Giovanni Boldini

Giovanni Boldini (31 December 1842 – 11 January 1931) was an Italian genre and portrait painter who lived and worked in Paris for most of his career. According to a 1933 article in Time magazine, he was known as the "Master of Swish" because of his flowing style of painting.[1]

Giovanni Boldini
Self-portrait at Montorsoli, 1892
Born(1842-12-31)31 December 1842
Ferrara, Italy
Died11 January 1931(1931-01-11) (aged 88)
Paris, France
NationalityItalian
EducationAcademy of Fine Arts of Florence
Known forPainting
MovementMacchiaioli
AwardsLegion of Honour
Patron(s)Diego Martelli, Goupil & Cie
Signature

Early life

Boldini was born in Ferrara, Italy on 31 December 1842. He was the son of a painter of religious subjects, and the younger brother of architect Luigi (Louis) Boldini. In 1862, he went to Florence for six years to study and pursue painting. He only infrequently attended classes at the Academy of Fine Arts, but in Florence, met other realist painters known as the Macchiaioli, who were Italian precursors to Impressionism. Their influence is seen in Boldini's landscapes which show his spontaneous response to nature, although it is for his portraits that he became best known.[2]

Career
Giovanni Boldini, Portrait of Lucie Gérard, circa 1890. Pastel on canvas.
Photograph of Boldini in his atelier, by Alice Guérin, c. 1925.

Moving to London, Boldini attained success as a portraitist. He completed portraits of distinguished members of society including Lady Holland and the Duchess of Westminster.[3] From 1872 he lived in Paris, where he became a friend of Edgar Degas. He also had a romantic relationsship with a French woman named Berthe, who would a regular model for him in the same decade.[4] He had another lover in the Countess Gabrielle de Rasty.[5] He became the most fashionable portrait painter in Paris in the late 19th century, with a dashing style of painting which shows some Macchiaioli influence and a brio reminiscent of the work of younger artists, such as John Singer Sargent and Paul Helleu.

He was nominated commissioner of the Italian section of the Paris Exposition in 1889, and received the Légion d'honneur for this appointment.[6] In 1897 he had a solo exhibition in New York.[6] He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1895, 1903, 1905, and 1912.[6]

Boldini died in Paris on 11 January 1931.[7] In a write up in The New York Times in January 1931, his career was summed up as follows:

Boldini was a fashionable portrait painter. He 'did' all the grandes dames of Paris, and at a certain period to have a portrait painted by Boldini was a crowning event of social season. His style was racy and advanced for his time, and he believed that his décolleté paintings touched the extreme limit of convention. His work was the talk of numerous salons. And then he was superseded by Vandongens and Etcheverrys and Domergues and others whose daring shocked and discouraged Boldini. He had not painted for many years before his death. His body was taken to Ferrara, his native city, for burial.[7]

After his death, his work continued to be exhibited around the world.[8] An exhibition of his work was held in 1938, seven years after his death, at the Newhouse Galleries in New York City.[9]

Works
Main article: List of works by Giovanni Boldini

Boldini is a character in the ballet Franca Florio, regina di Palermo, written in 2007 by the Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero, which depicts the story of Donna Franca, a famous Sicilian aristocrat whose exceptional beauty inspired him and many other artists, musicians, poets and emperors during the Belle Époque.

A Boldini portrait of his former muse Marthe de Florian, a French actress, was discovered in a Paris flat in late 2010, hidden away from view on the premises that were unvisited for over 50 years. The portrait has never been listed, exhibited or published and the flat belonged to de Florian's granddaughter, who inherited the flat after her father's death in 1966 and lived in the South of France after the outbreak of the Second World War and never returned to Paris.[10][11] A love-note and a biographical reference to the work painted in 1888, when the actress was 24, cemented its authenticity. A full-length portrait of the lady in the same clothing and accessories, but less provocative, hangs in the New Orleans Museum of Art.

