Word: boldini
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Faced with many such free-style virtuosities, observers might not blame the average vain sitter portraitists.* But the few bravura, turn-of-the-century, super-official portraits such as John Singer Sargent's Mrs. Fiske Warren and Her Daughter, and Giovanni Boldini's Miss Edith Blair, smartly included in the show, looked rather like candy-box covers among the rest of the displays...
...once described by Shaw as "a gorgeous dark lady from the cradle of the human race -wherever that was-Ceylon, Sumatra, Hilo, or the southernmost corner of the Garden of Eden!" Here she wears costumes (by the English house of Motley) inspired by the paintings of the late Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931), the "Master of Swish" whose society portraits had an even glossier Edwardian swank than those of John Singer Sargent. Simply by appearing in a blue velvet period gown, with a swooping hat crowned by an exotic bird and delicately moored in place by a face veil, Cornell stops...
Bravura was the word for Giovanni Boldini, whose society paintings in the period from 1890 to 1910 were the quintessence which John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, Howard Chandler Christy and Charles Dana Gibson diluted, in ascending order of popularity, descending order of excellence. Last week at the Newhouse Galleries Manhattanites were surprised and seduced by the 68 brilliant, relatively intimate paintings, crayons and drawings which the 89-year-old Italian left in his Paris studio at his death in 1931. In his smaller works (minimum price: $400 for a sketch) Boldini showed a direct mastery of the Proustian atmospheres...
Humanity, of which Boldini had one understanding, is the constant subject of sad-eyed, diminutive Raphael Soyer, who has another. His twin, Moses, and his Brother Isaac are also able painters, but in the last few years Raphael's single-minded portrayals of pathos in Manhattan's sober poor have given him the greater reputation. Last week his first one-man show since 1935, at the Valentine Gallery, brought 14th Street impressively to fashionable 57th. In Soyer's accomplished paintings of Greenwich Village characters there was neither humor nor brilliance but a great deal of dun truth...
...milking moppet he was known as "Smiley." In 1889 he went to New York with $200 in savings, entered the Art Students' League, quickly got himself into the class of the late William Merritt Chase. Chase painted in the bravura style with which Italy's Boldini, and Sweden's Zorn were able to produce first-rate works of art. For nearly 50 years Howard Chandler Christy has used the same flashy style but without the same results...