in a Hammock which Lloyd-Webber bought at Sotheby's, New York in 1994.

Not much is known about Frilli, other than the fact he was based in Florence where a studio he established still produces high quality copies of classical and renaissance sculpture.  His work was first recorded at the Esposizione Nazionale in Rome in 1883 and he also exhibited in Glasgow in 1888, Paris in 1889 and the St Louis International Exhibition in 1904, the setting, of course, for the musical Meet me in St Louis (1944)starring Judy Garland.  It was at the St Louis exhibition that this sculpture was bought by William Goldman, ironically, a theatrical entrepreneur. 

The Mastbaum Theater in Philadelphia which was build in 1929 and demolished in 1958

Goldman kept it in his garden until he moved it to join the numerous other works of art adorning the palatial Jules Mastbaum Theatre in Philadelphia in 1932.  This huge 4,717 seat cinema was named after Stanley cinema chain owner Jules Mastbaum (1872-1926) who was also a collector of sculpture. Mastbaum owned the largest collection of works by Rodin outside France, which he donated to the city of Philadelphia where they are still on exhibition in a building he commissioned (Agent Triple P went to see it a couple of years ago and we will feature it in due course).

Diana with a Deer (c.1900)

Frilli produced a number of copies of works by other sculptors and like other Italian sculptors of his generation was more influenced by 17th century style than the previous generation's reverence for neo-classical sculptures like Canova.  He produced a number of sculptures in what is known as Stile Liberty in Italy (Art Nouveau) such as these mixed marble and bronze pieces Diana with a Deer and Girl with Peacocks.

Girl with Peacocks

Frilli's workshop in Florence also produced a number of attractive decorative marble busts in bronze, marble and alabaster, such as the two examples below.

Nude reclining in a Hammock is his masterpiece, however, and it is believed that he worked on it from 1883 until 1904 when it was first exhibited.  At least two versions, both in white marble, were produced.  The second (below) was sold at Sotheby's New York as well in 1999 for $100,000.

The feeling of suspension Frilli achieves in this sculpture is really quite marvellous and you quite forget that the apparently flimsy draperies are what are holding the whole thing up.  The girls arm looks like it is idly dangling when, of course, it too, is part of the structure supporting the weight.

There is nothing classical about this wonderful, life-sized sculpture; she is a naked, modern girl beautifully captured in a sensuously indolent moment.

Utterly brilliant!

More girls in hammocks another time...

Sleeping Venus: Sleeper by Max Beckmann

 Sleeper (1924)

Another sensuous sleeping figure, this time by German artist Max Beckmann who was born in Leipzig in 1884.  Beckmann showed early artistic talent and attended the Weimar acadamy from 1900-1903.  He moved to Berlin in 1904 and came under the influence of German impressionists like Lovis Corinth. A 1907 exhibition of the works of Delacroix in Berlin added another influence and he began to wok on large scale epic works; his The Sinking of the Titanic in 1912 brought him increasing fame. 

The Sinking of the Titanic (1912)

He volunteered to serve as a medic during the Great War and was sent to the Russian front but the horrors he found there caused him to have a nervous breakdown and he was discharged. His paintings became more claustraphobic, violent and brutal as a result of his experiences during the war.

Minna Tube as Venus in Wagner's Tannhauser

At the time he produced this painting his marriage to his first wife Minna Tube was coming to an end after a relationship that had lasted over twenty years (although they had lived apart since 1915). He had an affair with Dr Hildegard Melms the previous year but in 1924 fell in love with the singer Mathilde von Kaubach (1904-1986).  She was twenty years younger than Beckmann and they were married  a year later after Beckmann's divorce with Tube came through.  In this painting the sleeping figure posesses, confusingly, Minna's curvy body but Mathilde's face.  He stayed close to Minna the mother of his son, however, who went on to be a well known Wagnerian opera singer.  Beckmann had forbidden Minna from continuing her painting studies when they got married so had taken up singing instead.

Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, Max Beckmann and Mathilde "Quappi" von Kaubach in 1924

Mathilde was the daughter of the Munich artist Friederich August von Kaulbach. She was introduced to Beckmann's work and indeed, Beckman himself, by her friend Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, herself an artist, who she had met during a visit to Holland.  It was Henriette von Motesiczky, Marie-Louise's mother who gave Mathilde the nickname Quappi inspired by the closeness of the sound of Mathilde's surname of Kaubach to Kaulquappe (tadpole-maybe you have to be a German!).

Zwei damen am fenster (1928)- Portrait of Quappi with Marie-Louise von Motesiczky

Beckmann had a monograph published about him in 1924 and from then his fame increased enormously with eight of his paintings being exhibited at the Metropolitan museum in New York in 1931 and the German National Gallery in Berlin devoting a whole room to his work; a then unprecedented honour for a living artist.

Quappi in a pink jumper (1932)

The coming of the Nazis saw bad times for Beckmann; dismissed from his post at the School of the Städesches Art Institute  in 1933 and his art being declared "degenerate" in 1937.  He fled to Amsterdam only to find himself under Nazi occupation a few years later. In 1947 he received an offer from the Washington Art Schools in St Louis, moved to the US and never returned to Germany.  He died in New York in 1950

Reclining nude (1929)

This reclining nude from 1929 is obviously Quappi, then aged twenty-five,  in a sensual portrait the composition of which suggests a strong sense of intimacy.  Beckmann never liked being called an expressionist and, unlike other avant-garde painters of the time, stuck to representational works but his reputation, particularly through his influence on young American artists was considerable and in the last decade or so his work has become increasingly well known.

Quappi and Max Beckmann in Baden-Baden, 1928

Quappi helped him get over the traumas of war and was a frequent subject for Beckmann.  After his death in the US she remained in America and ran his estate before her death in Jacksonville, Florida at the age of 82.