Art: Classical Pin-Ups

Fortunino Matania, 70, thinks every picture should have a woman in it. In his London studio last week he pointed scornfully to the picture on his easel, a group of staid 18th Century English gentlemen in periwigs and ruffles. “Imagine!” said Artist Matania. “They ask me, me of all people, to paint a picture without women. Such sacrilege! Such a crazy world we live in!”

A whole generation of Britons would agree with Matania that the picture, commissioned by a Scottish firm “for a calendar or something,” was a shocking waste of talent. Matania’s place in 20th Century British art may not be high, but it is reasonably secure: nobody in his day drew pretty, scantily draped girls more to the British fancy.

High Life. Fortunino Matania came to Britain at the end of the Victorian era, when he was 19. The son of an Italian illustrator, he was trained to magazine work and covered the kinds of auspicious occasions now assigned to photographers. His first big job for a British journal was the coronation of Edward VII. “Rapidity and accuracy, that was what mattered,” says Matania. He had both, and British editors kept him hopping for the next 25 years. In World War I, he spent four years in the trenches, sent out thousands of drawings that established him as one of the world’s best news artists.

But it was after the war, when he switched to scenes of ancient high life for the British woman’s magazine, Britannia and Eve, that Matania found his real career. He filled his London studio with reproductions of Roman furniture, pored over history books for suitably lively subjects. Then, with the help of models and statues, he began to paint such subjects as Samson & Delilah, the bacchanalian roisters of ancient Rome, and even early American Indian maidens—all with the same careful respect for accuracy and detail he had used in his news assignments.

Generally he managed to include one or two voluptuous nudes in each picture. “The public demanded it,” says Matania. “If there was no nude, then the editor or I would get a shower of letters from readers asking politely why not.” He was a standard in Britannia and Eve for 19 years.

Slices of Flesh. Although ill health has forced him to give up his regular magazine work, Matania is convinced that there is still a demand for his nudes, intends “to live as long as I can” and paint them. Leggy modern pinups he considers poor stuff. “Vulgar and artificial,” he says. “Copies of photographs with slices of lovely flesh cut off the thighs.”

He thinks art is even worse: “Those who paint modern pictures in bad faith are frauds. Those who paint them in good faith need a doctor. Those paintings will one day be in museums, like ancient instruments of torture, to show the depths to which art fell.”