Venus by the sea: In the Water by Eugene de Blaas

In the Water (1914)

Here is a nice one-off nude by Italian-born, Austrian painter Eugene de Blaas (1843-1932).  Blaas was born in Albano, near Rome, but spent much of his life in Venice where his father, who was also his original art tutor, was a professor at the Venice Academy.  Tourists visiting Venice wanted pictures of Venetian life and Blaas soon found a niche supplying pictures of gondoliers, fishermen and, above all, Venetian beauties in traditional costume.  His work was so popular in England two of the top art dealers of the time battled it out to represent him.

The Water Carrier (1908)

Sadly, this elegant nude, treading carefully in the shallows as a small shoal of fish darts past her legs, seems to be the only one that he did.  In all his other paintings, despite often displaying a smouldering Italian sensuality, his girls are clothed.  A lost opportunity, but perhaps for Blaas, a very commercial artist, sex didn't sell at the beginning of the last century.

 Young Italian Beauty

Bushy Venus: Nude on a Couch by Gustave Caillebotte

Nu au divan (1882)

One of the pictures Agent Triple P admired on his recent visit to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston was Gustave Caillebotte's The Orange Trees, which perfectly captures the experience of sitting in the shade on a very hot day in France.  It is a particularly cleverly composed picture with the sunlit path drawing the eye down to the figures in the shade who, otherwise, would look rather muted against the brightly lit background.

Les Orangers (1878) The figure in the foreground is the artist's brother, Marital and the girl is his cousin, Zoe.

Many of Caillebotte's paintings demonstrate strong perspective and geometric compositional aspects.  Although he exhibited at the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876 (notably with The Floor Scrapers; his early masterpiece) he was more a realist painter than the other impressionists at the time.   Born to a wealthy family Caillebotte (1848-1894) was the diametric opposite to the image an artist starving in a garret. 

Self-portrait (1892)

Caillebotte was born in the family home on rue Faubourg St.-Denis and qualified as a lawyer.  He started to paint as an amateur and studied under Léon Bonnat becoming skilled fairly quickly.  He entered  the École des Beaux-Arts but spent little time there.  A year later he inherited his father's fortune and was financially secure for life.

Unlike the other impressionists Caillebotte painted very few nudes and the few that he did are rather cool and  not particularly emotionally involving.  He died at the young age of 45, unmarried, although he was rumoured to have had a relationship with one Charlotte Berthier, a much younger working class woman who he remembered with a substantial bequest in his will.

Caillebotte in 1878

Possibly because he died young, or possibly because his own style varied a lot as he experimented with different techniques, he was largely forgotten and only in the last fifty years has he been rehabilitated somewhat. Perhaps his greatest impact was in his sponsorship and support of his fellow impressionists: paying the rent for Monet's studio and persauding the Louvre to buy Manet's Olympia, for example.  As a result, when he died in 1894 he left his collection of impressionists to the French government.  This included: 19 Pissaros, 14 Monets, 10 Renoirs, 9 Sisleys, 7 Degas,  5 Cézannes and 4 Manets!  Amazingly, the French authorities weren't keen on this and grudgingly accepted only 38 of the 68 paintings.  Renoir, as executor of his will retained a Degas and the other 29 were turned down again by the French government in 1904 and 1908.  Most of the remainder were sold to the American collector Albert C Barnes and can now be seen, as Agent Triple P did last year, in the Barnes Foundation Gallery in Philadelphia.

The work at the top of this post, nude on a couch, has been the subject of much speculation.  Some critics have interpreted it as a woman lying in shame after having had sex. More recently, in her book on Caillebotte, Norma Broude has said that in fact, given that the woman is playing with her nipple, she is in the process of arousing herself. Most agree, however, that the pose emphasises the private nature of the action given that the model is using her forearm to screen part of her face.  Whatever Caillebot intended, the attention to detail, from the belt mark around her waist, through the pattern on the couch to her magnificently rendered pubic hair generate a feel of voyeurism on a moment of quiet eroticism. Depiction of a woman's pubic hair in a finished painting like this would have been most unusual at the time and we would venture that it is the most tactilely successful portrayal of this area in the whole of painting.  Agent Triple P can almost feel it against the back of his fingers as he looks at it!

Femme Nue Etendue Sur Un Divan (1873)

His only other major female nude, Femme Nue Etendue Sur Un Divan is a magnificent, Courbet-like pastel and is rather more conventional in its pose and content; although, again, he depicts the model's pubic hair.  This is Caillebotte's first dated painting (1873) and was done in the year he entered the École des Beaux-Arts.  His fascination with the subtle play of light in interiors is ably demonstrated by his work on the shiny, striped sheet.

