DU darlings, welcome back to the Friday Afternoon Challenge: The Muse!

[CTyankee]

Identify the artists whose muses they have portrayed here. Extra credit if you know the muse's name!

And please, observe the “no cheating” rule...

1.
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2.
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3.
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4.
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5.
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6.
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[gateley]

1. #2

Igmar Bergman?

[CTyankee]

2. What a great guess. It is not, but I can see how you could interpret that photo.

Doncha just love the fur!

[gateley]

3. Haha! Yes!

The collar, the hat, the cuffs AND the muff!

I think she looks so glam, and I loved that look until my views on fur changed.

[CTyankee]

8. Yeah, didn't it for all of us. Now it just looks a bit weird...

[Tansy_Gold]

4. #3 certainly looks like

Fanny Cornforth, who was Dante Gabriel Rossetti's muse (until he fell in love with Jane Morris) but I can't find that picture anywhere so I must be wrong.

[CTyankee]

6. No, not Rossetti's muse...and not pre-Raphaelite...

[Tansy_Gold]

9. Then I'm lost, 'cause all I know is the PRB!

[CTyankee]

10. I love the PRB! I think it is beautiful. I also love Les Nabis and art nouveau...

I get a lot of pleasure from these art movements...

[gateley]

5. Since I'm the only one here at this point...

#4 has to be the Madonna, right? ("Has to" :eyes

#6 by Toulouse Laurtrec?

[CTyankee]

7. That is a Madonna, yes. #6 is not Lautrec...

[IcyPeas]

11. number 1

is by lautrec. I thought it looked like pastel and looked at some degas' first.

[CTyankee]

13. Right! However did you get this? I don't think it looks like a Lautrec...

[IcyPeas]

16. gossamer fabric

on some of his ballet dancers he uses that white gossamer looking fabric which also is like degas pastels

[CTyankee]

33. I must say I don't think of the gossamer fabric with Lautrec. Must go back and research more!

thanks...

[IcyPeas]

39. maybe gossamer not the correct word

light looking fabric like these:

http://www.friendsofart.net/en/art/henri-de-toulouse-lautrec/seated-dancer

http://www.reproarte.com/picture/Henri+de_Toulouse-Lautrec/Card-game/17224.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lautrec_jane_avril_dancing_1892.jpg

where you can see through the fabric to the pastel paper color underneath.

[CTyankee]

12. Here is a major hint: #s 1 and 3 were muses to more than one artist!

These women are famed...and historically painted...

[IcyPeas]

14. Misia Natanson: (re: number 1)

(from wikipedia (Misia Nathanson)

Misia Sert (born Maria Zofia Olga Zenajda Godebska; St. Petersburg, 30 March 1872 – Paris, 15 October 1950) was a pianist of Polish descent who hosted an artistic salon in Paris. She was a patron and friend of numerous artists, for whom she regularly posed.

When Natanson was on the brink of bankruptcy, the newspaper magnate Alfred Edwards saved him, on condition that he surrender his wife to him. Misia began living with Alfred Edwards in 1903. Around that time she started hosting a literary-artistic salon in Paris. She acquired considerable influence in Parisian musical and artistic circles. Stéphane Mallarmé, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, as well as painters such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Édouard Vuillard, Félix Vallotton, and Pierre Bonnard were among her guests. She was a confidante of Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau, an early patron of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and a close friend of the designer Coco Chanel.

Misia's third marriage was to the Spanish painter Jose Maria Sert (1876–1945). She loved Sert, and gave him up when he fell in love with another woman, Isabelle Roussadana Mdivani.

Misia was a noted beauty who was painted many times. She was one of the models for Toulouse-Lautrec's poster for La Revue blanche in 1895, in which she is shown as a skater. A portrait of Misia by Renoir is now in the Tate Gallery.[1]

Ravel dedicated Le Cygne (The Swan) in 'Histoires naturelles and La Valse (The Waltz) to her. In June 1905 Misia and her husband invited Ravel to join them, and the painters Bonnard and Laprade as well as their parents, on their cruise-ship "Aimée" for a six week holiday trip on the rivers and canals of northern France, Begium, Holland and Germany.

[CTyankee]

15. Don't you just love her? I think she's great!

It seems like she was everybody's muse at a certain time. All of their paintings of her could be a Challenge all its own!

[IcyPeas]

17. she certainly was.... popular

[IcyPeas]

18. number 6

Egon Schiele

it's funny how you can pull things up from the depths of your memory. I used to live in NY and went to museums all the time I don't know why I remember his style. also isn't it sideways?

[CTyankee]

22. Yes, I thought it was pretty obvious but it is Wally!.

Not sure about the positioning of the image, tho. I was running thru lots of them to avoid the "bent knee" one which is so famous...

[skippysmom]

19. #5

is Victorine Meurand, model for Edouard Manet. Model for Olympia and Dejeuner de l'herbe.

Is #3 Whistler?

[CTyankee]

23. Ah, Victorine! Yes.

As for #3, it is not Whistler, but...

[cthulu2016]

20. A story about #6

She and Egon both died in the influenza pandemic of 1918. She was newly pregnant at the time.

After she died Egon continued to draw her corpse for a day or so until he succumbed to the illness.

A very touching (if somewhat creepy) story about the persistence of art.



(I assume #2 is O'Keeffe by Steichen?)

