La Gatta, Sargent, and Boldini

Illustration for Laros Lingerie by John La Gatta, circa early 1940s. There's no argument that La Gatta is remembered as an illustrator who also did some painting, and John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) and Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931) are identified as painters. They didn't do illustratiions. Though they were also born in Italy -- Sargent in Florence of American parents -- they didn't emigrate to the United States. They all more or less experienced the same artistic influences of their times, but La Gatta's circumstances led him to the commercial world of illustration, the others to easel painting.

Compare La Gatta's illustration, above, with Sargent's sketch, below, and note the very pleasing liveliness and vitality of La Gatta's woman and Sargent's stodgy rendering of an undraped female form. This is not to intimate that Sargent was a stodgy painter of women, but to show that La Gatta was equally competent at drawing. Click on images to enlarge them.

Sargent's portrait of Rosina Ferrari, Capri, 1878. Rosina was famous as a model for painters who visited the island at the time.

Boldini's portrait of a Mademoiselle Lantelme, 1907, hangs in Rome's Museum of Modern Art.

Boldini's famous portrait of the composer Giuseppe Verdi, Paris, 1886.

Comments

[Rotebor]

Estimado Paul:
Admiro las pinceladas de Boldini, parecen plumas de pájaro a veces frenéticas, decididas, pero siempre fascinantes.
Ese retrato de Garibaldi es uno de mis favoritos, junto con "Girl in a black hat" (pastel). Y en "A lady with a cat" (¿es una acuarela?) hay un hermoso "modernismo" de altísima calidad artística.

[Rotebor]

Paul:
Admiro la pincelada de Boldini, parecen plumas de pájaro, a veces frenéticas, pero siempre fascinantes.
Ese retrato de Garibaldi es uno de mis favoritos.

[David]

Paul, I have to disagree with you when you say that La Gatta was the equal of Sargent when it comes to drawing. To me, there is no comparison. I say this based on a large file of La Gatta tearsheets (as well as having read the La Gatta book. La Gatta had a pleasing way of rendering women (and it shows that La Gatta liked women a whole lot more than Sargent did)but for me, Sargent starts at such a higher plane that even a "stodgy" Sargent drawing of a mere woman is superior to La Gatta's efforts. And of course, Sargent did a whole lot of "non-stodgy" drawings that crackled wih excitement.