It is a shame Caillebotte didn't do more female nudes as these two paintings demonstrate both a great facility and the ability to create an enigmatic story.

Jungle Venus: Kayla Collins

Playmate Kayla Collins is off to the jungle

One of the more ridiculous "reality TV" programmes on British television is I'm a Celebrity get me out of Here!.  In this epic, which runs every day for what seems like months but is probably only a few weeks, a group of Z list clebrities are taken out into the middle of the Australian jungle where they have to camp. 

Gravity actually works on Kayla's bust

In reality they are only a few kilometres from the remarkably tasteless looking Palazzo Versace, where they are all put up before and after at no doubt enormous expense, but the makers of the series make it look like you have to fly for hours to get to the camp.

Even aerosol whipped cream tastes better than kangaroo's testicles

They then camp in the jungle and have to perform various challenges to earn food to eat.  Increasingly these challenges involve having to eat disgusting creatures or parts of creatures. 

Mylene showers her way to the top of the YouTube hit list in 2006

Agent Triple P, we are sorry to admit, enjoyed some of the earlier series but hasn't watched it since 2006 when washed up manufactured pop group singer Mylene Klass took a shower in a white bikini and launched a hugely lucrative career as a model and presenter on the back (er..) of it.

This year's version starts on Saturday and, surprisingly, we have actually heard of most of the celebrities.  A last minute addition, due to an already booked "star" dropping out is described in the press today as "Playboy model Kayla Collins". 

Kayla's centrefold

Now usually when the press describe someone as a Playboy model it means that they have had 1 picture in the magazine or appeared on Playboy TV for three minutes.  But no, further research shows that Miss Collins was an actual Playmate of the Month; for August 2008. 

An unusually revealing shot for a recent Playmate

More than that she sems to have a natural bust and no tattoos.  Hooray!  She is a rather petite 5'2" and 34-24-34.  Born in Pennsylvania she is 23 years old and, wait for it, has her own swimsuit line coming out next year.  Expect lots of shots of her soaping herself up in her new bikinis in the jungle camp shower.

She's not really Agent Triple P's type of girl, but we will no doubt tune in once or twice (pretty girls usually get voted out by the public fairly early on) to check out her qualifications.  So far they look rather sound.

Venus seated by the sea: The Little Mermaid and Girl in a Wetsuit

Den lille havfrue (1913)

HMS asked us recently if the pose of the statue of Andromeda by Takanen link was inspired by the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen or whether indeed, it had any classical antecedents. We are not aware of any classical statues in this pose; most Greek and Roman figures being sculpted standing. I suppose the short answer is that there are only a certain number of poses a girl seated on the ground can adopt.

Edvard Eriksen (1876-1859)

The original Little Mermaid was commissioned by Carl Jacobsen, the son of the founder of Carlsberg, after he saw a theatrical version of the Hans Christian Andersen story in a Copenhagen theatre.

Ellen Price (1878-1968)

It was sculpted by Edvard Eriksen who modelled the figure’s head on the Danish prima ballerina Ellen Price and, because the dancer refused to pose nude, the body on his wife Eline.

Eline Eriksen (1881-1963)

It was unveiled in 1913. In fact, the much vandalised statue, which sits on small rock close to the sea wall just down from the ferry terminal, has always been a copy. The original version is kept by the family in secret. It is still a copyrighted piece; Eriksen’s family sell authorised copies of it for large sums of money and woe betide anyone who tries to copy it without their permission.

Elek Imredy

It was this issue which saw the development of Vancouver’s similar Girl in a Wetsuit statue. A Vancouver lawyer, Douglas Brown, discussed with the Hungarian sculptor Elek Imredy (1912-1994) about commissioning a copy of the Little Mermaid to sit atop a particular boulder off the northern shore of Stanley Park.

Girl in a Wetsuit prior to installation

Much to Imredy’s satisfaction the application to produce a copy was turned down by Eriksen’s heirs in Denmark, allowing Imredy to come up with a similar but different sculpture. His girl looks out towards the ocean to emphasise its importance to the city. Surprisingly, given that it is very much a part of the scenery in Vancouver today, it was not universally popular when it was unveiled in June 1972.

Girl in a Wetsuit (1972)

Having seen both many times (these are both Triple P's photographs) we have to say that we prefer Imredy’s sculpture; partly because it has a more spectacular setting compared with the rather dreary industrial backdrop which The Little Mermaid suffers from.

The Little Mermaid in Shanghai this year

Over the last few months, The Little Mermaid, for the first time, left her rock and was transported to Shanghai to sit in the Danish pavilion during Expo 2010.  Only today the Mayor of Copenhagen said that she had arrived back in Denmark and will be back in place on 20th November,

Montreal Venus: Emmanuelle Chriqui 2

We have featured the splendid Mlle. Chriqui before:
http://venusobservations.blogspot.com/2009/09/montreal-venus-emmanuelle-chriqui.html
However, trying to clear some pictures from our "my pictures" folder we came across these two and so here they are.