[CTyankee]

24. No, not O'Keeffe or Steichen...

[CTyankee]

26. Wally was not his wife. I think you are confusing the two. Wally had left after his wife to be

said she wouldn't marry him if he continued to paint her (Wally). So Wally had to go. I think the story was that she died a year before he did, he didn't know and then both he and his wife died of pneumonia which was a complication of the 1918 flu pandemic.

Scheile was a kinda creepy artist, but he wasn't the only one in Vienna of his day...

[cthulu2016]

28. My bad. I just assumed.

[CTyankee]

31. Understandable. I had to go back and check as I was unsure...

[lapislzi]

21. #5

Victorine Meurant, also Manet's Olympia and model in countless other images.

A very interesting character. I have studied her in great depth, and even written a short one-woman play about her.

[CTyankee]

25. That is so interesting! What is your play's central thesis? I would be interested in knowing

how you think she felt being immortalized by Manet in those paintings, esp. Olympia...

[lapislzi]

49. It was a job.

She was a pragmatic woman, working class, and a lesbian. She had a series of female lovers, and took care of her mother. All of that is true.

As I wrote her, she was defiant, refusing to collaborate with the prevailing academic aesthetic of the day that presented the female form as an object for the delectation of the upper-class male. She and Manet were complicit in shattering that shibboleth. Olympia says "NO" in no uncertain terms. She covers her sex with her hand and frankly challenges the viewer with her eyes.

It is no wonder that when the painting was exhibited at the Salon de Refusees, people whacked it with their umbrellas (also true).

I see her as a woman completely in charge of her own sexuality.

After Manet's death and a quarrel with his widow, Victorine retired to the suburbs of Paris and lived on in obscurity until early in the 20th century. Her name was remembered in the Parisian demimonde, however, for quite a long time, until the fin de siecle turnover was complete and the art world was taken over by the Picassos and other foreigners.

Thanks for asking!

If you want the complete piece, PM me.

[CTyankee]

27. So, 1, 5 and 6 have been identified! Great. Now we have 2, 3 and 4 to go.

Hmmm...

[cthulu2016]

30. Okay... spoiler alert

I hadn't really looked at #2 in guessing Steichen

Is the artist here initialed T. F.?

(If I know the model I still had to look up the artist, hence the dearth of info so as not to spoil it for others.)

[CTyankee]

32. No, the artist is not initialed T.F. Who were you thinking of?

[cthulu2016]

34. One of

Heddy Lamar's photgraphers, Ms. Trude Fleischmann.

But that photo would be too late anyway.

[CTyankee]

35. She DOES look like Hedy Lamarr! She also looks a bit like Ingrid Bergman.

Quite a beauty. This photo was iconic for the photographer.

[cthulu2016]

36. Hmmmmm...

Hepburn by Avedon? It's too pretty to be Hepburn... but that's what being a great artist is about, right?

(Avedon's an honest guess but getting Hepburn would be a cheat, if correct. If incorrect it's hard to call it cheating. The photo looks 1930s but I guess it could be more recent... beats me. I used to be able to real off some of the top mid-century glamour photographers but all forgotten today.)

[CTyankee]

38. You are on the right track...not Hepburn, tho...

[cthulu2016]

42. Beaton

photgraphing GG?

[CTyankee]

43. you veered off the right track...not Beaton...

[panader0]

29. Well, I didn't know any of the answers

but I think this is a very cool challenge and will pay close attention next time. Congrats to the DUers who are smart enough to to know the answers.

[CTyankee]

37. Hey, glad you're here! I try to get folks here involved in discussions about art through these

Challenges, so my real reason is not to stump anybody. Not that I could, anyway, because DUers are impossible to stump! They are just too good at art!

[IcyPeas]

40. whoever number 2 is...

she has absoutely no waist.

[burrowowl]

41. K&R

[CTyankee]

44. I'm going out of town but will post the answers when I reach my destination...

Hint for #2: she died at the end of 2011

Hint for #3: she was a "beautiful Irish woman," M'sieu!

Hint for #4: this painting was rescued from Dresden during WWII, hidden in a tunnel, and discovered there by the Red Army.

Hoping someone will get them all while I am enroute...

[horseshoecrab]

45. #4

This is Raphael's Sistine Madonna.

The muse and model for the Sistine Madonna was probably Margherita Luti, daughter of a baker, who was Raphael's lover in Rome. She was also seemingly the subject of the paintings La Fornarina, (The Little Baker Girl) and La Velata, (The veilied woman), and probably others.

A recent cleaning of La Fornarina has revealed a ring on her left hand and it is speculated that she and Raphael were married. Luti entered a convent following Raphael's death.


horseshoecrab

[horseshoecrab]

46. #2

#2 -- Richard Avedon's photo of his first muse -- model and actress Doe Avedon (born Dorcas Marie Nowell) who was Avedon's wife.

The photo was taken at Gare du Nord, Paris, August 1947.

Thanks for the clue!


horseshoecrab

[CTyankee]

47. I love this photograph. She is so beautiful and the setting is so dramatic, along with the lighting

and the effects of black and white film. Gorgeous. Even the fur is impressive!

[horseshoecrab]

48. Dior fur lined coat...

Wish it was faux fur! Back in the forties though, fur was considered the height of luxury. Now we understand that fur looks truly beautiful on the animal it belongs to!

I love the dark and the light, the contrast and structure revealed by b&w photography, and Avedon is simply masterful.

Interestingly, Richard and Doe Avedon were the inspiration for the storyline of the movie Funny Face. Avedon did the stills for the movie starring Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. Hepburn became Avedon's muse from then on.

That man produced some beautiful work in black and white! Timeless images of Hepburn especially.



horseshoecrab