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| Eugen von Blaas, The Catch of the Day, 1884, 39 x 50 7/8 in., Oil on Canvas |
Eugen von Blaas (1843-1931) is a perfect example of an
artist who was able to transform his no doubt ordinary looking models into visions
of loveliness on canvas or panels. Just
about every auction exhibition of 19th Century European paintings at
Sotheby’s or Christie’s includes one or two of his highly refined paintings depicting
beautiful young Venetian peasant women in classic poses either alone or flirting with handsome
young men. In his day, wealthy Americans
and Europeans on the Grand Tour bought so many of his paintings that by 1881 he
had become well-known as “the painter of Venetian beauties.” His paintings of these “cheerful and
self-assured” young women, as one reviewer described them, are a joy to behold.
Let me state, as usual, the obvious. Von Blaas could draw extremely well. His sense of color was outstanding. His women are arrayed in gorgeous costumes of
harmonious pastel shades that add so much to the charm of his paintings. His expert handling of the draperies
contributes a great deal to making his delightful creations masterpieces of
genre painting. All the clothing worn by
his models is perfectly and purposely arranged to enhance the beauty of the
pose. I wonder if he worked from life on
the costumes while his models were posing.
Some models can hold difficult poses for long periods of time. But in
order to get the folds just right, he could have arranged the clothing on one
of those cloth-covered, articulated mannequins commonly in use back in the day. But I don’t know.
The treatment of folds in clothing can present a problem for
many of us who paint from life. If folds
are painted too literally, without great discretion in selecting which ones to
include, the human form underneath can easily be obscured. Folds should complement the human form. The old painters were
skilled at painting folds that contributed to the understanding and beauty of
the model’s form – an arm, a breast, a leg -- whether painted from life alla
prima, as Sargent, Zorn and other bravura painters did, or over many sittings
with the model from life, or from a mannequin, or from some imaginative concept
for the draperies. These painters eliminated
some folds and emphasized others when necessary. Painters who work only from photographs without
extensive experience in painting from life tend to literally copy the
photographic image, so they end up with flat folds and flat forms in their flat
figure paintings.
I assume that the clothing depicted in paintings of the 19th
and early 20th Century must have been a lot more interesting to
paint than the T-shirts and jeans today’s models wear to work. Now an under-financed artist has to head off
to Goodwill to get an ill-fitting old bridal dress or evening gown if he wants
to paint a costumed model. Most of our figurative
painters who work photographically don’t seem to mind painting boring T-shirts
and jeans, so folds aren’t much of a problem for them.
Von Blaas was born to Austrian parents in Albano,
near Rome. His father was the painter Karl von Blaas
(1815-1894), who taught at the Academy
of Rome and painted portraits,
religious themes and frescoes. The
family moved to Vienna briefly and
then to Venice when Karl became
professor at the Academy of Venice.
Eugen became a professor at the Academy
later on as well. It was while Eugen was
assisting his father on frescoes in Vienna
from 1860 to 1872 that he learned how to paint figures so beautifully,
according to Thomas Wassibauer, author of the 2005 catalogue raisonné on von
Blaas. Wasibauer writes that throughout his long
career, Eugen von Blaas employed his father’s technique “of building up flesh
colors with different glazes to produce beautiful and natural looking flesh
colors giving a three-dimensional effect.” The father adopted this technique from his study
of Titian’s paintings. That’s all I
could find about his working method in my cursory search of the Internet. The direct approach to painting practiced by
Van Dyck, Thomas Lawrence, Sargent, Zorn, Sorolla, et al, produces even more
lifelike flesh tones. There’s no
substitute for close examination of the actual flesh color in alla prima
painting from life. But glazing as
apparently practiced by von Blaas and some other classical realists comes in a
close second.
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| His New Hat, 1896, 16.1 x 12.4 in., Oil on Panel |
Like von Blaas, a lot of good painters you read about from
the past and the present were born into a family where one or both parents were
themselves artists, an enormous advantage for the children who follow in their
footsteps. For those who don’t, I tend
to believe it’s an enormous disadvantage, considering how hard it is for most
painters to earn a good living from their art and how they are always
preoccupied with painting, not parenting.
I’ve known quite a few painters whose kids wanted nothing to do with the
art business.
In 1870, Von Blaas married Paolo Prina, a wealthy young
woman, and they lived in Venice for
most of the rest of their life. His
career really took off and they were able to enjoy the high life of Venetian
society to the fullest. The family settled
permanently in a beautiful palazzo on the Zattere, a long waterfront promenade
in Venice.
Von Blaas painted an intense self-portrait in 1898 that’s floating
around the World Wide Web, and you would never guess from that one image of him that this was a painter who made a very
good living painting charming pictures of beautiful young women. That old saying about not judging a book by
its cover sure applies here, in my opinion.
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| Self-Portrait, 1898 |
I wanted to mention von Blaas in my previous post when I
addressed the important advantages painters of the past had over today’s
figurative painters in being able to transform the ordinary into a thing of beauty,
but I couldn’t remember his name. So
many artists, so little time. Von Blaas
may not be a major figure in the history of art, perhaps because his success
was confined within a fairly narrow thematic range. Let’s be honest. He cranked out his Venetian beauties on a
fine art assembly line like any other successful painter who corners a niche
market. But his work is so skillfully
crafted and so appealing that I’ll give him a pass without hesitation.
Collectors throughout the world continue to seek out his
paintings and are williing and able to pay good money for them. His painting The Market Girl from 1900 was sold at auction by Sotheby’s in New
York in April 2008 for $735,400, and that ain’t hay,
as they used to say.
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| Eugen von Blaas, The Market Girl, 1900, oil on panel, 43 x 24 1/4 in. |
