Truncated Venus: Reclining Nude by Antoine Watteau

Reclining Nude (c 1716)

Here is a nude with an unusual origin, which Agent Triple P saw in the Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena a few years ago.

The Judgement of Paris (1721). One of Watteau's final paintings

Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) is most famous for his bucolic but theatrical paintings of figures in a landscape, particularly using characters from the commedia dell'arte. His nudes, many of which are, characteristically, only partly naked, either disport themselves in mythological scenes or in domestic interiors.

The Remedy (c 1716)

This very small (14cm x 17cm) painting is unusual in that it depicts a nude in neither a domestic nor a mythological scene.  However, recently Triple P came across a preliminary drawing for this painting which shows a very different composition and shows the figure in full, rather than the truncated version above.  Entitled The Remedy it shows the same woman about to have an enema administered by her maid.  In those days it would have been known as a clyster after the clyster syringe the maid is holding.  The use of an enema using the clyster syringe was a common remedy for stomach cramps and constipation from the 17th until the 19th century. 

The Secret Toilet (c 1715)

The drawing itself is far more than a sketch (although drawn over the top of other sketches) whereas the painting looks more like a study.  Watteau had produced a number intimate pictures of a lady and her maid, such as The Secret Toilet, which is in a private collection and we can only find in a black and white reproduction.  So whether he had any plans to produce this rather curious subject in a full blown painting isn't known.

Watteau in 1720 painted by Rosalba Carriere

Watteau, the son of a tiler, was initially apprenticed to a local painter in Valenciennes, where he was born.  Having outgrown his teacher he moved to Paris at the age of eighteen and workied in a workshop that produced copies of old master paintings.  It was here that he developed his characteristic, loose style which, in many ways, was an early forerunner of impressionism; particularly in the way he handled landscapes.  Failing to win the Prix de Rome in 1709 his 1712 entry was so accomplished that not only did he win the prize of a year's study in Rome but he was immediately accepted as  a full member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.

A Lady at her Toilet (1716)

Always a sickly individual, he died in 1721 at the age of only 36, largely unknown outside a small group of devotees but now considered one of the most influential painters of the eighteenth century.

Reclining American Venus: Nude Reclining by Arthur Beecher Carles

Nude Reclining (1921)

Here is a very sensous nude by that wonderful colourist Arthur Beecher Carles (1882-1952).  Carles was born in Philadelphia and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts there.  Whilst studying he received two grants which enabled him to travel and study in Europe. 

Self-portrait (1912)

These trips helped him immerse himself in the new artistic trends on the continent and he continued to travel to Europe during his career.  It is not an exaggeration to say that his exposure to these ideas and his advocacy of modernism made him an important channel for the movement to the US, especially as he taught at the Academy from 1917 until 1925.

Blue Nude (1937)

Later Carles became a modernist and experimented with cubism. Towards the end of his career he started to paint large abstract canvasses which are considered to be forerunners of abstract expressionism.

Reclining nude (1933)

Unfortunately, later in his life he struggled with alcoholism and his work was cut short when he suffered a massive stroke in 1941 which left him an invalid until his death in 1952.

Nude seated with book

His nudes vary enormously in style but all of them exhibit his keen eye for the use of colour and, indeed, he has been called one of the most brilliant colourists in American art. 

Reclining nude with red hair 1922

This picture, produced only a year after the painting at the top of this post shows how he started to deconstruct his iamges during the nineteen twenties.

Nude (1922)

He once said that "accuracy is an intellectual quality while art is an affair of the emotions" and was very much an expressionist by inclination.  He was also, in turn, a tonalist, an impressionist, a modernist and, eventually an abstract expressionist.

Nude in repose (1925)

All of his paintings, from the vibrant use of orange in the picture at the top of this post, to the cool colours of this later traditional work, use colour in a remarkable way.  Indeed, it is said that he revolutionised painting in the United States generally and he deserves to be better known in Europe.

Centrefold Venus of the Month 18: Franca Petrov, November 1970

As we try to catch up on our centrefolds of the month we go back forty years to Russo-Italian girl Franca Petrov from November 1970. 

A very seventies top!

Well, that's if the accompanying text is to be believed and, at this time, Penthouse was still using some of its models' real names and stories but as we can't find anything else about the young lady who knows?

It could just be that they chose the Italo-Russian mix to justify the quotation from Stendahl they used to open the piece. Stendahl reckoned that the ideally beautiful woman "would combine the regal grace and proud carriage of a Russian nobleman with the full-blown earth beauty of an Italian girl".  We can't think that Penthouse today would open their centrefold pictorial with a quote from a nineteenth century French novelist!

In fact the Penthouse piece claims, at one point, that Franca's father had studied in Grenoble, which is just, coincidentally, Stendahl's birthplace.

This pictorial was shot by two seperate photographers: David Dagley and Marc Sharratt.  We don't think that these photographers ever did any other work for Penthouse but do know that Sharratt photographed Pink Floyd in the sixties.

For most of her pictorial's pictures Franca is actually dressed.  Agent Triple P actually likes to see his centrefold ladies dressed in some of their pictures and when you factor in the fashions of forty years ago it sets the whole pictorial firmly in its time.

