Category: art history

Posted on

Sea Captains Carousing

It’s an iconic New England painting, and it’s fun to imagine with your friends in it.
Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam, oil on bed ticking, 1755, John Greenwood, courtesy St. Louis Art Museum. Greenwood painted himself in the doorway, leaving with a candle.

Last night I had a glass of wine with my pal Cathy. She doesn’t want to learn to paint, but she likes to sail, so she asked me about my Age of Sail workshop aboard the schooner American Eagle. In the way of small towns, her husband knows Captain John Foss, and remarked about what a great story-teller he is. That’s true of sailors in general, but he’s a wry master of the art form.

I got home to this essay about iconic New England paintings. It includes the wonderful Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam, 1755, by John Greenwood. Since moving to Maine I’ve gotten to know a number of sea captains, and even more lobstermen, and it’s wonderful to imagine them in their tricornes, dancing around in this painting.
Sea Captains Carousing is what art historians call a genre painting. These are scenes from everyday life: markets, homes, inns, brothels, churches, streets. Often, they’re moralizing, as in the work of English painter William Hogarth. Those fantastic Flemish and Dutch food paintings? They’re genre paintings, and they instruct us on the transience of luxury and the perils of gluttony.
Portrait of Richard Waldron, oil on wood, 1751, John Greenwood, courtesy New England Historical Society
Just to be confusing, the word genre also means in painting what it means in other arts—a type of subject matter. In fact, classical art had a hierarchy of genres, formulated by the Italians. It persisted right up to the modern era:
  1. History, religious and allegorical painting
  2. Portraits
  3. Genre paintings
  4. Landscapes
  5. Animals
  6. Still life
Greenwood was raised and trained in the hinterlands of the British Empire (Boston), so he didn’t have the advantages of such classical ideas. Still, he knew there was money in portraits, and he executed hundreds of the things.
Unless they emigrated from England as adults, most of our earliest painters were self-taught. They emulated British styles of painting, which they knew through prints and the works of émigré artists. This was true of both primitive painters like William Jennys or sophisticated artists like John Singleton Copley.
John Richard Comyns of Hylands, Essex, with His Daughters, 1775, John Greenwood, courtesy Yale Center for British Art 
Greenwood had the advantage of an apprenticeship with self-taught engraver Thomas Johnston. In addition to portraits, Greenwood painted many satirical works. Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam is the best known of them. Surinam was a Dutch colony in South America, now the Republic of Suriname. Greenwood lived there for five years, during which time he painted 115 portraits. He never returned to North America, traveling east to Amsterdam, Paris, and London, where he eventually settled.
Portrait of the painter Tako Jajo Jelgersma, c. 1750-58, John Greenwood, courtesy Rijksmuseum.
The beauty of Sea Captains Carousing is in what its subjects would later become in the history of Rhode Island. In addition to many prominent merchants, it includes Declaration of Independence signatory Stephen Hopkins, Governor Joseph Wanton, Admiral Esek Hopkins, and Governor Nicholas Cooke.
It’s about time for you to consider your summer workshop plans. Join me on the American Eagle, at Acadia National Park, or at Genesee Valley this summer.
Posted on

The survival of realism

In the 1930s, a quiet battle was going on between the forces of realism and abstraction. Abstract painting won—for a while.

Death on the Ridge Road, 1935, Grant Wood

American Regionalism arose during the 1930s as a response to the Great Depression. It had a short life as art movements go, ending in the 1940s. Focusing on small-town America, it rose in opposition to Abstract Expressionism. While it seemed dead by mid-century, it paved the way for the later resurgence of realism in American art.

