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.
Recent Comments