Redheaded Venus of the Week 13: The Favourite by Luis Ricardo Falero

Venus Observations and The Seduction of Venus will be featuring a number of harem girls over the next month or so, as a result of our recent visit to Istanbul. This particular specimen, by Spanish born but British based artist Luis Ricardo Falero (1851-1896), also qualifies as a redhead of the week!

Falero isn't a very well-known artist compared with the likes of Bougereau who also largely concentrated on nudes with a somewhat fantastical theme.  Falero was born in Toledo and was in the Spanish navy, which he hated.  So he upped and walked to Paris from Spain so he could study there, eventually settling in England and living in Hampstead.

Falero was very interested in astronomy and many of his paintings have a celestial theme.  However, he also painted a number of "harem" pictures as part of the late nineteenth century fascination with the near east.

La Favorite is framed by Arab architectural elements.  Her dazzling red hair and pale skin precludes her from being a local inhabitant of the harem so her favoured status is understandable. 

We'll have some more Falero harem girls shortly.

Redheaded Venus of the Week 12: Lilian by Evan Wilson

Lilian

Evan Wilson is an American artist who was born in Alabama in 1953.  He studied at the North Carolina School of the Arts, Maryland Institute, College of Art and the Schuler School of Fine Arts.  In 1978 he was awarded a grant to study in Florence.

His paintings are very nineteenth century in composition and style and are reminiscent of John Singer Sargent.

The Vermilion Kimono

His nudes tend to follow the same theme of women sprawled on a bed, often lying on brightly coloured kimonos.  The Vermilion Kimono presents us with another languishing redhead.

We like these particular paintings because he has rendered our redheads' hair (top and bottom) so well.

Redheaded Venus of the Week 11: Misha in front of windows

This Russian model goes under the name of Misha (or, sometimes, Masha).  She has a lovely, elfin-like quality as she reclines on a suggestively rumpled bed.

Agent Triple P's first proper girlfriend was a redhead with identical colouring to this.  We were amazed and delighted the first time we saw her bright orange pubic hair.  Since then there have been a number of redheads who have varied in shade from a reddish brown  colour through ginger marmalade colour to the aforesaid orange.  All of them delightful!

These two painterly pictures, taken in front of windows, very much remind us of C: the mark 1 redhead (especially the top one).  Sadly, for much of our relationship, given that Triple P's bedroom at college was unheated (he only had a small gas fire in his living room), there was not the opportunity for her to lounge around seductively like this!

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.

Redheaded Venus of the Week: 9 Andromeda by Eugene Delecroix

Andromeda (1852)

Recently, Agent Triple P visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston not really knowing what to expect in the way of paintings in such a relatively new city.  What he had failed to iimediately appreciate, of course, is that Houston is an oil town and, as such has had its fair share of very rich people.  Some of whom, at least, not only had a good eye for art but also were considerate enough to donate it to the museum.  As a result there are some very fine works there indeed and a good number of top artists are featured.  Some of the paintings are, admittedly, minor paintings by major artists but then these are just the sort of paintings that rich collectors would be able to acquire.

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston

We were very taken, when visiting the gallery, by Andromeda (1852) by Eugene Delacroix.  The MFAH has remarkably few nudes on display, for some reason but this vigourous interpretation of the Persues and Andromeda myth by Delacroix demonstrates how he became one of the precursors of the impressionist movement.  The subject of Andromeda has been popular with artists for hundreds if not thousands of years featuring, as it does, a naked virgin chained to rocks as an offering to a sea monster.  We will look at some different interpretations of the legend another time (even Agent Triple P did a drawing of the subject once, although where it is now we are not sure) although we have already looked at one example by Finnish sculptor Takkanen.