The 1913 Armory Show introduced New York audiences to the experimental styles of the European avant garde. New York might have been dazzled, but the rest of America was not. Regionalism gave American artists the confidence and voice to look to their own culture for inspiration, rather than endlessly parroting Paris and New York.
Achelous and Hercules, 1947 mural, Thomas Hart Benton, courtesy Smithsonian American Art Museum
Regionalism was the first completely indigenous American art movement. It was reactionary, but it was more than that. It was closely tied to Social Realism and its impulse to depict the real conditions of working class America. Its regional pride originates partly in its overlap with the New Deal artwork we discussed yesterday. Regionalist artists were, like the rest of small-town America, looking for something to celebrate in all the bad news of the Great Depression. That made them tied to their audience in a way the abstract painters were not.
There were three stars in Regionalism: Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry. All three started their education at the Art Institute of Chicago, all three started their careers looking east for inspiration. In the end, each turned back to a distinctly middle-American viewpoint.
Plaid Sweater, Grant Wood
Grant Wood is famous for his American Gothic, but that shortchanges his contributions to American art. Born in rural Iowa, Wood was raised in Cedar Rapids by his widowed mother. After attending The Handicraft Guild in Minneapolis and the Art Institute of Chicago, he returned to Iowa to teach in a one-room school house. In the 1920s, he traveled repeatedly to Europe. “I had to go to France to appreciate Iowa,” he told critics of American Gothic.
The painting was wildly misinterpreted. East Coast elites lauded it as a criticism of the narrowmindedness of middle America. Iowans were furious at this. In fact, Wood meant it as homage.
Thomas Hart Benton was born into a family with advantages. His father was a four-term Congressman. Benton was raised between Washington, DC and the Ozarks. Intended for a career in politics, he rebelled and attended the Art Institute of Chicago and the AcadĂ©mie Julian in Paris. After a stint as a military artist during WWI, he settled in New York. It was not until his late 40s that he abandoned New York and return to the Midwest.
Ajax, 1936-37, John Steuart Curry, courtesy Smithsonian American Art Museum
Like Benton, John Steuart Curry was known for his murals. Although his parents were Kansas farmers, they were college-educated and well-traveled. After a brief stint at the Kansas City Art Institute, he transferred to the Art Institute of Chicago, ultimately transferring again to Geneva College. Curry worked for several years as an illustrator. In 1926, he too made the obligatory trip to Paris. On his return, he settled in the New York City area.  
In 1936, Curry was appointed as the first artist-in-residence at the Agricultural College of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His job was to promote art in rural communities by providing personal instruction to students. This same year he was commissioned to paint New Deal murals in Washington, DC and Kansas.
We modern artists owe these three painters a great debt for keeping the tradition of realism alive in the US. And that’s all I can write. In a moment they’ll be calling my flight and I’ll be off to Santa Fe for Plein Air Fiesta. Have a great weekend!
It’s about time for you to consider your summer workshop plans. Join me on the American Eagle, at Acadia National Park, at Rye Art Center, or at Genesee Valley this summer.
Posted on

Why art history is important

To be relevant as an artist, you need to understand your place in history.
The County Election, 1852, George Caleb Bingham, courtesy St. Louis Art Museum.

“If she only knew some art history, she could go from being a good painter to a great painter,” a fellow teacher once mused as we wandered through a show. The artist was a superb technician, but painting in a style that was in vogue 150 years ago.

