ON LOAN: BOLDINI’S GUITAR PLAYER
by Joan K. Yanni
A charming replacement loan from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, is now hanging in the Impressionist room in our Alma-Tadema's space. Since it will be there until September 1992, when The Sculpture Garden returns, information on the painting is in order.
A Guitar Player was painted by the Italian artist Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931). Boldini was born in Ferrara, the 8th of 13 children of a painter, restorer and copier. He had a natural aptitude for art, great technical facility, and a talent for catching likenesses. He did a self-portrait at the age of 14; and, when he left Ferrara at 20, he already had a solid reputation in Italy.
In 1862 he moved to Florence and worked with an avant garde group called the Macchaioli, from the Italian meaning "small patches." Forerunners of the Impressionists, the Macchaioli used small patches of pure, contrasting colors in their works in an attempt to depict the look of nature more closely. Boldini adopted the patch technique in his painting and brought new sparkle and excitement into his works. He became friends with the rich and the clever in Florence, and spent two sojourns painting in England where his patron, Sir Walter Falconer, introduced him to the international art scene. He moved to Paris in 1871.
In Paris he rediscovered the works of the 17th century painters Hals and Valasquez, and his use of vivid colors and short, staccato brush strokes made his paintings ever more popular. He was much in demand by rococo dandies and ladies of La Belle Epoque. He became a friend of Degas and his circle. Prices for his works soared.
In 1886 he rented the studio of John Singer Sargent, an American painter whom he emulated. But though he sought to be like Sargent, his paintings were superficial. Boldini captured the attributes but not the essence of his subjects. Yet some of his best paintings, such as that of Madame Veil-Picard, her white shoulders emerging from the clinging velvet of her dress, are exquisite. Whatever his shortcomings, Boldini became portrait painter to the rich and influential in Paris, at that time the most elegant city in the world.
When World War I erased La Belle Epoque, Boldini turned to subjects that would appeal to the public as well as to his aristocratic audience. A Guitar Player is one of his delightful genre works. And because he was able to transform everyday scenes into dazzling pictures which caught the imagination, his paintings were reproduced in prints and sold in quantity all over Europe.
It is easy to see the appeal of A Guitar Player. Boldini's artful composition and short, swift brush strokes show us a fascinating woman, her toreador, and her guitar. Her dress shimmers; his clothing gleams. His glistening cape and sword lie on an ornate chest near a poster announcing a bullfight. As he watches her play her guitar, smoke curls from the cigarette between his lips. One can almost smell it. Boldini mixes satin-smooth tints with touches of bright color in a sunlit composition. The picture is spirited, the subject is flirtatious. The painting is delightful.
Though he had become an international artist, Boldini's home town never forgot him. A small Boldini Museum has become part of Ferrara's Municipal Picture Gallery. An early critic summed him up: "If he is an ass in painting an angel, he is an angel in painting an ass." (Art Journal, July 1878).
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