Painter of European urban scenes?

November 16, 2006 10:17 AM

Lost some good bookmarks in a crash. Trying to find a page of paintings by an unknown European artist, urban scenes of the early 20th century.

The tricky thing was that the paintings were linked to a livejournal page in Russian. I don't know the artist's name or whether he was Russian himself, although the feel of the scenes was central or eastern European, definitely not French or Italian.

All the scenes were intensely urban – streets, shops, trams. Some people, but they were secondary to the streetscapes.

Not a massively important artist, but a spirited and competent observer of the cityscape. Anyone have any clues for me?

posted by zadcat to media & arts (4 comments total)

Was the Livejournal MetroDream?
posted by iconomy at 10:47 AM on November 16, 2006

Hiya. Were these largely oils, watercolors, or a fair mixture of both? Was there any particular social interest indicated, or architectural, commercial or industrial emphasis?
posted by ardgedee at 10:51 AM on November 16, 2006

I don't think it was MetroDream – that seems to be mostly photos. I also think it was someone's personal lj, not a community.

I'm pretty sure the works were all oil paintings. The scenes were of the downtown shopping district of a city, exterior streetscapes, with windows of shops, traffic, trams. Some were rainy or wintery scenes, which I liked a lot.

There was also a sense of large rather monumental buildings in the background of some of the pictures.
posted by zadcat at 11:07 AM on November 16, 2006

OK, I doubt anyone is still looking at this, but I found him. I was mistaken on a couple of points.

The Livejournal in which I saw the images was written in Russian so I jumped to the conclusion it was a Russian or eastern European painter. In fact, it was a French artist, Eugène Galien Laloue. Some of his works are shown here and here.
posted by zadcat at 10:41 AM on November 26, 2006