Art history is an extension of straight-up human history. The little I learned in school, I learned in history class. Most of what I know, however, is self-taught, through reading and visiting museums and galleries. Over the years, I’ve gotten pretty good at it.
I think it’s possible to understand most of history by just looking at the pictures. Art, after all, is an expression of the cultural values of the society it was created in.
Consider The County Election, by Missouri artist George Caleb Bingham, above. Starting in the late 1840s, he began a series on American democracy. He critiqued the political process as he saw it. That in itself is historically interesting. But looking back on it through almost two centuries of history, we first notice the lack of women or minorities in 19th century democracy. By being true to his time, Bingham is able to talk to us today.
California gold diggers. Mining operations on the western shore of the Sacramento River, undated, Kelloggs & Comstock, New York, courtesy Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University. This tells us who the heavy lifters were in the early goldfields.
American public high schools offer no concentration in art history, although it’s possible to take an AP exam in the subject. In Britain, one can do an A-level in art history (the exam was nearly scrapped in 2016). That puts us at a disadvantage to our British cousins, right?
Not entirely. Bendor Grosvenor is an art dealer and BBC presenter who recently guest-lectured to a group of graduating art history majors at an unnamed university.  â€œ[W]hen I put an image of a well-known Titian on the screen, only one of them (of around 40) could identify the artist,” he wrote. “I asked what they had all been doing for the past few years; ‘reading’ came the unenthusiastic answer. I had been invited to discuss art-historical careers, and my advice was therefore simple: stop reading about art, and go and look at some.”
I’ve had an American art history major hanging around for several years now, and I know that she’s been schooled in attribution. She had to take a comprehensive examination in it to get her undergraduate degree. Luckily, we had amazing resources available, including the Met’s online database of 451,685 records. She quizzed herself on attribution until she had the western canon down cold.
Portrait of Margaret Kemble Gage, John Singleton Copley, 1771, courtesy of Timken Museum of Art. Looking at this portrait, can you see the patriot who would whisper her husband’s secrets to the Sons of Liberty five years later, sparking the American Revolution?
Her alma mater estimates that the cost of attending is now $62,882a year, or just about twice the annual real median personal income of $31,099in the United States. Her education was fantastic, but that is an absurd price tag. It pretty much excludes anyone but the wealthy from pursuing it. (Full disclosure: she attended community college first so that she could breathe the ether for only two years.)
Every large museum now has a database of its collection online—even the notoriously recondite Barnes Foundation has finally caved. These are a priceless resource. Then there’s SmartHistory, which I wrote about here.
On Monday, I said that anyone serious about painting should get their hands on a copy of Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color. I also believe that anyone serious about painting should know art history. The good news is that it won’t cost you a dime, and you can study from your laptop or tablet.
Posted on

Open source art history

An easy, interesting, free site for learning art history, available to everyone.

All art survey courses start with the Venus of Willendorf (courtesy of Naturhistorisches Museum)


A reader asked how she could learn more about art history. My normal answer would be to go to the library and take out a copy of Janson’s History of Art. But she can’t do that.

A while ago, another reader sent me this listing of free art-history courses online. Most of them are narrowly-focused, making them more interesting to the enthusiast than to the beginner. But the list led me to SmartHistory. It has a detailed set of syllabuses that takes you through the development of western art, from the Venus of Willendorf to Pop Art. (Those of you looking for an analysis of the last fifty years will have to wait.)
And go to this (Chartres cathedral c. 1220)

These are:
A syllabus is an outline for a course, a description of where you’ll go and how you’ll get there. You get them the first day of class, put them in the front of your binder and refer back to them when you’ve forgotten something. SmartHistory’s are interactive, so they end up driving your learning. You walk through them step-by-step, just as you’d go to lectures at university. I sampled several lessons and found them complete, interesting, and thorough. And there are graded quizzes.
And then to this study of a horse by Leonardo da Vinci (courtesy of ‌Royal Library, Windsor Castle)

SmartHistory started in 2005 as an audio guide series for use at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, and as a resource for college students. It has now published 1500 videos and essays on art and cultural history. While these include the art of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania, they’ve not yet written syllabuses for non-western art.
“Publishers are adding multimedia to their textbooks, but unfortunately they are doing so in proprietary, password-protected adjunct websites. These are weak because they maintain an old model of closed and protected content,” they wrote on their webpage.
And then to Impressionism, represented here by Monet’s Impression, soleil levant, 1872 (MusĂ©e Marmottan Monet)

That, to me, gets to the heart of the matter. Individuals and institutions may own individual paintings, but nobody owns our history or our heritage. Doling it out at $25 for a ticket to the Met or $100 for an access code to a textbook is contrary to our goal of building an educated, thinking society with common values. A person who follows these syllabuses meticulously is going to learn everything they’d study in a college survey course in art history.
And end up somewhere around Roy Lichtenstein’s Drowning Girl, 1963 (Museum of Modern Art, New York).
Smarthistory launched its first custom-designed website in 2007. Between 2011-2015, it was supported by Khan Academy and remains its official partner for art history. And this is the first I’ve heard of it. Somedays I feel like the last one to the party.
Posted on

The self-righteous art critic, he’s everywhere

Did Wyeth appropriate Christina Olson’s suffering for money? Only a really young person would ask such a question.

