Part of the ongoing effort to move material from my stale regular web pages to my if-it’s-stale-it’s-because-it’s-a-blog blog pages.
Despite (or perhaps because of) my comic book addiction, I have a great appreciation for fine art — particularly art that is both realistic and just a scosh magical or fantastic. What follows are some of my favorite “real” artists.
A lot of the folks below (and many others we love but can’t show, like Rosetti and Burne-Jones) are Victorian Era artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), or folks who were influenced by them.
Their ideas were that for every scene a real unidealised landscape or interior should be painted, that every figure should be based on a real model with their real proportions, that the figures should be grouped without reference to any artistic arrangement, and that they should paint worthy subjects. That is to say, as Ruskin had it, to avoid
“Cattle-pieces and sea-pieces and fruit-pieces and family-pieces, the eternal brown cows in ditches, and white sails in squalls, and sliced lemons in saucers, and foolish faces in simpers.”
What then, do we see in the early Pre-Raphaelite pictures? Firstly, they are generally bright – much more so than contemporary academic pictures – painted on a white ground. Secondly, the “truth to nature” apparent in attention to minute detail, to colour, and sometimes a lack of grace in composition. Thirdly, a taste for significant subjects – from mediaeval tales, from poetry, from religion.
So what’s not to like?
 Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema is one of my favorite artists, and to me an exemplar of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. He painted lusciously realistic figures, and got past much of the Victorian stuffiness by setting them in classical millieaux. If you see lots of marble in a Pre-Raphaelite painting, it’s either Alma-Tadema or one of his imitators. The piece here, Spring, is one of my favorites, and shows the complexities of what Alma Tadema did. It hangs at the Getty, which means I’ve have a chance to see it, and we have a print of it up in our living room. |
 Frederick Lord Leighton is another Victorian British artist, sometimes lumped in as Pre-Raphaelite. He’s a bit more lush than Alma Tadema, but just as enjoyable. A print of this piece, Flaming June, can be found over our bed. She’s great. |
 Adolphe-William Bouguereau is often lumped in with the PRB, mainly because his works show the same spirit. A fine, but underappreciated, artist. We’re looking for a copy of this work, Le Ravissement De Psyche, though this piece and this one are fine one, too. |
 John Waterhouse is yet another of those PRB-style guys. He’s best known, perhaps, for his Lady of Challott. Circe Invidiosa hangs in our family room at the moment. |
 Maxfield Parrish was one of the great, classic American illustrators, and his rich use of color and fantastic images are dreamlike wonders, as in this piece, my most favorite of his, Ecstasy. |
 Alphonse Mucha was a famous Czech artist of the Art Nouveau movement. He’s most famous for various prints and posters durnig his time in France. The piece shown here is called Dance, and is (at this writing) my current wallpaper (though browsing the Net, is see a wild array of color tones in other reproductions of it). On my office wall, I have versions of this and this currently up in my office. |
 Barry Windsor-Smith has done comics, yes, but he’s branched out into much more classical art as well, drawing extensively (so to speak) on the vernacular of both the PRB and the Nouveau movement. Visitors to our house may recognize Sibyl from the family room. Liberomano graces our living room. |
 Michael Parkes is touted as a “magical realist,” and his works are often laden with metaphor of various sorts, both fascinating and disturbing. This print, Circus Memories, hangs in my office — it’s one of the few, um, corporately acceptible images Parkes has done. |
 Jeffrey Jones is a contemporary illustrator as well, reminiscent of Frazetta (whom I also like), but often with more classical overtones. We’ve managed to end up with a number of his works, including Diane, shown here (and in my office), and a nice quartet of the Seasons, which are up in our bedroom. |
 No review of our art would be complete without mention of Gary Mauro, whose work graces the wall over our fireplace (the image here is similar, if monochrome). We discovered Mauro’s work when we visited Santa Fe, where he keeps his gallery. He works in a variety of media, including fabric and cast paper reliefs, and some glorious (and expensive!) bronzes. I certainly wouldn’t mind picking up a few of those. |
Note: All the images on this page are copyrighted by their respective copyright holders. No infringement of those rights is intended. The graphics here are solely for review purposes.
Ahh, wonderful artists, all. Add Erte to the mix, and we’d be about even on likes.
I do have a deep passion for the Impressionists, too.
I can appreciate Erte, but he’s a bit too stylized for me. The Impressionists are fine, too, but … well, a few too many “Cattle-pieces and sea-pieces and fruit-pieces and family-pieces” to make it to the top of my list, usually.
you’ve put together a page that has some of my favourite artists and introduced me to more, i love this style of painting and have just discovered Micheal Parkes ( a painting hangs in a coffeeshop in amsterdam). i love thje life and love and emotion that rings out of work like this. The reality and fantasy of the settings really invigorate the imagination.
Parkes is one of my favorites — though most of his works are not “office-friendly,” alas. But good stuff nonetheless. Glad you enjoyed the page.
Thank you so much for educating me on Barry Windsor-Smith. I had no idea he did anything but comics. I (being a comic book dork) first saw his art on news print for marvel, the weapon X series i think it was. immediatley i fell in love with it. now my only question is… how can i own some of his “fine art”. Also John William Waterhouse is tottally badass. My personal fav is Hylas and the Nymphs, tho i know nothing about the story behind it; something tells me it would be a bad idea for Hylas to get in the water.
great page, thanks again.
There are numerous prints of Hylas & the Nymphs online, such as here, which includes the backstory:
When the ship of the Argonauts reached the island of Cios, Hylas, the young and handsome companion of Hercules, was sent ashore in search of water. He discovered a fountain, but the nymphs of the place were so enchanted by his beauty that they pulled him to the depths of their watery abode, and in spite of the cries of Hercules which made the shores reverberate with the name Hylas, the young man was never seen again.
Yeah, Waterhouse is pretty cool.
re: Hylas and the nymphs. Hylas was the young lover (not just companion) of Heracles (Hercules in latin). In the original pre-Victorian version of the myth, Hylas refused to have sexual intercourse with the nymphs out of loyalty to Heracles and they murdered him. The myth was used as a scare tactic to keep boyfriends loyal and away from the perils of heterosexuality.
In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, “Hylas” was a nudge-nudge, wink-wink nickname given to any young member of the working class who was involved sexually with a member of the nobility or the clergy. Evidently, Hylas was a pretty popular nickname prior to about 1700. James I of England (and VI of Scotland) had a series of younger boyfriends (once he left Calvinist Scotland), all of whom were known by the nickname “Hylas”. Even in this century, Pope Paul VI (formerly Cardinal Montini) was known to have a special friendship with a famous Italian actor who was known about town as “Montini’s Hylas”.
Ain’t I a wealth of obscure, useless info?
hi i have come accross a small, old print of what may be a maxfield parish work. There are several clowns dressed in white with little blue spots on the outfits. They are holding round “lamps”. It is signed M P and copywrited. Does anybody know if this is maxfield parish…if so, is it worth anything
I just ran onto this site searching for particular Parrish art. I like all of the 19th century artists you listed. If you like them, also try Godward, Cowper, Draper, Collier, Falero, Hacker, Ryland, Mengen. They each have at least one painting that I love, usually featuring a naked lady. But Bougeureau is definitely my favorite.
Paintings featuring naked ladies usually have at least one good thing to recommend them.