Category: Art History

The Nude in Art

The release of my nude drawings, “Liz II” and “Liz III” as limited edition prints by Solomon & Whitehead, Ltd. in England presents the perfect opportunity to take a fun quick glance at the nude in art.

Since the dawn of man’s creative powers, artists have felt the need to depict the human form.  Prehistoric sculptures were fertility symbols with exaggerated attributes that leave us no doubt as to their purpose.  As civilizations began to take care of man’s basic needs, the artist attained the freedom and financial support to study and advance in expressing the beauty of the body in various images: gods and goddesses, Adam and Eve, and eventually the nude for its own sake.  After the re-emergence of classical realism during the Renaissance, no serious figurative artist would fail to pursue anatomy and life drawing.  Only by understanding the form beneath the clothes could the artist consistently render the structure of a figure and thereby drape the clothing…

The Art Pendulum

Victorian Painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) was one of the highest paid artists of his day, selling A Reading From Homer for $30,000 in 1903. The equivalent today would be $950,461.

A Reading From Homer 1885 Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Philadelphia Museum of Art The Roses of Heliogabalus 1888 Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Collection of Juan Antonio Pérez Simón

However, Victorian art became ridiculed as candy box art in the 20th century and his 1888 $7,000 commissioned painting of The Roses of Heliogabalus attracted no more than a $185 offer in 1960. Today, the pendulum is swinging back towards acceptance of his tastefully erotic and highly technical works, with his The Finding of Moses (1904) selling at a Sotheby’s auction on November 4, 2010 for $35.9 million.

The Finding of Moses 1904 Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Private collectionCopyright: imago/United Archives International Tepidarium 1881 Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema Lady Lever Gallery

The above small gem (9.5″ x 13″) is one…

In Memoriam: Thomas Calloway “Tom” Lea III (1907-2001)

Just six days after my father’s passing, another man in El Paso who had a profound influence on my art passed away. 

Tom Lea with his painting “The Price” ©1944 This is one of the paintings from Tom’s World War II illustrations for Life Magazine. He was one of the few studio artists (as opposed to photographers) embedded with the troops on assignment and saw and sketched the horrors of War first hand. Image courtesy of The Tom Lea Institute

Unlike older generations in my family, I had almost no direct contact with Tom Lea, but his art was no less a part of my life.  When I visited my grandparents, instead of playing with the neighborhood children, I would pull out the 11” x 14” x 3” scrapbooks (ten of them!) my grandmother created on art and artists.  I spent magical hours studying art from Albright to Zurbarán.  And there, nestled between Sir Thomas Lawrence…

Veronese and “The Wedding at Cana”

Art is communication and needs no interpreter. However, there can be histories, anecdotes, and observations that add another dimension to our enjoyment once the artwork has spoken to us. And so it is with Veronese’s “Wedding at Cana.”

Paolo Caliari (1528 – 88), called Veronese after his native town of Verona, painted this theatrical biblical scene in 1562 – 63 for the refectory at the Benedictine monastery of S. Giorgio Maggiore in Venice where it inspired the monks until 1798 when Napoleon purloined it and other masterpieces during his conquest of Italy. The painting is so enormous (21.5 x 32.5 feet or 6.55 x 9.91 meters) that it had to be cut in the middle horizontally so that it could be transported to its new home in the Louvre.

After Napoleon’s fall, the Neo-Classical sculptor Antonio Canova (1757 – 1822) came to Paris in 1815 as the head of the commission to restore the stolen works to their prior homes. When it…