Christina’s World, 1948, Andrew Wyeth, courtesy Museum of Modern Art.

On his centenary year, I suppose I should join the throng and comment on Andrew Wyeth. There is little new to say. An indubitably great painter, he had the courage to embrace realism at a time when it was devalued. His body of work speaks for itself.

Then I read essays like this and think some rebuttal is necessary. Zachary Small is too young and too self-righteous by half. He understands neither the artist’s relationship to the model nor mid-century American culture.
Christina’s Worldis an abstract painting masquerading as a narrative. It could have as easily been titled Three Objects on a Yellow Field.At 31, the artist was not yet famous, but he was subject to great expectations. He had been tutored at home by his world-famous father, NC Wyeth. They rubbed elbows with other luminaries of their day.
His training and instincts pointed him to realism. Nevertheless, the art world was in open rebellion against representational painting.
Trodden Weed, 1951, Andrew Wyeth, courtesy here. Three years later, it addressed the same formal questions as Christina’s World, but is a much more self-revelatory painting.
Most of us would have melted in that kind of crucible. Wyeth, instead, created this enigmatic masterpiece. This is, of course, magical realism, not realism, a direct riff on his dad’s storytelling. Not only did he beautify Christina Olson, he radically redrew the Olson House.
In modern parlance, Zachary Small objects to Wyeth’s ‘appropriation’ of Christina’s story of courage and disability. On Wyeth’s behalf, I claim a sort of fair-use exemption. That’s what artists have always done—taken particular pathos and raised it to be a universal statement.
In 1948, the United States was on the front edge of the biggest outbreak of poliomyelitis in its history. In 1952 alone, nearly 60,000 kids were infected with the virus. Thousands were paralyzed; more than 3000 died. Wealth was no insulator. There was no vaccine and no cure. Kids went into iron lungs and parents prayed.
Historians now believe that Christine Olson didn’t have polio, but rather Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease. That’s irrelevant. It wasn’t Wyeth’s understanding, and it wasn’t the American understanding in 1948. Wyeth was painting the polio epidemic.
I like to take students to the Farnsworth Museum to see whatever Wyeth sketches and drawings they have on display. They spell out Andrew Wyeth’s meticulous method. I find him, posthumously, to be a great teacher of painting.
Lovers, 1981, Andrew Wyeth, courtesy here.
But as to his finished paintings, I’m always deeply conflicted. They’re technically perfect, but hidden, reserved, and cool. As with Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth painted our isolation. Surrounded by hype, activity and people, twenty-first century man still lives a solitary existence.
Hopper told this story through buildings. Wyeth told it through faces and the human form. His paintings throw up masks I can’t get past. I find that most moving, and terrifying at the same time.
Posted on

