This biography from the Archives of AskART:
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 Giovanni Boldini, 1842-1931) enjoyed a long and successful artistic career. He was born in Ferrara, Italy in 1842, and trained on the Italian Renaissance masters from childhood with his religious artist-father, Antonio Boldini.
He also studied under other accomplished artists, gaining a reputation even at that young age as an accomplished portrait painter. He then studied in Florence at the age of 20, at the Scuola del nudo (the School of Nudes), a subject he would return to only in old age.
Giovanni combined work and study for many years, training in Paris and London, and Holland and Germany. He moved to Paris but continued traveling for his work. He developed his own, distinct style, and his portraits grew in fame, helped greatly by a portrait commissioned by Giuseppe Verdi in 1886, the biggest celebrity of his day.
One of his paintings was a portrait of the composer, Guiseppe Verdi, and Verdi gave Boldini an introduction into the world of opera, which led to many commissions for portraits, and to many intimate paintings of opera fans in theatres and cafes around Europe.
You can see his paintings in museums around the world including the N.Y. Metropolitan Museum, the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Legion of Honor Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco, and the National Gallery of Australia. And his paintings are reproduced on prints, posters and greeting cards.
But most of Boldini's paintings remain in private collections because most of his paintings were commissioned portraits, society portraits. Everyone who was anyone HAD to have their portrait (or their wife's portrait) painted by Boldini.
Boldini's paintings showed his subject in soft-focus, elongated, in movement, alive, and sophisticated. He was even dubbed the King of Swish, and looking at his portraits of women, you can see why. His portraits were flattering.
The brush work on his paintings was swift and bold and gives his paintings a sense of motion.
He also painted landscapes including Venice in the naturalistic style of his day, influenced by the Macchiaioli schooled artists he knew in Florence. He worked on engravings, and etchings, and painted with pastels and watercolors. Only toward the end of his long life, did his style change, becoming more impressionistic (possibly due to his failing eyesight) and using mainly dark, rich colors.
His subjects changed as well. He no longer relied on portraits for a living, so he began painting subjects he wanted to paint, which seemed to be many nude women. Perhaps this was just his Italian nature exerting itself, and a return to his preferred youthful choice of subject.
Another change that came late in life was that the bachelor Boldini finally married. To quote from a magazine article:
"In 1929, aged 86, he suddenly married. At his wedding breakfast he made a little speech:
'It is not my fault if I am so old, it's something which has happened to me all at once.'
He died of pneumonia while in Paris, and is buried in his hometown of Ferrara, Italy.
Source:
http://www.giovanniboldini.org/biography.html (From Italophile Site)
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| Please note: Artists not classified as American in our database may have limited biographical data
compared to the extensive information about American artists.
 Giovanni Boldini is best remembered for recording Parisian society of the Belle Epoque. He was born in Ferrara, Italy in 1842. He began painting in his father's studio, later went to Rome and Florence where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts.
In 1887 he went to Paris, where he was deeply impressed by the work of Manet. He extended his virtuosity of fashionable portraits and townscapes. In 1869 Boldini arrived in London and became the favorits portraitist of the aristocracy. But it was in Paris, where he returned in 1872, that most of his best painting was done. He was renowned as a colorist and technician but his increasingly refined manner did not always avoid affectation and facility. He died in Paris in 1931.
Written and compiled by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.
Source:
Phaidon Encyclopedia of Art and Artists
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Biography from Schiller & Bodo European Paintings:
| Please note: Artists not classified as American in our database may have limited biographical data
compared to the extensive information about American artists.
One of the portraitists most sought-after by fashionable high-society during the closing decades of the 19th century and opening of the 20th, Boldini enjoyed a huge international following. During a visit to Paris in 1884, the Catlin family, from St. Louis, Missouri, commissioned a portrait from the famous painter of their nine-year-old daughter Irene. While preparing for her sitting, Irene entered the studio wearing an elegant, white chemise, ready to put on her best dress. Upon seeing her, Boldini insisted that he paint her in the slip, probably eager to paint the delicate, white tones of the embroidery against the dark, red interior. The result is a particularly engaging image that captures both the girl’s curious and charming expression and Boldini’s exuberant brushwork and color. |
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