Bruno Paul

Self-portrait - Homo nudus -

1895

Adolph Eduard Otto von Faber du Faur (1828 Ludwigsburg - 1901 Munich). Man sitting in the studio. Watercolour painting, 43 x 27 cm (visible size), 73 x 53 cm (frame), monogrammed at lower right, estate stamp. Upper right corner neatly repaired, small tear in the wall to the left of the sitter. - Thinking about art - About the artwork The sitter, an elderly man, is seated in a studio on a pedestal reminiscent of an academy hall. The earthy, dark tones give the scene a weighty quality. The lightest tones are found in the incarnate parts of the figure, which do not stand out from the other colours of the picture, but are linked to them. As a result, the sitter's face is both part of and the highlight of the colour references in the picture. The colour of the sitter's skin is reflected in his pink coat, while his white-grey hair matches the colour of the wall next to him. This almost monochrome wall surface, in turn, is connected across the portrait to the framed picture standing on the floor, which seems to have been erased by this correspondence with the empty wall surface. Through the palette, which is positioned directly behind the sitter's head, the reference to painting, which is already given by the studio space, is explicitly linked to the sitter, who thus seems to be contemplating the question of the meaning of art. This raises the question of whether Faber Du Faur, who had become lonely in his old age, might have painted a self-portrait here in his later years. In addition to the studio setting, the sitter's explicit reference to the palette and the fact that the picture was part of his estate, the only summary elaboration of the body suggests a self-portrait, while the representation of the face is concretised with the wide-open eyes typical of a self-portrait. This concentration on the face gives the impression of the artist's melancholy introspection, captured by the palette and related to the meaning of painting, whose dark character is reinforced by the concealment of the palette hanging on the right of the picture in the light tones so characteristic of Faber Du Faur. In the course of this resignation, Faber du Faur advises his son Hans, who has also become a painter: "Promise me one thing: never move to Munich, they'll kill you here!" Whoever the sitter may be, the references to painting make the portrait a resigned self-contemplation by Faber Du Faur, focused on art. About the artist After leaving school, Otto Faber du Faur entered the service of the Württemberg army, at the same time cultivating his artistic talent. In 1851, on the recommendation of his father Christian Wilhelm, who was himself a battle painter, he spent six months in Munich as an apprentice to Alexander von Kotzebue. In 1852 he was granted a year's leave of absence from military service to study battle painting in the studio of Adolphe Yvon...

Paul Friedrich Meyerheim (1842 Berlin - 1915 ibid.). Sketch of a female torso with hands and an umbrella. Pencil on paper, 27.5 x 22.5 cm (visible size)...

Hans Dvořák (19th century). Shady hollow way in a sunny forest. Watercolour and pen-and-ink drawing, 58.5 x 43 cm (visible size), 70 x 55.5 cm (frame), signed and dated "Hans Dvořák ...

Charles Edward Brittan Jr (1870 Plymouth - 1949). High moor landscape in the fog. Gouache, signed at lower left "Charles E. Brittan", 18 x 34.5 cm (passepartout), 45 x 62 cm (frame)....

Johannes Friedrich Heinrich Hänsch (1875-1945), Red blooming war landscape with dead soldier, 1918. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 15 x 24.5 cm (image), 27 x 37 cm (sheet size / frame), monogrammed and dated "19JH18" at lower left. - Paper slightly darkened About the artwork Despite the relatively small format, the watercolor with an internal frame depicts a panoramic view of a flat landscape stretching to the horizon. As far as the eye can see, the poppies bloom in flaming red. The flowers are not rendered individually, however, creating an almost cohesive red surface. The bright red is interspersed with vegetal green. A complementary contrast that creates an intense color effect. In this color contrast, a white area breaks through from the middle ground, widening towards the foreground and surrounding a brown hole. Next to it, in blue, is the actual protagonist of the painting, the first thing that catches the eye: a dead soldier. Next to him is his helmet, revealing the empty interior. The brown, hollow shape corresponds to the hole in the ground. A shell funnel is surrounded by bright ash, which, like the inverted helmet, becomes a sign of death. The soldier's arms point to the funnel, while the empty helmet paraphrases the calotte of the skull and, like the funnel, thematizes the empty darkness of death. The soldier's body, however, is intact and not - as in Otto Dix's triptych "The War" - a dismembered corpse. Instead, Johannes Hänsch activates the landscape, especially the color, to illustrate a blooming landscape of death that extends from the shell funnel in the foreground to the rising column of smoke on the horizon. If the soldier's body is intact, the tangle of barbed wire emblematically placed over the empty helmet also appears tattered. On the right side of the picture, the barbed wire even seems to stretch its arms to the sky in horror. Against the background of this allegory, the content of the bright red also becomes clear: the landscape is drenched in blood, literally a sea of blood, and the single unknown soldier stands pars pro toto for all those who died on the battlefield. Dying in war is not dying in community, but in solitude. In order to emphasize the isolation in death, Johannes Hänsch has set the blue of the soldier in the axis given by his body in the middle ground of the picture into the red sea. A master of landscape painting, Hänsch succeeds in creating a natural-looking landscape allegory that illustrates the horror and death of war, without depicting the brutality of war itself. This singular 'war memorial' of the unknown soldier is the opposite of heroization and yet the dignity of the deceased soldier is preserved through the integrity of his body. About the artist As the son of the sculptor Adolf Haensch, the young Johannes received his first artistic training in his father's Berlin studio. However, he eventually decided to become a painter, and in 1897 he entered the Berlin Academy of Arts. He initially studied under Paul Vorgang and Eugen Bracht, and was particularly influenced by Bracht's increasingly colourful landscape painting. In 1901 he moved to the class of Friedrich Kallmorgen, with whom he spent several weeks on excursions into nature. In 1905 he became a master pupil of Albert Hertel, who taught him watercolour painting. From 1903 to 1933 he exhibited annually at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition, the exhibitions of the Berlin Artists' Association and the Munich Glaspalast. In 1905 he was awarded the Carl Blechen...