A pigment that’s older than modern man himself

In life and in death, our ancestors covered themselves with iron oxide.
Image of a horse colored with yellow ochre from Lascaux cave, France, c 17,300 BC
“What is the oldest pigment?” a reader asked me this week. That’s one of the few questions that archeology can answer definitively.
It’s ochre, one of the iron-oxide pigments. These minerals are common and easy to manipulate. Primitive man needed only to find suitable rocks and scratch or grind them. Adding water, he had paint. Adding milk, he had paint with a protein binder.
Ochre’s history is far older than modern man. A quartzite hammerstone found near the Danube shows a 500,000-year-old partial handprint of ochre. The earliest known cache of milled ochre comes from a Homo erectus site that’s about 285,000 years old. By 250,000 years ago, Neanderthals were using ochre at the Maastricht BelvĂ©dĂšre site in The Netherlands. By 40,000 years ago, ochre was being manufactured in an ongoing process in an Ethiopian cave. That workshop lasted 4500 years.
Image of a human hand created with red ochre in Pech Merle cave, France, c.  25,000 BC
All that makes the Upper Paleolithic cave art at Lascauxseem downright modern.
Sienna, umber and red oxide are other iron-oxide pigments from antiquity, but none are as venerable as ochre. In ancient practice, different hues might have come from different rocks, or they could have been ochre that was heated or treated to change its structure.
The easiest way to manipulate ochre was to toss it in the fire. Burned, it turns red. Evidence of this dates from 100,000 to 70,000 years ago in deposits in Blombos Cave in South Africa.
Ochre filled a large niche in the prehistoric world. In addition to its obvious uses as a paint, it was a medicine, cosmetic, tanning agent and mastic.
Paintings in the Tomb of Nakht in ancient Egypt, c. 15th century BC
“[It] is not unusual to find a layer of the cave floor impregnated with a purplish red to a depth of eight inches. The size of these ochre deposits raises a problem not yet solved. The colouring is so intense that practically all the loose ground seems to consist of ochre,” wrote archeologist AndrĂ© Leroi-Gourhan of prehistoric Europeans. “One can imagine that the Aurignacians regularly painted their bodies red, dyed their animal skins, coated their weapons, and sprinkled the ground of their dwellings, and that a paste of ochre was used for decorative purposes in every phase of their domestic life. We must assume no less, if we are to account for the veritable mines of ochre on which some of them lived.”
Red ochre is closely associated with prehistoric burial rites. The so-called Red Lady of Pavilandwas a male skeleton dyed with red ochre about 33,000 years ago. 
Remains of the Red Lady of Paviland, Wales, c. 35,000 BC
“I found the skeleton enveloped by a coating of a kind of ruddle … which stained the earth, and in some parts extended itself to the distance of about half an inch around the surface of the bones … Close to that part of the thigh bone where the pocket is usually worn surrounded also by ruddle [were] about two handfuls of the Nerita littoralis. At another part of the skeleton, viz in contact with the ribs [were] forty or fifty fragments of ivory rods [also] some small fragments of rings made of the same ivory and found with the rods … Both rods and rings, as well as the Nerite shells, were stained superficially with red, and lay in the same red substance that enveloped the bones,” wrote its discoverer, the Rev. William Buckland.
Some prehistoric graves used cinnabar in place of ochre. That would have been a costly trade item. Even in death, society has always been divided between the haves and have-nots. Ironically, what they had in this instance was toxic.
Posted on

Mysterious stone balls

Math, engineering and art are never very far apart. They’re all creative processes.

Stone balls in the Terraba Plain, the Boruca region, Costa Rica. Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of American Ethnology, 1948. (Courtesy Doris Stone) *
A petrosphereis a round stone artifact shaped by human hands. Since no practical purpose has ever been assigned to them, they should properly be considered art.
Among known examples are the stone spheres of Costa Rica, painted pebbles from Scotland, plain sandstone balls from Traprain Law in Scotland, and the Carved Stone Balls of Scotland.

There’s definitely a Scottish bias in the distribution. Clearly, our Caledonian ancestors had a thing for stone balls.