Andromeda was the daughter of Queen Cassiopeia and King Cepheus of Ethiopia.  This would have made her black, something which is hardly represented at all!  Cassiopeia boasted that she was more beautiful then the Nereids, the sea nymphs and as a punishment for this impudence Poseidon sent the whale, Cetus, to ravage the coast of Ethiopia.  Desperate to stop these predations Cepheus consulted the Oracle of Apollo as to what to do.  The Oracle said that only by sacrificing his virgin daughter, Andromeda, to the monster could he save his kingdom.  He chained her to a rock on the coast and waited for the monster to take her.  Fortuitously for Andromeda, Perseus, having just returned from having killed the Gorgon Medusa, rescued her by turning Cetus to stone by exposing him to the head of Medusa.  He married Andromeda and they lived happily ever after becoming the ancestors of the Persians.

Chained Andromeda in the 1981 version of Clash of the Titans

Parts of this story were used in the recent (2010) and the superior original (1981) films called Clash of the Titans.  Sadly, Andromeda is fully clothed in both versions (although Andromeda (Judi Bowker or more probably a body double) does strip off to great effect in an earlier bath scene in the 1981 version).  In the recent remake they don't even put Andromeda on a rock but suspend her from a sort of fireman's ladder from the city wall.

 Alexa Davalos as Andromeda hangs about waiting for rescue in the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans

Eugene Delacroix was born in Charenton-St-Maurice in 1798 but moved to Paris with his family at the age of seven on the death of his father.  It was widely believed that his real father was the noted French diplomat Talleyrand whosucceeded Delacroix's father as French Minister of Foreign affairs.   By 1815 he was studying under Pierre-Narcisse Guerin and submitted his first major work to the Paris Salon in 1822.  Two years later his next Salon entrey The Massacre at Chios was bought by the French government and his career went from strength to strength with him eventually producing 850 paintings of largely historical or contemporary subjects. 

Delacroix: Self portrait

In 1825, impressed by the work of Constable he visited England and Constables loose style influenced him greatly.  His pictures became less academic until by the time he painted Andromeda in 1852 his style can be seen as a clear forerunner of the impressionist movement which started fifteen years later.  Delacroix, unfortunately, did not live to see the glories of impressionism.  He died in 1863 having suffered ill health for some time possible exasapated by spending a great deal of his time painting murals in drafty buildings contorted on uncomfortable scaffolding.

Mlle Rose (1817)

He painted several other nudes, although they were not a huge part of his output.  Mlle Rose (1817) is a full-length, unromanticised, portrait from his student days.  Such a physically accurate figure painting would not have been able to have been exhibited publicly at this time so was likely to have been a technical study.

Female nude reclining on a divan (1825)

 

His Female nude reclining on a divan (1825) is one of his earlier works and is of a challenging, partly foreshortened pose.

Odalisque reclining on a divan (1827)

Odalisque reclining on a divan (1827) is in an equally rather uncomfortable looking pose but it does give the figure a sense of life that a more static position would not have conveyed.  It is, possibly, his only really sensual nude with the figure's draperies across her groin only emphasising the area.  An odalisque (from the Turkish odalık (chambermaid)) was an assistant or apprentice concubine in the Turkish Imperial Harem.  To become a concubine she would have to service the Sultan sexually but would not normally be even seen by the Sultan unless she was particularly skilled at singing, dancing or sex.  Therefor the popular depiction of odalisques in nineteenth century art often has them posed in attitudes of extravagant display as if to attract attention.

Woman with a Parrot (1827)

From the same year comes Woman with a Parrot which looks forward to his orientalist paintings of five years later when he visited Morocco and, as a result produced ove 100 early examples of what would become a popular nineteenth century genre.

Death of Sardanapalus (1827)

Probably his most well known nudes, howver, can be found in his epic painting the Death of Sardanapalus (1827) and the studies for these demonstrate his academic ability.  This version is in the Louvre but in 1844 he painted a smaller somewhat looser version which is now in Philadelphia.  It has been interpreted as everything from a representation of the desire of the West to dominate the East (Said 1978) to an allegory of sexual possesion and male domination ( Nochlin 1983).

