Linen postcards are easily identifiable by the type of high rag card stock they were printed on which was produced with a linen finish; a textured pattern distinguished by parallel and intersecting lines resembling linen cloth. The face of the card was the textured side and the reverse was smooth just like other postcards.
Due to the use of this paper, linen postcards could be printed with brighter inks creating brightly coloured images, making them a huge advancement over the earlier white border postcards. Linen postcards' heyday was from the 1930's when they were introduced to about 1945.
I have quite a collection of these linen postcards mainly featuring town views, ‘important’ buildings, and factories. I believe they are mainly heavily retouched black and white photographs, rendered in vibrant colours. This retouching gives then a unique look.
It seems appropriate somehow to follow my post on the portraits of Henri Rousseau with those of an old friend of mine, Royal Academician Anthony Green. Anyone who has been to visit the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition in the last forty years can't have failed to have been struck by Anthony's highly personal portraits which are very frequently autobiographical, his subject matter almost always inspired by his relationships with his wife and family.
Anthony Green was born in 1939 and studied at the Slade School of Art, where he won the Henry Tonks Prize for drawing in 1960. This was followed by the Gulbenkian Purchase Award in 1963 and the Harkness Fellowship in the USA from 1967-69. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1971. He is a Fellow of University College, London and serves as a Trustee of the Royal Academy.
He has experimented with irregular shaped compositions since 1966, which have on occasion progressed to freestanding 'sculptures' incorporating real objects as well as beautifully executed attention to detail. One of the most popular artists in the Royal Academy of Art Summer Exhibition each year, his paintings intrigue, amuse and enchant his many fans with their mood-enhancing sense of colour, humour and remarkable ability to capture life's events, both happy and sad, in a way that people readily identify with.
Anthony Green's work is included, among many other venues, in the public collections of the Tate Gallery, Setagaya Museum, Tokyo and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He has also exhibited internationally in London, New York, Berlin, Tokyo, Sidney, Chicago etc. He has had over 100 one-man shows since 1962.
I said in my last posting that I would follow up the naive painter Henri Rousseau's more famous jungle paintings with some portraits of his. Having started a few posts ago with some very modern minimalist portraits by Julian Opie, and then contrasting those with the more naive (faux naive?) style of Frida Kahlo's self portraits I thought I'd contrast those with one or two other painters' works.
The style of Rousseau's portraits are more traditionally what one associates with naive painting, and I like them a lot. I've always been a fan of early American naive painting and portraiture, and I would have to say that Frenchman Rousseau's work has a similar charm. The first one shown here is a self portrait.
I'm returning to my mini-theme of portraiture by a roundabout route. In my next post I'll put up some portraits by the naive painter Henri Rousseau (1844–1910); but first I'm posting a different aspect of his work. Rousseau is far better known for some of the most popular and memorable paintings of the modern era. He is celebrated for his visionary jungle paintings that captivate the viewer with the lushness of their plant and animal life painted with incredible detail and precision. Extraordinarily the artist never saw the tropical scenes he brought so much to life, as he never left France. His exotic jungle paintings are the fantasies of a city dweller, constructed from visits to the zoo and botanical gardens, from postcards, books and from Rousseau’s vivid imagination. These jungles have intrigued people for decades, offering a dream of escape from humdrum reality to a savage and yet enchanting realm.
Rousseau’s unique vision was celebrated by his modernist contemporaries like Pablo Picasso and the surrealists René Magritte and Max Ernst, who saw his work as opening up new realms of artistic possibility. They were particularly fascinated by his bold, primitive style and the dream-like nature of his paintings. For a customs official who was self-taught and only took up painting full-time in retirement, this was an extraordinary accomplishment.
This post isn't meant to be flippant in the light of the stream of bad news that keeps coming from Pakistan. Now contending with the human disaster of the monsoon floods, and the seemingly endless reports of terrorist bombs in the larger cities of Pakistan might make it seem like a bad time to be looking at a lighter side of the nature of Pakistan, but I think it's a valid point.
Pakistani truckers consider their vehicles as national symbols and make it a competition as to who has the most fabulous truck. Owners often spend over $3000 on paint and metal designs for their vehicles, which can be many times their monthly salary. Truck art started as a way to differentiate trucks in Pakistan from those in India after the countries split in 1947. Many of the treasured vehicles have an average age of 30 years and every part is replaced to keep the vehicle running as long as possible.
I love these painted vehicles, it's real folk art done with aplomb. I think there are many similarities with the old gypsy caravan painting and fairground art in this country. In Pakistan it's like the 60's and the Hippy trail never died.
