The Swedish artist Nils Dardel traveled a lot and painted a lot. Respect wasn't necessarily quick in coming. According to this biography:
I suspect that his character stood in the way of his artistic career – for many years, some critics considered him to be a superficial and trite artist. Even worse were the many attacks on him as a person, relating to his ambiguous sexuality. Dardel was deeply hurt by the criticism, even though he usually dismissed it with his sharp and witty tongue.
Now as far as his sexuality is concerned I just don't know. He was married to a woman. So was Elton John for a while. But that's not really what's key here. What we can tell is that he knew how to put a picture together and he didn't take himself too seriously.
The Dying Dandy, above, stands as a case in point. Both of the men within the frame―the dyer and the mourner―have a kind of Korean boy band prettiness. The women are quite pretty too; Dardel wasn't blind to female beauty, or incapable of depicting it. But they knew they're subordinate. And the young man in the bed certainly knows it. He's still clutching his hand mirror.
Between the clothes, the plants, and the blanket, the full Roy G. Biv is covered here, and in rich, gemlike shades. Oscar Wilde could only dream.
2 comments:
The one thing it's impossible to know from looking at artwork on the internet is just how big or small they might be. That 'Crime Passionel', the one shown on the website, is fairly large is made obvious by the fact of the artist and his wife sitting nearby. That's very helpful. It's always good to know such things when you haven't actually seen an artist's work in person.
Considering the fact his life spanned two world wars and the Great Depression it's no surprise he was always aware of the fragility of life, including his own after the bout of scarlet fever when he was a teenager. As for his marriage, or marriages, since he married and had a child with Thora and then spent the rest of his life with Edita Morris it would appear he liked women but wasn't inclined to box himself in. A number of male friends are mentioned too and history hasn't made an issue of who he was sleeping with and when. Thanks heavens. The first version of 'The Dying Dandy' shows two young men and a boy in attendance and no women at all.
He certainly had a wonderful eye for beauty and for very rich colors. Subtlety wasn't the word to accurately describe many of his paintings but once you examine the portraits he made on his travels it's easy to see he was more than capable of honest portraiture.
Thanks for another fine introduction.
That's a good point about how big or small pieces are. Even in the RISD Museum there are paintings that take up a huge chunk of wall and others that are so tiny you have to get up close to see what's in them. On the Internet they'd all look about the same size. According to the Swedish art museum this one is (not counting frame) 140X180 cm, which translates to about 55 by 70 inches. Pretty big then.
We've forgotten about how intense and life-or-death the time of the two world wars was, although we might be relearning against our will. I'm sure that and his brush with serious illness did much to deepen his work. He and Edita appear to have been quite happy together. If he were around now it would probably be more known and publicized who he was sleeping with. But why would we want that? I've seen the earlier version as well. There are two more men the dying dandy's age (dandies themselves then) and a little boy. Clear in both versions that the other men rather envy him.
The straight portraits show him to be a very versatile painter. They tend to be in muted , neutral colors as opposed to the gem tones of his more expressionist paintings. He could work in both very well.
Glad to have the chance to show it to you.
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