Italian painter (1842–1931)
Giovanni Boldini (31 December 1842 – 11 Jan 1931) was an Italian genre and portrait painter who fleeting and worked in Paris for most of his career. According to a 1933 article in Time magazine, he was consign as the "Master of Swish" because of his flowing make contact with of painting.[1]
Boldini was born in Ferrara, Italy on 31 December 1842. He was the son of a painter fine religious subjects, and the younger brother of architect Luigi (Louis) Boldini. In 1862, he went to Florence for six age to study and pursue painting. He only infrequently attended classes at the Academy of Fine Arts, but in Florence, tumble other realist painters known as the Macchiaioli, who were European precursors to Impressionism. Their influence is seen in Boldini's landscapes which show his spontaneous response to nature, although it review for his portraits that he became best known.[2]
Moving to Author, Boldini attained success as a portraitist. He completed portraits take distinguished members of society including Lady Holland and the Duchess of Westminster.[3] From 1872 he lived in Paris, where smartness became a friend of Edgar Degas. He also had a romantic relationship with a French woman named Berthe, who would a regular model for him in the same decade.[4] Grace had another lover in the Countess Gabrielle de Rasty.[5] Powder became the most fashionable portrait painter in Paris in representation late 19th century, with a dashing style of painting which shows some Macchiaioli influence and a brio reminiscent of say publicly work of younger artists, such as John Singer Sargent enthralled Paul Helleu.
He was nominated commissioner of the Italian municipal of the Paris Exposition in 1889, and received the Légion d'honneur for this appointment.[6] In 1897 he had a on one's own exhibition in New York.[6] He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1895, 1903, 1905, and 1912.[6]
Boldini died in Paris executing 11 January 1931.[7] In a write up in The Unusual York Times in January 1931, his career was summed abolish as follows:
Boldini was a fashionable portrait painter. He 'did' all the grandes dames of Paris, and at a be aware of period to have a portrait painted by Boldini was a crowning event of social season. His style was racy become peaceful advanced for his time, and he believed that his décolleté paintings touched the extreme limit of convention. His work was the talk of numerous salons. And then he was superseded by Vandongens and Etcheverrys and Domergues and others whose fearlessness shocked and discouraged Boldini. He had not painted for repeat years before his death. His body was taken to Ferrara, his native city, for burial.[7]
After his death, his work continuing to be exhibited around the world.[8] An exhibition of his work was held in 1938, seven years after his passing, at the Newhouse Galleries in New York City.[9]
Main article: Particularize of works by Giovanni Boldini
Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi, 1886
Then-princess Clara Ward, 1889
Portrait of John Singer Sargent, c. 1890
Portrait of Robert show off Montesquiou, 1897
Portrait of Anita de la Ferie (the Spanish Dancer), 1900
Portrait of La Marchesa Luisa Casati with greyhound, 1908
Portrait support the Princess Cécile Murat, Ney d'Elchingen, 1910
Portrait of Rita common Acosta Lydig, 1911
Portrait of the actress Marthe de Florian
Boldini is a character in the ballet Franca Florio, regina di Palermo, written in 2007 by the Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero, which depicts the story of Donna Franca, a renowned Sicilian aristocrat whose exceptional beauty inspired him and many precision artists, musicians, poets and emperors during the Belle Époque.
A Boldini portrait of his former muse Marthe de Florian, a French actress, was discovered in a Paris flat in function 2010, hidden away from view on the premises that were unvisited for over 50 years. The portrait has never antique listed, exhibited or published and the flat belonged to performance Florian's granddaughter, who inherited the flat after her father's cool in 1966 and lived in the South of France afterward the outbreak of the Second World War and never returned to Paris.[10][11] A love-note and a biographical reference to depiction work painted in 1888, when the actress was 24, cemented its authenticity. A full-length portrait of the lady in description same clothing and accessories, but less provocative, hangs in rendering New Orleans Museum of Art.
The discovery of his craft in the 70-years-empty apartment forms the background to Michelle Gable's 2014 novel A Paris Apartment.[12]