The one of her behind the net curtain reminds us of some of the Playboy centrefold photographs from the nineteen fifties.  It is revealing without being revealing.  A very nice picture indeed!

The second one of her on the beach, in a very effective bikini, is unusual in that it shows what appears to be an appendix scar.  Many people have these (not Triple P, of course, he is perfect) but you very rarely see them in photographs such as this.  The only other ones we can recall are those of Marilyn Monroe in the Bert Stern Last Sitting pictures.  Just as Ian Fleming's James Bond appreciated the one fault on the otherwise perfect Honey Ryder (she had a broken nose) so we think this scar makes the otherwise perfect Emmanuelle all the more appealing.

Pedlars of Death Venuses: Manikin Advertisements from 1974

Agent Triple P doesn't find women smoking sexy.  He can't stand the smell of cigarette smoke and believes the one good thing the last government in this country did was to ban smoking in restaurants and bars.  Except now you can't sit outside in the summer because the tragic deathstick addicts are all outside polluting the atmnospher there instead.

Now, whilst we would never smoke and think cigarette smokers are the spawn of the Devil we can sort of understand cigar smoking.  I suppose it's like the difference between malt whisky (which we don't like either) and drinking methylated spirit.  Our particular friend S has been known to smoke the occasional cigar (a few a year and she doesn't smoke otherwise) and we did find that sexy.  But maybe that was just because it was S and she can make gutting fish look sexy.

Anyway, back in the mid-seventies (when the idea of sexism was something only a few deranged American women went on about) the makers of Manikin cigars, Hunters & Frankau, decided that their previous advertisements had been somewhat lacking and came up with these efforts. 

The 1932 efforts were rather lacking on the girlie front

Nothing to do with cigars of course but then many advertisements through the years have featured underdressed young women rather than the actual product. 

Fielding Dixon of Dock Green in the fifties didn't help much

You do wonder wther these ad campaigns are only dreamed up by advertising or client executives who think: "What we need is some half naked girls lounging about in the Bahamas.  I will, of course need to supervise the shoot myself"

"Hmm...I know what we need"  Sixties Manikin man doesn't realise he is about to be replaced by a woman

There were also accompanying TV advertisements (with incredibly raunchy music) also featuring scantily dressed women in the tropics that a teenage Triple P remembers as being particularly stimulating.

Redheaded Venus of the Week 10: Edna Smith by Robert Henri

Edna Smith (1915) by Robert Henri

Robert Henri (1865-1929) was one of America's best painters of the nude at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth.  A skilled portraitist, many of his nudes are really more portraits than figure studies. In his nudes he often concentrated on upper torso pictures as he had a particular facility for rendering woman's breasts.  They really are some of the finest busts in the entirety of art!

The Young Girl

The picture of Edna Smith at the top of this post is now in the Curtis Galleries, Minneapolis. The elfin-faced Smith was a professional model who Henri painted several times. He captures her luminous white skin perfectly whilst still managing to impart enough shading to give her form.

Edna (1910)

Born Robert Henry Cozad in Cincinnati, Ohio, his father was a property developer who moved across the West founding towns which, with great modesty, he named after himself.

During an argument with a rancher in the town of Cozad, Nebraska his father shot and killed the man.  Although cleared of a crime the family moved to Denver where they changed their names so Robert Cozad became Robert Henri in 1882.  Henri was a distant cousin of impressionist painter Mary Cassat.  

Robert Henri in 1897

By 1886 Henri had enrolled at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, which Triple P visited last year.  Two years later he moved to Paris and studied under Bougereau at the Académie Julian and then was admitted  to the École des Beaux Arts.  He returned to Philadelphia at the end of 1891.  In Philadalelphia a group of like minded artists formed around him and they would meet for life drawing sessions and philosophical discussions. 

Edna Smith in a Japanese Wrap (1915)

In 1898 he married one of his students, Linda Craigie, although she died only seven years later.  For the next few years he divided his time between Philadelphia and Paris.  In 1902 he began teaching at the New York School of Art where one of his pupils was Edward Hopper. He was elected to the National Academy for Arts and Design in 1906 but when some of his friend's pictures were rejected for its 1907 exhibition he resigned and set up his own exhibition.   At the age of 43 he married again to a 22 year old Irish girl, Marjorie Organ.

The Beach Hat

In 1929, the year of his death, he was chosen as one of the top three living American artists.

We will look at some of Henri's other nudes another time.