Sometimes I think the art department for Agatha Christie’s Poirot must have been having so much fun… Did you know that multiple paintings in the series were basically tweaked renditions of Tamara de Lempicka’s works?
Lempicka was a celebrated Polish Art Deco artist. Her distinctive style shows influence of Cubism as well as Ingres-style portraiture. I had, some months ago, painted a tiny (reversed) copy of one of her works– a girl with gloves– for the cover of one of my miniature books.
In the Poirot episode One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, the board room of Alistair Blunt shows a portrait of himself and his wife Rebecca, done exactly in the style of Lempicka. This is historically fitting, since Lempicka painted a number of “celebrity” portraits for the wealthy and aristocratic in the ’20s and ’30s.
In fact, that painting above isn’t only in the style of Lempicka– it is basically a conglomeration of different Lempicka paintings: a portrait of Mrs Boucard and one Mr Tadeusz de Lempicki. You can see below how the face of the man has been changed to look like Alistair Blunt (Peter Blythe). 🙂
There is a similarly-styled portrait, a la Lempicka, in the episode The Underdog— a painting which hides the safe of Sir Reuben Astwell, the murdered man.
Again, it is based almost completely off of a legit Lempicka painting, Dr. Boucard.
The “remake” includes the test tube of liquid, which in Lempicka’s original has (presumably) some medical aspect, but which seems to have been cleverly re-imagined as relating to “Astwell Chemicals.” Like the Alistair Blunt portrait, the face is reconfigured to look like Sir Reuben (Denis Lill).
Interesting, no? 🙂
Seven Storeys High 