An Arts Fuse regular feature: the arts on stamps of the world.

By Doug Briscoe

Titian and Man Ray are our birthday superstars on this August 27th. But by one of those extraordinary coincidences, August 27 is also the date on which two of the very greatest Renaissance composers died, Josquin des Prez (c1450/55 – 27 August 1521) and Tomás Luis de Victoria (c1548 – 27 August 1611). To my astonishment, nobody seems to have issued a stamp for Josquin, but Spain put out one for Victoria in 1985.

So we follow yesterday’s big splash for Frans Hals the Elder with one for Tiziano Vecelli (or Vecellio, born c1488/90, died 27 August 1576), or as we English-speaking types call him—pace Dan Ackroyd—Titian. I found that although the master painted many different subjects, the majority of the stamps tended to show his portraits and religious pieces, not so much the mythological ones. So we’ll start with one of those, The Bacchanal of the Andrians (1523-4), in a se-tenant Spanish strip with a detail from Titian’s Self-Portrait of c1567. Next to that I’ve placed a detail from another Self-Portrait, one made some time between 1550 and 1562, on a stamp from Dominica. In the second row we see more portraits, Man in a Red Cap (c1510), Isabella of Portugal (1548), and two stamps of Titian’s famous Equestrian Portrait of Charles V in the Prado (1548), the first in full color from Belgium and the second in blue from the Dominican Republic. The picture of Isabella was done long after her death in 1539, based on a portrait by a lesser artist. We move on to the second collage, beginning with a row devoted to the same lovely canvas, Flora (1515), shown on stamps of Bulgaria, Hungary, and Italy. I think the Italian one is my favorite, despite its being in monotone, because it’s engraved. In the second row, we turn to some sacred paintings, The Holy Family with a Shepherd (c1510, Christmas stamp from New Zealand, 1963); Saint Sebastian (1570-72, stamp of Russia, 1987); detail from Madonna and Child, known as the “Gypsy Madonna” (1510, stamp of Paraguay); and Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (c1515, stamp of the British Virgin Islands). In the final row, a mixture: Portrait of Clarissa Strozzi (1542); Pesaro Madonna (1519-26); Ecce Homo (1485-90); and Danaë (1545-6). I cannot leave the topic, however, without mentioning one great masterpiece I had the pleasure of seeing in situ, the glorious Assumption of Mary (1516-18) in the church of Santa Maria dei Frari in Venice. There doesn’t seem to be a stamp for that one.

American painter and photographer Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) has twice been remembered on stamps of the United States, and in both cases with his photographs. The 2002 stamp shows one of his “Rayographs” from 1923, and the one from 2013 offers an image from his Noire et Blanche series (1926). The other day we mentioned that Christian Schad was likely the first artist to create photograms—aka cameraless photography. Ray’s “Rayographs” employed the same technique. He contributed to the Dada and Surrealist movements and worked in a variety of media including collage. Further, he did much work in fashion and portrait photography.

Don’t go away—we have eleven more artists to talk about. The Hungarian architect Ödön Lechner (27 August 1845 – 10 June 1914) has been called the “Hungarian Gaudí“, and a look at some of his buildings will show why. Perhaps his crowning achievement, not shown on any stamps that I know of, is his Postal Savings Bank in Budapest (1899-1902). Similar in appearance is the Museum of Applied Arts (1893-96, also in Budapest). This building, the third oldest applied arts museum in the world, is shown on a 1995 Hungarian stamp along with a portrait of the architect. The other Hungarian stamp (from 1968) shows the 1893 Kecskemét City Hall, a collaboration between Lechner and his early partner Gyula Pártos. Though most of Lechner’s work was done within the Kingdom of Hungary (some buildings are today in Serbia, Slovakia, etc.), he also created the Saint Ladislaus Church in South Norwalk, Connecticut between 1909 and 1912.

The Ukrainian writer and political figure Ivan Franko (August 27 [O.S. August 15] 1856 – May 28 [O.S. May 15] 1916) was a remarkably energetic person. He began writing poetry and a novel while still at Lviv University and took up the socialist cause, earning himself a nine-month spell behind bars. He did another three-month term the next year after having started and restarted political magazines. Not long after that he translated Goethe’s Faust into Ukrainian. Over time, Franko became critical of Marxism, and one wonders whether his unspokenness would have got him into hot water with the Communists had he not died in poverty before the Revolution. He wrote prolifically: journalism, literary criticism, novels, including some of the earliest detective novels, and ethnographical studies, besides founding two political parties. The Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater in Kiev is named for him. Remember that name, because it will be coming up again a bit further down the page!

Ferdinand Schirnböck (27 August 1859 – 16 September 1930) was an academic painter and engraver who worked not only in his native Austria but also in Buenos Aires, where he was responsible for designing or engraving Argentinian banknotes and postage stamps. He returned to Austria in 1892 and worked for the Austro-Hungarian Bank and the state printing office, creating stamps for the empire, including Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro, as well as for Sweden, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and many other countries. Schirnböck also engraved (but did not design) the world’s oldest composer stamps for Austria in 1922. I show the Johann Strauss stamp from that series along with a variety of Schirnböck’s other international productions.

