Homages
Sometimes the tribute or influence, in whole or part, is intended, but sometimes may be coincidental to theme and pose
"Juan de Pareja"
By Diego Velázquez (oil, 1650)
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Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) was one of the great painters of the Spanish Golden Age. In his early career, he painted mainly religious works and genre scenes. In 1623, after winning admiration for his portrait of King Phillip IV, Velázquez was appointed a royal court painter. He also rose administratively to become Gentleman of the Bedchamber, overseeing all palace art and, in 1647, was assigned to update the Alcázar palace. Perhaps his most well-known work is “Las Meninas” (“The Maids of Honour”), a large, complex, and enigmatic painting, which includes a self-portrait of the artist at work.
The work featured here is a (1650) portrait of Velázquez’s enslaved assistant, Juan de Pareja, whom he freed four years later. From southern Spain, Juan de Pareja was of North African Muslim descent. Upon gaining his freedom, he pursued his own artistic career as a painter of portraits and religious works. Velázquez’s portrait won immediate accolades from fellow artists, and was later loosely reinterpreted by 20th-century surrealist Salvadori Dali.
"Portrait of Jamaal,"
By Colleen Barry (oil, 2014)
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A native of New York City, Colleen Berry’s art training began at age 14 under Sam Adoquei at the National Academy of Design, where she learned to observe nature and apply a loose, painterly technique. After eight years of Adoquei’s tutelage, he encouraged her to pursue atelier training. Upon winning a Newton-Cropsey Foundation fellowship, Berry traveled to Italy, copying master artworks. Returning to New York, she continued her training in the classical style at the Harlem Studio of Andrea J. Smith for two-and-a-half years. Berry then began a four-year apprenticeship with Jacob Collins at his Water Street Atelier, renamed Grand Central Atelier, where Berry is Director of Drawing. As seen on her website, Berry’s current work has ventured away from the classical to a looser, post-impressionist and sometimes surrealist style.
"Nijinsky, faun half-length"
Adolf de Meyer (photograph, 1912)
The early life of photographer Adolf de Meyer is uncertain because of contradictory accounts, including his own. Whether born in Germany or Paris, he spent his childhood in both locales. In 1896, he moved to London, where he created photographs in the Pictorialist style, manipulating the image rather than simply capturing a scene. His skill merited him membership in the Linked Ring, a British organization of Pictorialist photographers. In 1903, he began a professional correspondence with famed photographer Alfred Stieglitz and affiliated with Stieflitz’s Photo-Secession movement, which promoted photography, especially in the Pictorialist style, as a fine art.
In 1912, de Meyer immigrated to the United States, where two years later he became the first full-time photographer for Vogue magazine. In 1921, he became photographer for Harper’s Bazar, assigned to Paris. He specialized in fashion photography and society portraiture and was the primary photographer of Vaslav Nijinsky and the Ballets Russes. When De Meyer’s style of elegant sophistication fell out of fashion he lost his job with Harper’s in 1932. At the start of World War II in 1939, he returned to the United States, living in Hollywood, where he died in relative obscurity in 1946. Today, his photographs are collected by major museums, such as the Getty in Los Angeles.
"Vaslav Nijinsky, Green Faun"
Adrienne Stein (oil on linen, 16 x 12 inches, 2021)
Based in Pennsylvania and Colorado, Adrienne Stein is a multi-award-winning artist, whose beautiful figures, florals, and landscapes are richly colorful and romantic. Her work draws inspiration from art history, folklore, nature, symbolic imagery, memory, and imagination, blending reality and fantasy.
Stein earned a BFA Magna Cum Laude at Laguna College of Art & Design and an MFA from Boston University, with additional study under several top representational artists in the United States and Europe. Her many awards include from The Art Renewal Center, The California Art Club, The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, and The Portrait Society of America. Her work has been featured in leading art publications, such as American Art Collector, Beautiful Bizarre, and Fine Art Connoisseur, and shown in numerous solo and group art exhibitions. Her artwork is in collections across the globe.
Stein’s painting of ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky is an homage to Adolf de Meyer’s photograph and part of her recent series on early-20th century stars of stage and screen.
Stein is represented by Gallery 1261 in Denver.
"Water Nymph [or Mermaid] in a Goldfish Pond"
Franz Hein (color lithograph, 1904)
Franz Hein (1863-1927) was a painter and poet born in Hamburg, Germany. Exhibiting artistic ability at a young age, he attended a trade school to learn handicrafts, apprenticed with a theater painter, and then studied at the Karlsruh Artists Academy, where he later taught (1890-1905). He painted work for pubs and churches as well as personal commissions, which were often done in watercolor. In 1905, Hein became an art professor in Leipzig, where he taught graphics and book illustration until his death in 1927.