Roman dodecahedron.*
Petrospheres shouldn’t be confused with Roman dodecahedra. These have no known purpose or meaning either. They are small, hollow bronze devices with twelve flat faces and knobs at the corners.  They are beautiful artifacts, but compared to carving a stone sphere from igneous rock, casting a brass shape was easy.
There are roughly 300 known stone spheres in Costa Rica. They range from pebble-size up to two meters in diameter. They were carved from granodiorite, which is a common, coarse-grained, hard, igneous rock. Since most of them have been removed from their original locations, scientists are guessing about their age. (It’s impossible to radiocarbon-date a rock.) But they’re generally thought to be “pre-Columbian,” which means they were there when Europeans arrived.
Pre-Columbian stone balls at Palmar Sur, Costa Rica.*
There’s no easy way to measure the rotundity of a large object, especially when it’s partly sunk into the ground. Photographs tell us that the Costa Rican stones are very spherical. The mystery to me isn’t why, but how. There was metallurgy in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, but it would have been useless for carving rocks. All they had for tools were other, harder rocks. Even with that limited technology, they carved shapes that rival those we can make today. And, of course, they are pure abstractions.
Six-knob Scottish stone ball, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow.*
The Scottish Carved Stone Balls are less abstract. They are usually knobby and sized to be comfortably carried in the hand. Many of them have six concentric circles incised on them. They are mostly made of igneous greenstone, but there are sandstone versions as well. There are almost 400 known examples. Their distribution suggests that they originated in Aberdeenshire, in the northeast corner of Scotland.
They are much older than the Costa Rican spheres, being generally ascribed to Neolithicor Bronze Age people. Their decorative, incised surfaces hint at meaning and purpose, but these hints vanish under hard scrutiny. Were they fishing weights? Ball bearings to move stones for Neolithic stone circles? The Scots are, after all, famous engineers. Weapons? Or, that last refuge of an unimaginative archaeologist, religious symbols? There isn’t enough context for us to know.
Six-knob Scottish stone ball, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow.*
But what there is in both the Costa Rican and Scottish examples is a kind of mathematical perfection. We make modern stone spheres with machines; they did them with eye and hand, and they’ve lasted for thousands of years. They are a reminder that math, engineering and art are very closely intertwined.
Posted on

Learn to paint in beautiful Acadia

Christmas
Now is the time to buy an artist you love—possibly even yourself—a special gift for Christmas. Spend a week painting with Carol L. Douglas in one of the most beautiful venues in America—inspirational, mystical Schoodic in Maine’s Acadia National Park. And if you reserve before January 1, you can save $100!
Far from the hustle and bustle of Bar Harbor, Schoodic has dramatic rock formations, pounding surf, and stunning mountain views that draw visitors from around the world.

Instruction10
At 440 feet above sea level, Schoodic Head offers a panoramic view of crashing surf, windblown pines and enormous granite outcroppings laced with black basalt. Across Frenchman’s Bay, Cadillac Mountain towers over the headlands of Mt. Desert Island.
You might look up from your easel to see dolphins, humpback whales or seals cavorting in the waves. Herring gulls will visit while eiders and cormorants splash about.
A day trip to the harbor at Corea, ME is included. Far off the beaten path, Corea, ME is a village of small frame houses, fishing piers and lobster traps. Its working fleet bustles in and out of the harbor.
Your instructor, nationally known painter and teacher Carol L. Douglas, has taught in Maine, New York, New Mexico and elsewhere, and regularly returns to Acadia.
Boo
Concentrate on painting 
Meals and accommodations at the beautiful Schoodic Institute are included in your fee. This former navy base is located right at Schoodic Head. It gives workshop students unrivalled access to the park.

All skill levels and media are welcome
Carol Douglas has more than fifteen years’ experience teaching students of all levels in watercolor, oils, acrylics and pastels. Her Acadia workshops are very popular. “This was the best painting instruction I have ever had. Carol’s advice in color mixing was particularly eye-opening. Her explanations are clear and easy to understand. She is very approachable and supportive. I would take this course again in a heartbeat.” (Carol T.)
Lynne hard at work
Easily accessible
It’s easy to get to painting locations on the Schoodic Peninsula. A ring road with frequent pull-offs means you never walk more than a few hundred feet to your painting destination. And Schoodic itself is only 90 minutes from Bangor International Airport.
To register
The one-week workshop is just $1600, including five days’ accommodation in a private room with shared bath, meals, snacks, and instruction. Accommodations for non-painting partners and guests are also available. Your deposit of $300 holds your space, and if you reserve before January 1, you can save $100 off the price.
At Owl's Head
You can download a registration form here or a brochure here. Complete registration forms should be returned by mail to Carol L. Douglas, PO Box 414, Rockport, ME 04856-0414 with your $300 deposit. Or email the form here and make a credit card payment by phone to 585-201-1558.
Refunds are available up to 60 days prior to start, less a $50 administration fee. Final payment is due 60 days prior to the start of the workshop.
Posted on

It’s a fake, darn it!