Arthur Claude Strachan (1865 Edinburgh - 1954 Minehead), Evening Cottage Scene. Watercolor on paper, mounted, 28 x 46 cm (visible size), 48 x 65 cm (fra...

Born in Szeged, Hungary, he became one of the better known and successful illustrators of the Golden Age of Illustration, completing over 100 books. Among them are "A Treasury of Verse for Little Children," "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam," and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." He is probably best known for pen and ink drawings of mythology subjects geared towards children. He studied at Budapest Technical University and attended art schools in Munich and Paris before moving to London at age 23. In 1907, he began illustrating children's books and did a series of annual gift books...

Arabian Charger Seller" by Antonio Rivas (Spanish, 1845-1911) stands as an exquisite example of Orientalism, a 19th-century artistic movement that sought to depict the rich and diverse cultures of the East. Rivas, a master of his craft, delves into this genre with a keen eye for detail and a dedication to authenticity that brings the scene to life. In this antique watercolor on paper...

Louis Tinayre (1861-1942) An encampment of journalists in Chambéry, signed and titled lower left "Campement de journalistes à Chambéry" Ink on paper In quite good condition, a a visible vertical fold in the centre, some stains and foxings 21 x 29 cm Framed : 33.7 x 45.5 cm Louis Tinayre's background and adventurous life obviously shed light on this humorous and detailed scene. He shows a remarkable sense of observation, capturing as a journalistic illustrator this scene of extraordianarian life. We don't know for the moment why these journalists had to improvise a camp, probably in a hotel room. No doubt it was to cover a trial or a sensational news item that had filled all the hotels in the city with journalists who had flocked for the occasion. In any case, what interests Tinayre as an almost ethnographic observer is this camp of journalists, of which he makes a tender and comical scene. One understands him better when one knows how he could be fascinated in the same way by the territories of Madagascar, the North Pole or the Far West that he painted and drew. Louis Tinayre was born on 14 March 1861 in Neuilly-sur-Seine. His mother, Victoire Tinayre, was a teacher and a member of the International Workers' Association. Louis was the son of a Communard couple. His father, Jean Joseph, known as Jules Tinayre (Issoire 1821 - Paris 1871) was shot during the Bloody Week. His mother, Victoire Tinayre, fled with her children. Louis was the first to be sent to Hungary, and the rest of the family (including his brother Julien) joined him there later. He studied Fine Arts at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest. Returning to Paris in 1880 (after the amnesty), Louis Tinayre assiduously frequented Le Chat noir, where he met the positivists and Adèle Jacomet (Buenos Aires 1867-1946), whom he married in 1888. He became an animal painter and press illustrator and was sent by Le Monde Illustré to cover the second expedition to Madagascar (then under French protectorate) in 1895. He stayed there, fascinated, for six months and produced numerous drawings and photographs. Back in France, he created eight 5 x 4 meters dioramas presented at the National and Colonial Exhibition in Rouen in 1896. He returned to Madagascar in 1898 to prepare the creation of a giant panorama representing the surrender of Antananarivo in 1895. The Malagasy pavilion at the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris allowed him to admire the dioramas (on the ground floor) and the panorama (on the first floor). On his second trip, Tinayre took a Lumière cinematograph with him to document the daily life of the Malagasy people, no doubt to facilitate the design of the vast panorama. These short films were donated to the Cinémathèque française in 2009 by his grandson, Alain Tinayre. One of the admirers of Tinayre's drawings, watercolours, paintings and photographs at the Universal Exhibition was Prince Albert I of Monaco: from 1901 onwards, Tinayre accompanied him on his hunts, painting scenes in North Africa, Russia, the Far West (Wyoming) and the North Pole. Tinayre, the official painter of the Prince's scientific expeditions, left his name to a glacier. Together with the painter Alexandre Jean-Baptiste Brun, he painted the four murals in the large amphitheatre of the Oceanographic Institute in Paris. Louis Tinayre painted the figures while Alexandre Brun...

"In the Artist's Studio" was painted in the realistic style in the late 19th century by the Scottish artist, George Clark Stanton. Stanton was a painter, watercolorist, goldsmith and...

French School 19th Century Episode of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, a cantonment of soldiers during the siege of Paris Pen and brown ink on paper 15 x 23 cm Annotated on the lower...

An fine period watercolor, dated 1910, an illustration by Charles Edmund Brock (English, 1870-1938). This, from a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, "The Newcomes, Memoirs of the Most Respectable Family." The novel was published in 1855. Below this image are two characters from "The Newcomes, Chapter XI". Presented in a rustic giltwood frame. Signed "C.E. Brock" and dated "1910" lower left. Image size, 10"H x 7.5"W. Charles Edmund Brock was a widely published English painter, line artist and book illustrator, who signed most of his work C. E. Brock. He received his first book commission at the age of 20. He became very successful, and illustrated books for authors such as Jonathan Swift, William Thackeray, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot. Brock also contributed pieces to several magazines such as The Quiver, The Strand, and Pearsons...