Death of Sardanapalus study (1827)

Based partly upon a poem by Lord Byron from 1821 the exact incident illustrated in the painting, where King Sardanapulus, last king of Assyria, faced with military defeat, decrees the destruction of all his possessions, including his concubines, isn't actually in the poem but is based on the ancient account by Diodorus Siculus.

 

Death of Sardanapalus study (1827)

A later partial nude, Odalisque (1857), demonstrates the value of his research of costume and jewellery in North Africa.

Delacoix was one of the first artists to use photography as a reference source.  In the photograph belowe we can see the source photograph he had taken for the 1857 Odalisque. 

So, although Delacroix is better known for his historical paintings his early approach to what would become impressionism paved the way for the splendid nudes from the likes of Renoir, Degas, Bonnard and Manet which we will come to in due course.

Redheaded Venus of the Week 7: Venus by Modigliani

Venus, (1918) by Amedeo Modigliani

This is an unusual nude from Modigliani for several reasons. Firstly, the figure is shown standing, rather than the more usual reclining or sitting nudes of Modigliani's painted nudes period. Rather than being just a nude for the sake of it she is actually named as a "Venus" and is posed in the classical Botticelli way.

More noticeably is her colouring, however. Most of Modigliani's nudes were painted with black or dark brown hair but everything about this one indicates a real redhead. The hair on her head is a rich red and her pubic hair a paler orange colour. As someone who has explored more than few redheads this colour differential is not unusual. Many redheads colour their hair, as red hair tends to lose its colour very early in life; being grey at thirty is not unusual. Henna was a popular dye in the nineteenth century (as it still is: Triple P had a friend who used to source her henna in suspicious looking packages from Casablanca) and this has that characteristic dark tint. Her face has a pink blush on the cheeks which is far more visible than on his other figures. Her nippes are paler than he usually depicted. Above all. her skin is very pale compared with most of Modigliani's other nudes. He tended to render women's bodies in flat, largely unshaded, expanses of fairly dark colour. The different parts of the body were indicated by line rather than tone. The effect is almost like a Roman, terracotta amphora.

Modigliani painted quickly, in rapid bursts of energy, often finishing a painting in a couple of hours. Drink and drugs fuelled his endeavours: his normal companion when he painted (he never let people in to his studio when he was working) being a bottle of brandy. The sculptor Chana Orloff once observed of Modigliani that "To work well he had to have two or three glasses of wine. After the first it didn't work; after the second things were a little better; after the third his hand worked on its own...he threw a way sketches when he was sober. He drew with incredible facility when intoxicated."

This painting was sold at Christies New York, in November 2006, for $15,920,000.

Redheaded Venus of the Week 6: Girl with Towel by Al Moore

Esquire's 1951 calendar also gives us this lovely redhead. Quite saucy for 1951!

Redheaded Venus of the Week 5: Mind if I don't play hard to get by Alberto Vargas

Somewhat surprisingly we haven't had an Alberto Vargas picture on Venus Observations yet. Joaquin Alberto Vargas y Chávez (1896-1982) deserves a proper entry later but here, as a taster, is one of the paintings that he did for Playboy in the 1960s. This one appeared in the May 1963 edition. His paintings were invariably embellised with a fictional quote from the young lady in the picture. This one read "I'm a little tired tonight do you mind if I don't play hard to get?" Fortunately the picture is of a higher standard...

A decade later he re-worked the picture but the girl remains a red head.

Redheaded Venus of the Week 4: girl on waste ground

After three paintings in a row its time for a photograph this week. We don't know anything about this picture or why the young lady in question is striking this rather Victorian classical pose in what looks like a demolition site. We hope she has some stout footwear on as otherwise she might well cut her feet.

She is, anyhow (a word Triple P's English teacher at primary school crossed through once and wrote "American slang" underneath it), a very fine natural redhead. She is one of the very freckly ones and her arms are so mottled she reminds me somewhat of Jadzia Dax from Star Trek: the Next Generation; almost an alien marking.

Quite splendid, anyway.

