Old and new art

Superstroke as an Art Movement

Giovanni Boldini

Giovanni Boldini (1845 -1931)
Italian-French portrait painter

Born in Ferrara, Italy in 1845. Like Sargent, he had an international career, working mainly in Paris, but also in England where he was well known in London. By the turn of the century Boldini had become the most sought after portrait painter in Paris, achieving such a success that his reputation equaled that of Sargent's in London. He was renowned as a colorist and technician, and his works are considered very much Parisian.

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I believe Sargent first met Boldini in the summer of 1880 (Sargent was 24 and Boldini 38). John had traveled to Venice to meet his family and there he set up a studio. He very easily could have met him in Paris prior, or at the very least Sargent might have known of him. It would be in the early 80's that Boldinipainted Sargent.

In 1885, after the Madame X scandal of the previous year, Sargent moved to London after being there a year he gave up his ParisBoulevard Berthier studio to Boldini who would become one of the best-loved portrait painter of Parisian high society. Their paths would cross quite a bit. They stayed in contact but it is not documented very well. I know for sure Boldini sketched him in 1902.

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Giovanni Boldini was born in Ferrara the eighth of thirteen children. He arrived in Florence in 1862-65, where he came into contact members of the Barbizon school, the Macchiaioli (a group of artists opposed to the strict teachings of the Accademia -- pronounced "mah-key-ay-OH-li") worked to emphasize painterly immediacy and freshness -- (Other artists of that school included Silvestro Lega, Giovanni Fattori, Vito d'Ancona, and Giovanni (Nino) Costa). Principle among these early associations was Boldini's friendship with the influential thinker and art critic Diego Martelli who, himself, would helped mold and champion the ideas of French Impressionism in Italy.

From the earliest years of Boldini's career, he displayed a remarkable talent as a portrait painter, and during a trip to London in 1869 was able to obtain numerous commissions. He would carry this forward residing in London on-and-off for the next five years. Boldini also produced landscape paintings, including a series of frescoes at the Villa 'La Falconiera', near Pistoia in 1870 at the age of 28.

However gifted he might have been in these other areas, his talent and love was clearly for the art of portraiture. In 1872 he settled in Paris at the age of 30, taking a studio on the Place Pigalle. Beginning in '74 he exhibited frequently at the annual Salons (the year that Sargent arrived) and quickly rose to prominence in Parisian art circles. He enjoyed an exclusive contract with the eminent art dealer Adolphe Goupil, and for him produced small, brightly colored 18th century costume pieces such as "Young Woman Writing" that were popular with his Parisian clientele.

Boldini's public debut of '74 at the Salon de Mars with his bold, fluid style of painting soon proved immensely popular. He began to paint society portraits and quickly developed a reputation for his dazzling, elegant depictions of the fashionable women, executed with these bold, fluid brushstrokes.

Here, Boldini is depicted in a caricature by Sem dancing with the wealthy socialite Ava Astor.

Boldini
1910

He would paint portraits of other painters such as James A. McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, and Paul-César Helleu along with Paul's wife. He became a close friend of Degas (Degas drew Boldini); and like Degas, he began to use pastel extensively in the 1880's. Boldini died in Paris in 1931.

Today there is a Boldini museum in his native Ferrara. Among Boldini's better known works are "A Summer Stroll", "At the Piano", "After the Orgy", "Count Robert de Montesquiou ", "The dutchess of Marlborough", "the princess von Hohenlohe" and "Spring Flowers"

(P.806, Vol3)

“Master of Swish” Time Magazine, April 3, 1933, p. 28-29 With her tongue ever so slightly in her check, Mrs. Chester Dale, collector and authority on French painting, helped organize four months ago an exhibition of the paintings of the late Alphonse Bouguereau, barroom decorator par excellence of the Gay Nineties. For all their technical slickness, the correct perspective for looking at a Bouguereau nude was always obtained through the bottom of a 16 oz. Beer glass. Critics in the chill light of a formal art gallery were not impressed with the “Back to Bouguereau” movement. Last week with a better artist and in a better cause (a loan exhibition at the Wildenstein Galleries for New York’s Child Welfare Committee), Maud Dale revived the work of one of M. Bouguereau’s contemporaries, the late Giovanni Boldini. Giovanni Boldini (“Zanin” to intimates) was a society portraitist as artificial as any who ever stretched a lady’s fingers to tickle her vanity. Modernists excuse Zanin Boldini for a virtue denied most Academicians, an exuberance, vivacity and frank sensuousness that won him the title of “Master of Swish,” and made his huge canvases on view last week a series of gay explosions, brilliantly painted. Born in Ferrara in 1842, he grew up to be a little fellow (half an inch too short for military service), with a mincing manner and a domelike forehead. He abhorred Bohemianism, was always perfectly frank in his love of rich food, fine clothes, beautiful women. His career took him first to Florence, then London, then Paris. Ever since the Salon of 1875 his steady succession of portraits and mistresses had been gaining fame but it was not until the turn of the century that Boldini entered his Grand Period. He was preeminently the artist of the Edwardian era, of the pompadour, the champagne supper and the ribbon-trimmed chemise. The passing of the petticoat was the passing of Boldini’s art. He lived to be 88. Too purblind to paint, he could still drink champagne and chuck pretty young models under the chin. In 1929, aged 86, he suddenly married. At his wedding breakfast he made a little speech: “It is not my fault if I am so old, it’s something which has happened to me all at once.”

Conrad Bo, Abstraction in Superstroke and Generalism

Conrad Bo

Bilion little rooms in background

Twitpic Photo