The discovery of his painting in the 70-years-empty apartment forms the background to Michelle Gable's 2014 novel A Paris Apartment.[12]

References
  1. "Art: Master of Swish". time.com. 3 April 1933. Archived from the original on November 22, 2010.
  2. Morris, Roderick Conway (13 November 2009). "In Impressionist Paris, the Face of the Belle Époque". The New York Times.
  3. de Gubernatis, Angelo (1889). Dizionario degli Artisti Italiani Viventi: pittori, scultori, e Architetti. Tipe dei Successori Le Monnier. p. 63.
  4. Berthè la musa indimenticabile di Giovanni Boldini, Museo Giovanni Boldini (Italian)
  5. Boldini dipinge le sue amanti insieme. Bionda e bruna, agli antipodi. Il retroscena, Stile Art, 22 January 2018 (Italian)
  6. Steingräber, E., & Matteucci, G. (1984). The Macchiaioli: Tuscan Painters of the Sunlight : March 14-April 20, 1984. New York: Stair Sainty Matthiesen in association with Matthiesen, London. p. 105. OCLC 70337478.
  7. TIMES, Wireless to THE NEW YORK (18 January 1931). "PARIS HAS LOST TWO NOTED PRE-WAR FIGURES; Gay Life of Earlier Days Recalled With the Passing This Week of Willy and Boldini". The New York Times.
  8. Jewell, Edwabd Alden (19 March 1933). "FIN DE SIECLE BRAVURA; Maud Dale Clamorously Presents Boldini, Galvanizing the Early Spring Season". The New York Times.
  9. Jewell, Edward Alden (9 March 1938). "BOLDINI EXHIBITION OPENS AT NEW HOUSE; Interesting Display Made Up of Works Found in Artist's Studio After His Death". The New York Times.
  10. John Hall (16 May 2013). "Revealed: Eerie new images show forgotten French apartment that was". The Independent.
  11. Samuel, Henry (4 Oct 2010). "Parisian flat containing €2.1 million painting lay untouched for 70 years". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 6 October 2010.
  12. Wilkens, John (7 February 2016). "Novelist writes what she doesn't know". The San Diego Union-Tribune. Retrieved 3 August 2016.

Sources
  • T. Panconi, Boldini, L'uomo e la pittura, Pisa (Italy) 1998
  • E. Savoia (a cura di), Giovanni Boldini. Il dinamismo straordinario delle linee, (catalogo della mostra), Bologna (Italy) 1999
  • E. Savoia (a cura di), Omaggio a Giovanni Boldini, (catalogo della mostra), Bologna (Italy) 2001
  • T. Panconi, Giovanni Boldini, L'opera completa (Catalogo generale ragionato legale), Firenze (Italy) 2002
  • P. Dini e F. Dini, Giovanni Boldini 1842-1931. Catalogo ragionato, Torino 2002
  • E. Savoia (a cura di), G. Boldini. Dalla macchia alla sperimentazione dinamica, (catalogo della mostra), Bologna (Italy) 2003
  • T. Panconi, Boldini Mon Amour (catalogo della mostra, con presentazione del ministro per i beni culturali), Pisa (Italy) 2008
  • E. Savoia (a cura di), Giovanni Boldini. Capolavori e opere inedite dall'atelier dell'artista, (catalogo della mostra), Milano (Italy) 2011
  • S. Bosi, E. Savoia, Giovanni Boldini. Il Narratore della "dolce vita" parigina, Treviso, Antiga Edizioni 2011
  • T. Panconi, S. Gaddi, Boldini e la Belle Epoque (catalogo della mostra), Milano (Italy) 2011
  • S. Bosi, E. Savoia, La mostra di Giovanni Boldini del 1963 al Musée Jacquemart-André di Parigi da un album fotografico inedito, Milano (Italy) 2011
  • Boldini, Giovanni, Enzo Savoia, and Stefano Bosi. Giovanni Boldini. Capolavori e opere inedite dall'atelier dell'artista. Crocetta del Montello: Antiga. 2011. ISBN 978-88-88997520
  • T. Panconi, S. Gaddi, Giovanni Boldini (catalogo della mostra di Roma - Venaria Reale To), Skira editore, Milano 2017
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