Triple P, who has some experience of Italian women, responds very positively to her dark and sultry Mediterranean looks.

It's a shame so many mens' magazines photographers don't show their models smiling but then if you are being asked to look sultry and Mediterranean then its difficult, we suppose.

An interesting composition this; it reminds Triple P of the framing of some of the shots in The Ipcress File (1965) where the director, Sidney J Furie, often put random objects in the foreground whilst the action took place in the background.

Franca was blessed with a 39-24-37 figure but we only get to see her in her naked entirity once, in what is the nicest photograph of the shoot, as she sits astride a chair..

Franca has a lusciouly full pair of lips; something which Triple P particularly appreciates!

Finally, Franca becomes only the sixth Penthouse centrefold (seventh for the UK edition) to flash her fur, in this one picture.

Frankly (!) all you really take in, though, is that amazing psychedelic top!

Hawaiian Venus: Nelia Cozza

Exotica for the winter

Well, its another cold and bleak day in Britain's answer to Beverly Hills.  Apparently, our winter so far is the coldest in Britain since 1683 and we are now on course to have our coldest winter for 1,000 years!  The whole of December had a below freezing average temperature.

Nelia gets touched up for her shell-hugging shot in the sea

In which case what we need is one of our regular trips to the South Seas to warm ourselves up.   So here, from  1980, is Nelia Cozza, a part Filipina girl photographed in Hawaii.

Nelia, looking rather magnificent in 1979

Nelia had appeared on the cover of Oui magazine the previous year, in April 1979, but she returned as the centrefold in this February 1980 offering.

Oui magazine, which was supposed to be Playboy's answer to the naughtier Penthouse was struggling financially at this time and within  less than two years Hugh Hefner would quietly sell it off.

Still, for a decade, from its first issue in 1972, it would present some peerless photographs of some of the most beautiful women in the world taken by some of the top photographers in the world.

Jeff Dunas does Brian May of Queen

On photographic duty for this pictorial was big-haired lensman Jeff Dunas who took, part Filipina, part Cuban, Nelia to a private island in Hawaii for her centrefold shoot.

Dunas and Nelia go boating

Dunas was born in Los Angeles in 1954 and started working on Penthouse in the Seventies; contributing his first pictorial, a boy/girl set, for the April 1973 issue.  Two months later he shot his first Pet of the Month, Paula Francis for the June 1973 issue.

Off to the island

He would continue to shoot regularly for Penthouse for the next five years before moving on to other magazines.  Dunas never shot a centrefold for Playboy but did work for Playboy Germany. He would take photographs for a number of men's magazines but now he doesn't mention this aspect of his career on his website, concentrating instead on the artier magazines he worked on in the eighties.  Many of these were French, as he was splitting his time between Los Angeles and Paris.

Dunas and Nelia on the rocks

During most of the eighties he was involved in publishing; setting up his own company to issue photographic books but he returned to fashion, commercial and fine art photography in 1989.  He is now mostly known for his portraits of actors and musicians 

Nelia is stranded as Dunas searches for a good vantage point

He is also the father of actress Alexa Davalos, most recently seen as Andromeda in Clash of the Titans (2010).  

This rather splendid photograph of Nelia also featured on the contents page of Oui magazine that month.  Below we can see Dunas setting up the shot.

Dunas and Nelia spent all day on the small island shooting this pictorial, which they had waded across to earlier, but then the tide came in and they got cut off from the land and had to be rescued by some crab fishermen.

Still, the results are suitably tropical with twenty year old Nelia complementing the Hawaiian scenery very nicely.

Nelia was a Bunny girl at the Playboy club in Los Angeles.  She appeared in a pop video for a song called Belly of the Whale by a group called Burning Sensations in 1982 and also had a brief appearance in a 1986 film called Hell Hunters starring Stewart Granger (!), Maud Adams and George Lazenby (yes, he did make other films!).

Nelia climbs a rope ladder for the music video for Belly of the Whale by Burning Sensations

By 1980 Oui had become much less explicit than it had been in the late seventies so Nelia's pictorial is comparatively modest compared with what Penthouse was doing at the time.

Even so, we still get some lovely tropical, island girl bush on display.

Although, unlike its parent magazine Playboy, we don't get to know much about the lives of their centrefolds Oui does inform us that Nelia was 34-24-35.

She has a nicely soft-looking bust which is displayed to great effect in a number of these pictures.

Nelia sets off the Hawaiian scenery very nicely and, even though she is not a local, gives off the right sort of South Seas island vibe.

Lovely smile!

Dressing to impress

So, if you are suffering from horrible winter weather, put on some Arthur Lyman music and make yourself a ridiculous cocktail like the Blue Hawaii so you can drink to the tropical loveliness of Miss Cozza.  

In fact, the Blue Hawaii was created in 1957 by a barman at the Kaiser Hawaiian Village resort (now the Hilton Hawaiian Village) where Lyman, who played in the resort's Shell Bar, recorded most of his albums.  The bartender who created the drink, Harry Kee, was asked to do so by a representative of Bols who had just launched their new Blue Curacao liqueur.  So its Tiki credentials are impeccable!

Agent Triple P feels warmer already!