Redheaded Venus of the Week 3: Venus binding her hair by John William Godward

Venus binding her hair (1897)

This week's redheaded Venus is a rare nude by the last great Victorian Classicist, John William Godward (1861-1922). Many of Godward's pictures are instantly recognisable as they are now popular as prints and postcards but, like most Nineteenth Century Classical artists, he was ignored through much of the Twentieth Century. Godward's obscurity was compounded by the fact that he was rather reclusive, did not write or make declamations about himself and was seen, at best, as an imitator of "better" painters like Lord Leighton or Alma-Tadema. Even now, very little is known about his life and there is only one known photograph of him, as an infant.

The artist (right) with his mother, Sarah, and brother and sister Alfred and Mary.

Godward was born at home in Battersea on 9th August, 1861. His father worked in life insurance and Godward followed him into that profession. When Godward was young the family moved to Wimbledon (where Agent Triple P lived for a time as well-only about 500 yards from the Godwards' home!) and that was where he went to school. Living not far away was the architect William Hoff Wontner (1814-1881) and it seems that when Godward failed to take to life insurance his family felt that perhaps architecture might be a suitable profession instead. Whilst staying on at the insurance company Godward probably studied rendering and graining under Wontener between 1879 and 1881. Certainly this training would account for Godward's later amazing facility to paint marble, for which he would often use a feather rather than a brush. The earliest known painting by Godward, a portrait of his grandmother, appears about this time.

Godward's family probably never envisaged that he would want to become a painter but when Wontner died in 1881 his eldest son William Clarke Wontner, who was becoming a successful portrait painter at this time, may have taken over teaching Godward. Godward may well have then sudied at an art school in his free evenings: possibly The Clapham School of Art. When Wontner moved to a studio in St John's Wood, however, Godward would have come into very close proximity to the likes of JW Waterhouse, Sir Frank Dicksee and Edward Poynter; all well known Classical painters. Certainly his first exhibited work, The Yellow Turban (now lost), which appeared at the Royal Academy Summer exhibition in 1887 suggests an Orientalist theme, which was certainly an interest of Wontner's. However by this time he was already starting to do the Classically themed pictures for which he would become famous.

Unlike many other Classical painters, Godward's women actually look like they were born in the Mediterranean (the Venus, above, is a rare exception) and don't have the "English rose in a toga" look of so many of his contemporaries. One influence on the look of the women in his subsequent paintings was an introduction, through Whistler, of the famous artists' models, the Pettigrew sisters: Harriet, Lilian and Rose. They were gypsy girls from the West Country and were the most famous models in London at the time; sitting for Whistler, Poynter, Millais and Sargent.

Godward joined an artists studio in Gilston Road named the Bolton Studios where he was probably influenced by Henry Ryland who, when he left the Bolton studios, then shared a studio with Classical painter Herbert Draper. Unusually, nearly 40% of the artists at the Bolton Studios were women painters. The studio, as a result, developed a somewhat racy reputation; with rumours that some of the lady painters were earning a living in ways that weren't relating to their painting!

1 St Leonard's Studio is the low building on the right. We had our first Chinese on the roof terrace!

By this time Godward was becoming a reasonably well-known artist and established his own studio, for the first time, in 1889. This was at 1 St Leonard's Studio, Smith Street in Chelsea, where he painted many of his great early Classical pictures including The Betrothed; the first of his pictures to be put into a permanent collection. It was donated to the Guildhall Art Museum in 1916 where it reamins to this day. Agent Triple P has a meeting nearby tomorrow so may go along to have a look at it.

The Betrothed (1892) Another redhead

Agent Triple P actually went to a Fouth of July party at 1 St Leonard's Studio over twenty years ago and ended up with a rather luscious Chinese-American lady. Oddly, although we did talk about art, Triple P had no idea of the Godward connection at that point! The sleeping area was on a gallery overlooking the studio itself, an idea we have always quite fancied.