"Water Nymph from the Goldfish Pond"
Sara Golish (oil, stain, and gold leaf on panel, 16 x 12 inches, 2015)
Sara Golish is a Canadian figurative artist, whose works include paintings, drawings, and sculptures. During high school, she honed her artistic skills at the Windsor Center for the Creative Arts. In 2008, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto, majoring in Drawing and Painting and winning the Eric Freifeld Award for “proficiency in draughtsmanship.” She continued her education at George Brown College in Toronto, studying graphic and web design.
Golish has worked as a decorative painter of bas relief, murals, and gilded and faux finishes, and as an interior designer for corporate, retail, and residential projects in Canada, the United States, and Barbados.
Golish’s mixed media work featured here is a contemporary homage to Hein’s 1904 lithograph.
"St. Anthony Abbot and St. Paul the Hermit" Diego Velázquez (1635-38)
Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) was one of the great painters of the Spanish Golden Age. In his early career, he painted mainly religious works and genre scenes. In 1623, after winning admiration for his portrait of King Phillip IV, Velázquez was appointed a royal court painter. He also rose administratively to become Gentleman of the Bedchamber, overseeing all palace art and, in 1647, was assigned to update the Alcázar palace. Perhaps his most well-known work is “Las Meninas” (“The Maids of Honour”), a large, complex, and enigmatic painting, which includes a self-portrait of the artist at work.
Featured here is another Velázquez painting, “Saint Anthony Abbot and St. Paul the Hermit.” Its subject is based on a legend of two Christian saints of the 4th century meeting in the Egyptian desert, where St. Paul was a hermit. In Velázquez’s painting, St. Anthony appears five times: asking directions from a centaur, talking with a satyr, knocking on St. Paul’s door, conversing with him in the center foreground, and praying over his death body (center-left) while lions dig St. Paul’s grave. In the center of the painting is the raven that brought bread daily to St. Paul. For a larger image of the painting and more detailed explanation, see the Prado Museum website.
"Conversation between St. Anthony and St. Paul"
Daniel Barkley (acrylic on canvas, 60” x 44”, 2010)
Contemporary Canadian painter Daniel Barkley has a Master of Fine Arts degree from Concordia University in Montreal. He has participated in numerous solo and group shows in Canada and the United States, including two retrospectives of his career, and has won top awards in national competitions.
Working with watercolor or acrylic, sometimes incorporating gold leaf, Barkley’s paintings depict the human figure, with allusions to legends, myths, or historic art. Much of his art has an open narrative nature, with figures often nude or wrapped partially in blue plastic to remove social or historic indicators, thus allowing the viewer to speculate freely about the meaning. Barkley is represented by Galerie Mark Liebner in Montreal and Christine Klassen Gallery in Calgary.
“Fair Helena”
Arthur Rackham (1909)
Helena is a character in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play that conjures the enchantment, revelry, and anarchy of the traditional English festivals of Midsummer Eve and May Day. Helena and three friends—Hermia, Lysander, and Demetrius—temporarily flee the strictness of ancient Athens for a forest inhabited by fairies, including the mischievous Puck who concocts a magical potion that tangles their love interests. After much mayhem and mirth, the plot resolves happily with the couples—Helena and Demetrius; Hermia and Lysander—sharing their wedding day with Theseus, duke of Athens, and Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons. A Midsummer Night’s Dream celebrates romantic love while cautioning about its capricious nature and the risks of excess.
Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) was one of the leading artists associated with the Golden Age of book illustration, c. 1880s-1920s. Major works of his prolific career include Rip Van Winkle, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, Gulliver’s Travels, and Grimm’s Fairy Tales. In the featured illustration, Helena from A Midsummer Night’s Dream stands in the forest where she pursues her love, Demetrius.
“Midsummer Night”
Cornelia Hernes (oil on canvas, c 35.4" x 23.6", 2013)
Contemporary artist Cornelia Hernes pays homage to Rackham’s Fair Helena in her breathtakingly beautiful oil portrait, Midsummer Night. A native of Norway and a graduate of the prestigious Florence Academy of Art, Hernes has established an esteemed reputation both as an artist and as a teacher at the Florence Academy and its branches in Sweden and the US (2007-2020). Since 2018 she has focused on making artistic training available globally through teaching classical painting and drawing online. Her tutorials are currently available on Patreon. Her Midsummer Night was a finalist in the figurative category of the 2013-14 Art Renewal Center Salon. In addition, she is a 2016 ARC award recipient in the drawing category for the chalk and charcoal drawing, Storyteller.
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“A Bar at the Folies-Bergère”
Édouard Manet
This famous painting by renowned impressionist Édouard Manet centers on a barmaid at Folies-Bergère, a popular nightclub in Paris. She faces the customer, reflected in the mirror behind her, as well as viewers of the art.
“Barra del Laurel”
Alejandro Decinti
Spanish artist Alejandro Decinti’s updated version is in a Spanish bar,
"Seven-Eleven"
Dan McCleary (1996)
American painter Dan McCleary's version features a clerk in a ubiquitous Seven-Eleven.