Boldini, Portrait Painter of Europes "It" Girls of 1880

Their have always been the graced and favored within European society, the famous ,the notorious, the ennobled have all sort to grab their little piece of immortality by being portrait painted in their prime. The artists favored by these celebrities have changed over the years and certain artists were favored by certain classes of the famous . In the late Eighteen Hundreds the favored portrait painter to the nobility and European Royal Families was Franz Winterhalter and I will be covering him in a later post. However lesser characters including the notorious and members of the acting profession preferred the work of John Singer Sargent and the flamboyant Giovanni Boldini.

Born: December 31st 1842. - Died: July 11th 1931. Boldini was an Italian genre and portrait painter, belonging to the Parisian School. According to a 1933 article in Time magazine, he was known as "The Master of Swish" because of his flowing style of painting.

Boldini was born in Ferrera, the son of a painter of religious subjects, and went to Florence in 1862 to study painting, meeting there the realist painters known as the Macchiaioli. 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. He attained great success in London as a portraitist.

From 1872 Boldini lived in Paris, where he became a friend of Edgar Degas. He also became the most fashionable portrait painter in Paris in the late 19th century, with a dashing style of painting which shows some Impressionist influence but which most closely resembles the work of his contemporaries such as John Singer Sargent. He was nominated commissioner of the Italian section of the Paris Exposition in 1889, and received the Légion d'honneur for this appointment. He died in Paris in 1931.

For further information about Boldini and to see Paintings for Sale done by our in-house Bouguereau specialist, "David Billet" go to our website at www.kingsgalleries.com and to fully understand why you should only be considering Kings, read this article