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Friday, January 21st, 2022

Inbetweens: Jean Gabriel Domergue- Granddaddy of All Pinup Artists

I love it when I discover a new artist!

The other day, my friend Tony “Superslice” Mora sent me a Facebook message asking me if I had ever heard of Jean-Gabriel Domergue. I hadn’t, but I did some Googling and quickly came up with a new name for my list of favorite “girl artists”. Here is the granddaddy of all pinup painters!

The interesting thing about Domergue is that his girls aren’t the best thing about his art. They’re sometimes rather loosely constructed with long ostrich necks, and the eyes and mouth are the same formulas used over and over again… No, the best thing about Domergue is his color and brushstrokes. Notice the incredibly bold use of primary colors, some of which appear to be straight out of the tube. Usually, this results in flat, blown out color harmonies, but Domergue is able to adjust the colors around the primary to make it work. His brushstrokes are beautiful and spontaneous. They’re abstract at the same time as perfectly defining the texture and folds of the fabric. Wow!

Thanks to Tony Mora for turning us on to this great painter. Here’s a gallery of images to browse…

Stephen Worth
Director
Animation Resources

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Friday, January 7th, 2022

Illustration: Monks By Eduard von Grutzner

Here is another interesting item from the collection of Carlo Vinci. These photographs were among his most prized posessions. They are turn of the century reproductions of the paintings of Eduard von Grutzner. Grutzner was born in 1846 and received classical art training at the Munich Academie under the noted realist painter, Karl von Piloty. Grutzner specialized in genre paintings, which formed the basis for the style of many classic book illustrators who followed. He was famous for his paintings of jolly gatherings in alehouses, hunting scenes, and humorous images of monastic life, which these particular images represent. Grutzner was successful and popular in his day, and died in 1925.

The family isn’t quite sure where Vinci obtained these photographs, but my guess is that they date back to his earliest years as a professional artist. After graduating from the National Academy of Design, Vinci was hired to do reproductions of classic paintings. It’s entirely possible that these were used by him as reference for reproductions of one or more Grutzner paintings. It’s easy to see why Vinci treasured these pictures. The compositions are classically perfect, the caricatures are well observed, the lighting is beautifully rendered, and a Falstaffian sense of humor makes the images a lot of fun.