We will return to Godward in another post but to return to the redhead in question she was Godward's entry for the 1897 Royal Academy Summer exhibition; so ten year after his first exhibit there. She was one of Godward's largest paintings to date (90"x44") and an obvious attempt to emulate the grand Classical painters of the time. In truth, like most of Godward's nudes, she is not as successful as his clothed figures but she was given the place of honour in gallery VII at the exhibition.

Several of Godward's Summer Exhibition paintings at this time are generally agreed to have been unsuccesful. His previous year's entry was a similarly epic sized nude: Campaspe (1896) (Alexander the Great's mistress) which, whilst popular at the time has beenn heavily criticised since. Yet Godward persisted with these often clumsy epic paintings as he was desperate to become a Royal Academician, which would have offset the doubts as to the suitability of painting as a career to his disapproving father. These large Academic, in every sense of the word, paintings were intended to be Godward's key to being accepted at Burlington House. Unfortunately, Godward's withdrawn manner and lack of social skills meant, however, that he never got enough support in the Academy to achieve this.

Godward is one of Triple P's favourite artists but is still under-rated, even at a time whem Alma-Tadema and Leighton have been largely rehabilitated. Godward eventually came to a tragic end
which we will explore the next time we look at some of his more succesful female figures.

Redheaded Venus of the Week 2: After the Bath by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

After the Bath (1888) 65x54cm

This is Agent Triple P's favourite Renoir (1814-1919) and, quite possibly, his favourite picture of all time. This image is a scan from a book that belonged to Agent Triple P's father: The Female Nude in European Painting (1957) by French art historian Jean-Louis Vaudoyer. It was one of only eight colour plates in the book, which may have something to do with Triple P's reaction to it when he was younger.

Renoir painted over 6,000 pictures but we would venture that this is one of his best and, in our opinion, his best nude. She is a perfect voyeur's subject; caught seemingly lost in the process of drying her perfectly plump, pink body. The raised arm and the hand holding the towel just draw attention to her perfectly shaped breast.

Renoir, it is said, never really liked women; not as people anyway. His friend Georges Riviere noted that although " he gave women a beguiling appearance in his paintings...he generally took no pleasure in their conversation...he only liked women if they were susceptible to becoming models". Renoir himself said that he wanted to paint figures "like beautiful fruit" hoping that the viewer would respond to his paintings in such a way that they would want "to stroke a breast or a back". We can't help feeling that he totally succeeded in his aims with this marvellous figure.

This particular painting was sold in the mid-nineties to a Japanese collector for over £6million. A bargain!

Redheaded Venus of the Week 1: Paintings by Gil Elvgren

Agent Triple P has always had a fondness for redheaded women. Much derided as the mutants they, of course, are, many have had to deal with all sorts of vilification over the years: from insults provoked by the paleness of their skin to the often erratic texture of their hair.

Male redheads are, of course, an abomination. A BBC3 documentary a couple of years ago, with the rather assertive title Fuck off, I'm ginger!, showed a redheaded male TV presenter talking about the discrimination redheads endured. He tried to persuade a group of girls in a bar that there was nothing wrong with redheads. Despite him being on TV they all universally rejected him because of his hair colour.

A scientist was wheeled on to explain that women were programmed to reject pale skinned redheads as unhealthy looking and therefore bad breeding material. In Britain and Ireland we have a disproportionately large number of redheads of course but that means a higher than normal proportion of redheaded women.

Redheaded women fall into two camps: the vast majority, who tend to have a rather porcine aspect, and the rare but striking minority who will be the subject of our study over the coming months.

Today, as we heven't had any artwork on here for a bit, we present some paintings by pin-up artist supreme, Gil Elvgren (1914-1980). Most famous for his calendar work for Brown and Bigelow he produced over 500 oil paintings of women from the mid Thirties through to the mid Seventies.

He had an eye for an attractive redhead and a great ability to render their hair so we present a selection of his output to start our redheads collection.

The picture below sold last year for over $210,000 so there are obviously some rich redhead afficianados out there!