Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find as many images of paintings by 19th century Austrian-Hungarian painter Wilhelm Bernatzik as I would like.
Those I have found, however, show an interesting and skilled painter who took occasional forays from romatic realism into stylized symbolist and Art Nouveau influences.
The Scapegoat, Willaim Holman Hunt; oil on canvas; roughly 34 x 55 inches (86 x 140cm). Link is to image file on Wikipedia, original is in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool.
From the Bible: book of Leviticus, which is where we get the general concept as we use the term today.
For more background on this painting, see this post on Wikipedia.
While it’s not unusual for artists to transition from a career in commercial art to gallery art, English artist Richard Thorn came to painting from a career as a jazz musician.
Thorn uses watercolor in a manner I particularly enjoy — lots of crisp, controlled edges balanced with softer ones and still maintaining a feeling of freely applied color.
His compositions are filled with light and atmosphere, often eveoking the look of the countryside in strong light and shadow.
Thorn’s website features work for sale as well as prints, and information about his instructional video course from Domestica. He also has a YouTube channel.
Male Nude, Francois Bouçher; red chalk over black chalk on paper; roughly 20 x 13 inches ( 50 x 33 cm); in the collection of the Morgan Library and Museum, NY. There are both zoomable and downloadable imges on their site.
18th century French artist Francois Bouçher, who is more commonly noted for his Rococo drawings and paintings of sensuous women, here gives us a straightforward male nude study.
The forms of the musculature are so clearly defined that the drawing could be used as anatomical reference. He also gives the figure a sense of dimension and solidity, as well as a feeling of gravity in the leg that is supporting most of the model’s weight.
As was common with master chalk drawings of this time, the tones are rendered with hatching rather than being smoothy blended. Notice also the way he has accentuated parts of the outline of the figure, again contributing to turning the form and suggesting weight and volume.
Considered both a Symbolist and Art Nouveau painter, Edward Okuń was a Polish artist who studied in Poland, German and France.
He lived and worked in Rome for 20 years, and traveled widely in other parts of Europe before returning to Poland in the later part of his career. He was active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Italian seamstress, Eugen von Blaas; oil on canvas; roughly 16 x 12 in. (50 x 32 cm). Link is to page on Wikimedia Commons from which there is link to a large image. The image was originally sourced from a Bonham’s past auction, so I assume the painting is now in a private collection.
Eugen (Eugene) von Blaas was an Italian painter active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His painting of a seamstress working looks smoothly refined at first glance, but on closer inspection reveals itself to be nicely painterly.
