Going Greek: William Russell Flint

Chorus and Musicians

Since I've been contemplating things Ancient Greek recently, it seems a good time to dust down (and wipe off) some Homeric pics by William Russell Flint (1880-1969)

Flint was a water-colourist who straddled the boundaries between Classicism and the Modern, commercial illustration and fine art, respectability and soft porn. He was knighted but "enjoyed little respect from art critics, who were disturbed by a perceived crassness in his eroticised treatment of the female figure." He painted illustrations for volumes of The Odyssey, Le Morte d'Arthur, King Solomon's Mines and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales among other family favourites, but he also did about a billion pics of topless ladies in Spanish costume, and OH BOY DID HE LIKE PAINTING TITS.

"Minxes Admonished: an album of deplorable caprices"

So here's some legendary Greek nudes 😍😍😍 mostly painted just before WWI.
Enjoy!

I'm going to be a Legend

Georges Rochegrosse: Andromache (1883)

What a week! We're still trying to catch up with life after running the Gothic LARP last weekend, but I had a story to turn in too. I sat up until 4 in the a.m.  on Thursday night finishing it, emailed it on Friday morning - and had it accepted on Friday afternoon 😮 My historical fantasy The Price of Passage is now booked to appear in Vol. 3 of the Legends series from Newcon  Press, to my great delight and pride!

The incredibly grim piece of art above shows a scene from the sacking of ancient Troy. Princess Andromache, stripped nearly naked, has been seized by Greek soldiers and is helpless to stop her infant son being carried off by another Greek and dumped to his death off the walls of  the city. The antagonists are posed against a background of hanged, raped and beheaded corpses and a city in flames. Rochgrosse had a bit of a penchant for violence in his paintings, and this one is quite extreme by Victorian standards.

Next ... back to finishing off edits on Lust in the Dust! I'm just such a huge fan of sunny, optimistic themes, clearly ;-)

Love and His Counterfeits

For your romantic enjoyment on Valentine's day, here are some rather wonderful paintings by the "last of the pre-Raphaelites," and one of the most popular artists of the Edwardian era, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872-1945) on the subject of LOVE. [click to enlarge]:

Love and His Counterfeits (1904)

This picture needs quite a bit of explanation!

"When a girl's soul awakens and she opens the door of her Heart's Castle to receive Love, at first she will not recognise him.

First, she will see Fear and think him to be Love. Fear, in craven armour of black, with no coat of arms or badge to mark his family. But by Fear, Love may come.

Then she will see Romance, being now in love with 'being in love' - Romance, the Boy on a Bubble with a Castle of Dreams in his hand, and Birds and Roses about him. He leads Ambition, who shall stir the girl to think he is Love himself - Ambition, very hot and eager, riding upon Pegasus, the winged Horse.

After them is Position, whom she may take for Love; but truly she is in love with Appearance, Prestige, Importance, Riches, Place, all his Train, and this is borne by a Cupid.

Now she is stirred by Pity, thinking whom she pities she loves - Pity with the Cup of tears with three handles, that many may drink.

Then she perceives Arts, a brave fellow who is but words and emptiness and a mask for love. Arts paints a wound upon him and sings that it is real. To Love he is not henchman, nor cousin, but enemy.

Behind him goes Flattery with a mirror, so she is wooed by vain words. Then Gratitude comes with the smoke of memory, and she will think she is faithless if she does not love one who has been kind.

Now, at last, after her emotion, her assault by gifts, mirrors, riches, tears, dreams, phrases, memories, comes True Love, empty-handed, to take and win her Heart's Castle."

Perhaps Brickdale's most famous painting is The Uninvited Guest (1906) which depicts Cupid hanging out disconsolately at the fringes of a wedding that is all about wealth, appearance and position. Love is not invited here.

Can't get enough of that ol' Symbolism? Here's Chivalry Dying of Love for the Goddess:

(Note the knights all swooning about somewhat over-dramatically, which has entertained Venus enough to give her pause in the procession of olympians.)


Here's much simpler picture, but still full of drama:

The Secret

And my absolute fave, Love and Adversity (1900) in which the protagonist is kept company by Love while (one assumes) his Beloved goes off to marry some rich dude.

Add caption

I means, it's got a hairy dude in bondage at the castle gate - What's not to adore? There's definitely a story waiting to be written for that one!

Burne-Jones at the Tate

In the Depths of the Sea
(the only picture where anyone is smiling!)

