Pearce Bates: K.C. Pearce and Bob Bates

K.C. Pearce and Bob Bates

also known as

Pearce Bates 

(American printmakers couple) 

Going through some portfolios with prints to decide which may go and which may stay(*) I found this nice Pearce Bates (sparrow and swallows) print which I simply had forgotten. A fine  opportunity to try to find out some more about this printmaker on a rainy day.

Excavating the internet, other sources and my archive files for more examples I found this rather strange and seemingly incoherent collection of prints and styles but hardly anything personal about the makers. 

So here're all the examples I could find an scratch together. To be honest, some pictures I've pimped in Photoshop because they were either very small (auction house pay-site thumbnails: do you hate those as much as I do ?) or very  perspectively distorted. 

Pearce Bates in reality proofed to be two artists: K.C. Pearce (Mrs. Bates)  and Bob Bates working together, not only as a a couple but also as printmakers. Educated and trained in the 1930's and still working in the 1970's is all I was able to discover so far: hardly anything about their lives and careers. No dates or places and not even where the  initials K.C. might be standing for. 

Bob Bates had been a bird decoy woodcarver and both had been working in the advertising, magazine and newspaper illustration world. They choose to go their own way, flying their own plane and living in the woods in Dillsburg Pensylvania (USA) dedicated to producing graphic art. 

So maybe with the help of readers we can fill in and color the lives and careers of this American couple and joined printmaking venture. I particularly like these amusing titmouse (or is it a nuthatch or just a phantasy bird ?) 

The prints they've created reflect their personal interests in music (jazz), dogs (Irish water spaniels), traveling, flying and sailing. Their work is collected by  private collectors around the world as well in institutional collections like the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art and the Microsoft Art Collection. 

(*) As of today the narrowing down my collection to prints made by German Women Printmakers born 1860-1900 and active until WW2, has priority, preferably by swapping. So if you have any prints by this particular group and your focus of collecting or interests lies elsewhere you are invited to contact me.  

All pictures borrowed freely from the Internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only.                

August Oppenberg: in the fields !

August Oppenberg 

(1896-1971)

German painter and printmaker.

August Oppenberg is in Germany a very appreciated artist although with a regional status as a painter and printmaker. Nevertheless he is rewarded his own entry in the Wikipedia(*). He started, lived and worked and closed his life in the region near the city of Wesel in the Province of Nieder-Rhein (Lower-Rhine). Roughly between Arnhem (Netherlands) and Duisburg (Germany).

Living some 300 km north, and in a neighboring country, I suppose I would never have heard of August Oppenberg hadn't I stumbled over this etching that wasn't very successful in finding a new owner in our local Ebay. But I could not help falling instantly in love with it. Had it been a scribble by Vincent (why not ?) it would have been priceless.  

It's better then anything else August produced in his 75 years on the planet, I honestly believe, excavating the internet for images and examples of his artistic achievements. But this is all my personal opinion. It's actually more a drawing (on a plate) then it shows a proper etching. The cleverly constructed long diagonal and the sloping horizon giving it a great perspective and feeling of space. 
   

Millet, les Glaneuses: gathering the last remains of the weat-harvest spoiling nothing. 

August must have known one of Vincent van Gogh's (1853-1890) many Provence weat-field paintings. And/or the "Glaneuses" (Gleaners) by Vincent's inspiration Jean Francois Millet (1814-1875) the French Barbizon painter-etcher and forerunner of the Impressionists. Also knicked by his friend Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)(r.)   

Weat harvesting remained practically unchanged before it was taken out of our hands by combine-machines. From the dark ages and Pieter Bruegel's  the elder (c.1525-1569) 1565 masterpiece until these photographical recordings from not that long ago, the beginning of my era. A family and village business. 

And thanks to August Oppenberg I've met this wonderful Polish painter: Wlodzimierz Tetmajer (1861-1923). Warmed by his glowing palet and uncomplicated rural scenes of summers and days gone by I'll have to honor him with his own posting soon. 

All pictures borrowed freely from the Internet for friendly, educational and noncommercial use only.

On the multiplication of flowers.

Unkown German printmaker c.1910 the signature and marges cut of by framemaker. 

The composition, arrangement and being able to multiply flower-bouquets in vases by German women printmakers who were pioneering with color woodblock and linoleum in the beginning of the 20th century coincided with similar possibilities arising for photographers. A dream came true. 