The Mexican poet and journalist Amado Nervo (August 27, 1870 – May 24, 1919) also served as his country’s ambassador to Argentina and Uruguay. He studied at a seminary, and mysticism would infuse his later creative work. Unable to join the priesthood, he worked in the law before turning to journalism and poetry. He wrote the first of his three or four novels in 1895 and started a magazine, La Revista Moderna (The Modern Magazine) in 1898. The finest of his numerous poetry collections is held to be the one he wrote after this death of his wife, La Amada Inmóvil (The Immovable Loved One), which did not appear until after his death in Montevideo while in the diplomatic service.

Another writer, but of the next generation and a world apart, was the Japanese poet Kenji Miyazawa (27 August 1896 – 21 September 1933), who also wrote children’s literature. A man of diversified interests, Miyazawa taught science, played the cello, took up farming, and was at an early age a convert to Buddhism and a vegetarian. He learned Esperanto and translated some of his own works into that language. In a parallel with Nervo, Miyazawa wrote poems of mourning, said to be among his finest, on the death of his young sister in 1922. It was also around this time that he began to investigate Western classical music, listening to recordings. It’s believed he was a synesthete. A number of his many children’s stories have been adapted to anime.

Soviet stage actress Faina Ranevskaya (27 August [O.S. 15 August] 1896 – 19 July 1984) did comparatively little work in film, always in supporting roles. She came of a well-to-do Jewish family named Feldman in Taganrog. While still in her mid-teens she decided on a career as an actor. She performed in the classic Russian repertoire and appeared in her first film, a silent, in 1934, her last in 1965. Ranevskaya excelled at both tragedy and comedy and was twice awarded the Stalin Prize.

Paraguayan composer José Asunción Flores (27 August 1904 – 16 May 1972) is best known for having created the music genre he called Guarania, but he also worked in classical forms, producing twelve symphonies. Flores declined to accept the National Order of Merit in 1949 as a political protest and suffered for his stance. Alfredo Stroessner later disallowed him from returning to Paraguay from Argentina, and Flores was never able to see his homeland again. His songs—his Guaranias—had been banned by the government, but were still played by radio stations and loved by the people. He died in Buenos Aires. After the ouster of Stroessner in 1991, the composer’s remains were returned to Paraguay and today rest in a plaza named for him. The stamp comes from the same Cuban set of 1991 as yesterday’s stamp for Luis Abraham Delgadillo.

Austrian artist Max Weiler (27 August 1910 – 29 January 2001 in Vienna) worked in oils, frescoes, mosaics, and ceramics. He studied in Vienna and had his first show there in 1935. He worked as a teacher until drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1942, serving in northern Italy and Yugoslavia. Weiler returned to his alma mater as professor of painting between 1964 and 1981. His work appears on three Austrian stamps, Easter (1986, stamp of 1993), a work in egg tempera, Young Sunflowers (1949, minisheet of 2004), and on a centennial stamp of 2010, a work the title and date of which I wasn’t able to learn.

Another painter of the 20th century was the Spanish Filipino artist Fernando Zóbel (August 27, 1924 – June 2, 1984). His father patronized the artist Fernando Amorsolo, who in gratitude gave art lessons to young Fernando. Fernando studied medicine in Manila and then history and literature at Harvard. His thesis was on García Lorca. After being graduated magna cum laude he worked for a time in the Houghton Library before returning to the Philippines, where he had his first show in 1953. But he came right back to New England for further study at the Rhode Island School of Design. There he saw the work of Mark Rothko and turned from representational art to abstraction. Soon after he became interested in Chinese and Japanese calligraphy. Himself an art collector, Zóbel founded an art museum in Cuenca, Spain in 1963. I was able to find online only a small, low-res scan of the Filipino stamp from 1997 showing Zóbel’s Jardin III. Sorry.

We have two more actors to visit with today, and then we’re done. (You’ve been very patient.) Ukrainian actor Bohdan Stupka (27 August 1941 – 22 July 2012), who appeared in over a hundred films, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, and Georgian, and also performed extensively on stage, also served as Ukrainian Minister of Culture from 1999 to 2001. And get this: he also headed the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater in Kiev! (Did you forget to remember?)

I just have to mention American actress Barbara Bach (née Goldbach, born August 27, 1947) just because I was infatuated with her for a while, especially in her role as Anya Amasova in the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) (which is why she’s on a couple of stamps from a Congolese “Bond girl” issue). Actually I think she was a terrible actor, but I didn’t notice until I’d seen the movie four or five times. Anyway, she threw me over for Ringo Starr, whom she married in 1981.

No stamps yet for novelists Theodore Dreiser (August 27, 1871 – December 28, 1945) and C. S. Forester (real name Cecil Louis Troughton Smith, 27 August 1899 – 2 April 1966), the creator of Horatio Hornblower.

A graduate of the University of Massachusetts with a B.A. in English, Doug Briscoe worked in Boston classical music radio, at WCRB, WGBH, and WBUR, for about 25 years, beginning in 1977. He has the curious distinction of having succeeded Robert J. Lurtsema twice, first as host of WGBH’s weekday morning classical music program in 1993, then as host of the weekend program when Robert J.’s health failed in 2000. Doug also wrote liner notes for several of the late Gunther Schuller’s GM Recordings releases as well as program notes for the Boston Classical Orchestra. For the past few years he’s been posting a Facebook “blog” of classical music on stamps of the world, which has now been expanded to encompass all the arts for The Arts Fuse.