Since I spent a day in London last week, here are some photos I took in the Tate Britain exhibition of the work of Pre-Raphaelite Edward Burne-Jones (1833-98) - which is on for another month: if you want to go, get there EARLY and allow yourself lots of browsing time.

The Annunciation

I'm just sorry that my photos don't give you a proper idea of the SCALE of many of the pieces - which were huge in most cases - nor of the richness imparted by the colour and gilding.

The Wine of Circe

The Pilgrim Outside the Garden of Idleness

The Wheel of Fortune

Love and the Pilgrim

Portrait of Amy Gaskell

They had the whole Perseus Cycle there, in various forms

 -  though some pieces were unfinished

And the whole Briar Rose Cycle too:

 

Burne-Jones and his ilk are wildly unfashionable with critics, but OMG the beauty...

Spirits, or The Uninterrupted Dream

Greatly recommended, for anyone who has a chance to go.

Salome

Salome Dancing Elegantly Before King Herod

It's Hallowe'en, so let's have some sexy horror art!

The story of Salome combines all the things that Victorian/Edwardian artists and rich connoisseurs loved: an irreproachable Biblical provenance, a dramatic death, an irresistible femme fatale, and some serious sadomasochism (along with hints of quasi-incest and necrophilia). The barebones New Testament version goes:

"On Herod’s birthday the daughter of Herodias [Herod's wife] danced for the guests and pleased Herod so much that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she asked. Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist.” The king was distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he ordered that her request be granted and had John beheaded in the prison. His head was brought in on a platter and given to the girl, who carried it to her mother."

 Prior to the 19th Century this story was treated mostly like any other Bible story in art, and in fact it could be difficult to tell whether the painting depicted bad-girl Salome or heroine Judith - like this:

Salome, or Judith, Sebastiano del Piombo (1510)

NOT sexy, right? But by Victorian times Salome stopped being a mere cipher pimped out by her mother to her step-father (Ew!) and accrued this enormous mythic status as the epitome of Feminine Lust, and the destructive power it could wreak on the most powerful of men. Who is mostly to blame for this? An artist, Gustave Moreau, and a writer, Oscar Wilde.

Moreau seems to have been obsessed with the Salome story and painted many many interpretations in the 1870s that focused on the dancer's sensual beauty and her guilt:

The Apparition of the Head of St John the Baptist

Oscar Wilde was introduced to these sensational paintings and wrote a play, Salome (published 1891 but banned in England until 1931!). It actually introduced the motif of the "dance of the seven veils" to the myth, which subsequently became a staple for erotic dancers. That play inspired an opera by Strauss, and suddenly there was full-blown Salomania in artistic circles.

Illustration for Wilde's Salome, by Aubrey Beardsley.

So here's some artistic Salomes, starting with the relatively innocent dancers...

Gaston Bussiere - La Danse de Salome (or The Golden Butterflies) 1923

Georges Rochegrosse - Salome Dancing before King Herod (detail) 1887

Rudolf Ernst (1854-1932) - The Dance of Salome

Gyula Tornai (1861-1928) - The Dance of Salomé

To the ominous just-a-gal-hanging-about-with-a-sword-and platter portraits:

Henri Regnault - Salomé (1870)

Francesc Masriera - Salome (1888)

Francis Luis Mora - Salome (1899)

From here on it gets pleasingly lurid, as Salome forms an attachment to her head and likes to hang out with it socially.

Bela Čikoš Sesija, - Salome (1919)

Franz Von Stuck - Salome II (1906)

Jean Benner - Salome (1899)

Eder Gyula - Salome with the head of John the Baptist (1907)

Pierre Bonnaud - Salome (c. 1900)

Adolf Frey-Mook - Salome and John the Baptist (1910)

Leopold Schmutzler - Salome (c.1910)

Leon Herbo - Salome (1889)

Leopold Schmutzler  - Salome (1907)

But honestly you can have too much of a good thing - even getting head...

Beardsley

Maurycy Gottlieb - Salome with the Head of St. John (1878)

Seriously?!

Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer - Salome (1896)

And just in case you think that mum Herodias had a sensible motive in engineering John's death (he had publicly condemned Herod for marrying her, the ex-wife of Herod's brother) ... here she is totally getting her rocks off too:

Francesco del Cairo - Herodias and the head of St. John the Baptist

Same artist, same title ... take a cold shower Francesco

So you see, the problem is not horny kings making bad decisions: it's horny women. According to Art, anyway... 😉