Paintings of 1924: 2 Narrative and miscellaneous

This second collection of paintings that were made one hundred years ago, in 1924, opens with some narrative works, followed by a couple of interiors, miscellaneous works, and ends with an early sporting painting.

Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), The Trojan Horse (1924), oil on canvas, 105 × 135 cm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin. Wikimedia Commons.

Lovis Corinth’s Trojan Horse proved to be his last major painting from classical myth, showing the wooden horse made by the Greeks to gain access to the city of Troy so they could destroy it. The city is seen in the background, with its lofty towers and impregnable walls. The select group of Greek soldiers who undertook this commando raid are already concealed inside the horse, and those around it are probably Trojans sent from the city to check it out.

Although there are suggestions of an allegorical relationship between this painting and the First World War, Troy had been a hot topic in Berlin since the excavations at Hisarlık in Turkey in the late nineteenth century by Heinrich Schliemann and Wilhelm Dörpfeld.

Ker-Xavier Roussel (1867–1944), The Sleeping Diana (c 1924), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA. Wikimedia Commons.

Ker-Xavier Roussel’s Sleeping Diana uses a simpler motif of the goddess asleep under the watchful eye of one of her devotees, as a deer comes to drink at the pool between them.

Kazimierz Sichulski (1879–1942), Bachanale (1924), tempera on cardboard, 69 x 98 cm, Lviv National Art Gallery, Lviv, Ukraine. Wikimedia Commons.

Kazimierz Sichulski’s Bacchanal shows three naked bacchantes cavorting with Bacchus. This is set during the grape harvest, with bowls of the fruit and a couple of donkeys laden with buckets for the crop.

Mykola Ivasyuk (1865–1937), Riders on the Steppe (1924), oil on panel, 46.5 x 36.7 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Mykola Ivasyuk’s Riders on the Steppe is one of this Ukrainian artist’s late Cossack paintings. Two years later, Ivasyuk was appointed professor at the Kyiv Art Institute, but started to fall out of favour and was transferred to Odesa, where criticism became more serious. In the autumn of 1937, he was arrested, imprisoned, convicted of being a terrorist on the basis of his art, and was shot by a firing squad in Kyiv on 25 November 1937. Much of his art was confiscated or destroyed, and it wasn’t until 1980 that he was rehabilitated and his surviving paintings could be seen again.

Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940), Reading in the Dining Room, Vaucresson (1924), oil on board, 39.5 x 55 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

In Édouard Vuillard’s Reading in the Dining Room, Vaucresson, Lucy Hessel has already left her husband Jos reading the newspaper at the breakfast table, and gone to busy herself in the next room. Behind this mundane domestic scene is deeper complexity: Jos and Lucy Hessel were close friends of the artist, so close that at the time of this painting Vuillard, then in his mid-fifties, and Lucy were lovers.

Þórarinn B. Þorláksson (1867-1924), The Artist’s Home (1924), media not known, 35 x 25 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Until relatively recently, Icelandic society remained strongly traditional, and homes in its capital Reykjavik were still decorated in older style. Þórarinn Þorláksson’s glimpse into The Artist’s Home shows this well.

Henri Le Sidaner (1862–1939), White Garden at Dusk (1924), oil on canvas, 60 x 73.8 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

I believe that Henri Le Sidaner’s White Garden at Dusk shows a corner of the artist’s garden in the old village of Gerberoy.

Bruno Liljefors (1860–1939), Sea Eagles Chasing an Eider (1924), oil on canvas, 125 × 160 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

The pioneer Swedish natural history painter Bruno Liljefors never lost his fascination for the relationship between predators and prey, as seen in his Sea Eagles Chasing an Eider.

Heinrich Zille (1858–1929), Circus Games (1924), coloured lithograph, dimensions and location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

By the early years of the twentieth century, circuses were an established if itinerant part of society. Children in neighbourhoods engaged in circus games, as shown so delightfully in Heinrich Zille’s lithograph Circus Games.

Charles Demuth (1883-1935), Fruit and Sunflowers (c 1924-25), watercolour over graphite on white wove paper, 45.7 x 29.7 cm, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum (Louise E. Bettens Fund), Cambridge, MA. Courtesy of Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum.

When Charles Demuth was unwell as a result of his diabetes he sought solace in floral paintings, such as these exquisite Fruit and Sunflowers.

Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), Königsberger Marzipantorte (Royal Marzipan Cake) (1924), oil on panel, 55.5 × 71 cm, Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

Lovis Corinth sometimes painted purely for fun: this superb depiction of a Königsberger Marzipantorte (Royal Marzipan Cake) must have been completed at speed before his family consumed the model.

George Bellows (1882–1925), Dempsey and Firpo (1924), oil on canvas, 129.5 × 160.7 cm, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

The American artist George Bellows is perhaps best-known for his paintings and prints of boxing matches, many of them clandestine. Dempsey and Firpo, though, shows a famous historic boxing match between the heavyweights Jack Dempsey, world champion since 1919, and Luis Ángel Firpo, an Argentinian challenger. This took place in the Polo Grounds of New York City on 14 September 1923.

From the start of the first round, the fight was gripping in excitement, with Dempsey knocking Firpo down seven times. Towards the end of the first round, Dempsey was trapped against the ropes, and Firpo knocked him out of the ring, the moment shown here. Dempsey finally knocked Firpo out late in the second round. This was made from contemporary press photographs.