In that first decade the reproduction proces of color photography was patented (1903) marketed (1907) and perfected (1910-20) by the Lumière brothers in the "autochrome" proces. It was to stay the standard of color photography until the mid -30's

In before posting I've met Heinrich Kuhn, He explored and perfected the aesthetic beauty of the academic nude, the composition of city and landscapes and portraits. But he was also intrigued by the aesthetic beauty of the "perfect" color flower-bouquet composition. 

Woodblock by Karl Pferchy (1888-1930), Austrian printmaker.

In spring 1883 Eduard Manet, on his deathbed, had finished his, some say the, 16 perfect flower-bouquets paintings (see here) from flowers brought by his friends to say farewell.

Manet's flowers also might have been an inspiration to Kuhns colleague French-German Baron Adolph de Meyer (1868-1949) to try his skills (below). Around 1920 he was the worlds highest payed photographer and famed for his (society) portrait photography. It is so good to see these lovely and delicate results in our digital erra, blinded by pixel madness en easy to use photoshop. We are all Kuhns and Meyers today. What stays is the admiration for the combination of originality, skill and true craftsmanship.
  

All pictures borrowed freely from the Internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only.

Edward Steichen and friends: Sculpting the Muse.

Edward Steichen (1879-1973), Heinrich Kühn (1866-1944) and ,

Alfred Steiglitz (1864-1946): 

Sculpting the muse(*).

This monumental academic nude is probably the finest photograph in its genre  ever taken. I think. I found dates between 1901 and 1904(*). It's a gum-bichromate over platinum print and a study of claire-obscure and of form,  created in Paris. Like Auguste Rodin sculpted his models from marble or casted them in bronze, the artist Steichen immortalized his muse with light, a lens, chemicals and many hours spend in a dark room. Both men admired and knew each other closely. It is written(*), somewhere in the Internet, to be his model and lover "Rosa". It is also said(*) that "not long after her posing she committed suicide". Steichen married Clara Smith in 1903(*).

Steichen like the other great pioneers of early photography truly tried to paint with light captured on glas negatives and in the best academic tradition of painters-in-oil of the generations before. His "old master" self-portraits captured on glass above. Rodin, Matisse and all the great "classic" painters embracing  these pioneers and the new and magic possibilities of capturing light and images the photographical way.   

But then there are these images (c.1908(*), evenly great classical studies, by friend and colleague Heinrich Kühn.

The resemblance of the model, the very long hair and the curves of the beautiful body are at least remarkable although both artists did their best working the negatives and staging the poses to make the women less or not directly recognizable. By face that is. Kühns model is the (English(*) nanny Mary Hanna Warner (she died 1933(*), employed for his four children after the death of his wife Emma Rosa Katzung in 1905. Mary appears in many of his iconic autochrome photographs, alone, clothed and along with his children (same dress ? different hat ?)  

But for this undressed session she posed against a roll-top desk in a Paris studio. With different attributes on top. And see the light shining underneath the closed door. Kühn also "etched" his self-portrait on a glass plate and his wife Emma in 1900(*). 

(*) "All information found in the Internet is at best unreliable".

is the warning to all modern students at the first day of their academic careers and training. This also applies on readers of this Blog of course. 

I couldn't help imagining and thinking Alfred Steiglitz (1864-1946), teacher, colleague and friend of Steichen had James McNeill Whistler's (1834-1903)  Japanese inspired "Old Battersea Bridge" in mind when he shot his "Going to the start" in 1905. Whistler's, Steichen's and Steiglitz's work could be seen together in 1908 in New york in the National Arts Club "Special exhibition of Contemporary art". 

Colleague photographer Gertrude Käsebier-Stanton (1852-1934) left us Steiglitz' painterly portrait (above) and her self-portrait (below). Steiglitz would accumulate even more fame with the intimate images of his undressed muse, painter Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986). Those images you can find easily your-self. Steiglitz had married Emmy Obermeyer in 1893, unhappy he divorced her in 1924 marrying his muse a few month later.  

(*) Don't forget to check and double check all "facts" mentioned in this Blog ! 

(*) THE MOUSAI (Muses) were the goddesses of music, song and dance, and the source of inspiration to poets. They were also goddesses of knowledge, who remembered all things that had come to pass.

All pictures (embiggen by mouse-click) borrowed freely from the Internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only.