“Women working in wheat field, Auvers-sur-oise,” 1890, Vincent van Gogh

“Women working in wheat field, Auvers-sur-oise,” 1890, Vincent van Gogh.
I often say I’m not a big believer in an art genius, any more than I’m a believer in a math genius or a language genius. Almost everyone can learn to draw, just as almost everyone can learn to do sums, write or sing. To make this point, I frequently point people to Van Gogh’s drawing. By dint of hard work, his drawing went from pedestrian to splendid in just a few short years.
Vincent van Gogh: the Lost Arles Sketchbook was published simultaneously this week in France, the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands. Its author, Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, is a respected Van Gogh scholar from the University of Toronto. “When I opened it up, the first thing I said was, ‘No, unbelievable!’ The first drawing that I took out and held in my hands, it was a moment of total mystical experience: ‘Oh my goodness, this is impossible!’” said Welsh-Ovcharov.
The book is based on a folio purported to contain 65 recently-discovered Van Gogh drawings from his mature period. Van Gogh’s drawings are very instructive. He used a pencil or pen with the same flourish as a brush, creating works with energetic and detailed mark-making using an enormous range of technique. Even at the nosebleed list price of $85, the book was making my credit card hand start to itch.
“Small house on road with pollarded willows,” 1881, Vincent van Gogh.

“Small house on road with pollarded willows,” 1881, Vincent van Gogh.
But wait, there’s more! On Tuesday the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam—the accepted top dogs on the subject—released a statement saying that the drawings are fakes. Among other things, they say that the drawings do not show the rapid development in skill that was the hallmark of this period in his work.
I wouldn’t need anything more to convince me, because that’s the defining characteristic of his drawing career. However, the Museum also notes that the drawings include topographical errors. Van Gogh was a meticulous recorder of reality. It is inconceivable that any painter would forget the details of a place in which he lived and worked. Drawing has a way of deeply imprinting them on your being.
“Vincent's boarding house In Hackford Road, Brixton, London,” 1873, Vincent van Gogh

“Vincent’s boarding house In Hackford Road, Brixton, London,” 1873, Vincent van Gogh.
I feel like a kid who just got socks for Christmas instead of the toy I really wanted. This doesn’t, however, negate what Van Gogh’s drawings say to me as an artist and teacher: to paint, you need to be able to draw, and you need to do it as regularly and naturally as you brush your teeth.
Posted on

That Ugly Renaissance Baby thing

“The Madonna on a Crescent Moon,” artist unknown.

“The Madonna on a Crescent Moon,” artist unknown.
I spent the weekend with my grandchildren, who are both perfectly lovely but of distinct and different temperaments. I once painted my grandson. Time got away from me before I could ever paint his sister.
Whenever I spend a lot of time with them, I come back to a conundrum of pop art history: why are babies so misshapen in Byzantine and Renaissance art?

There are several academic explanations for this. The first is that naturalism wasn’t the primary goal of these paintings. Thus the Christ child was never shown crying or having his terribly stinky diaper changed. We like to assume that’s because he was the object of veneration, but we moderns wouldn’t paint babies in those situations either.
Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, Jan van Eyck, c. 1435

“Madonna of Chancellor Rolin,” Jan van Eyck, c. 1435. The infant Jesus is the world’s great high priest in this painting, as indicated by his pose and the landscape.
But we do impute childlike qualities to children, whereas the pre-modern mind was more inclined to see them as little adults-in-training. In Renaissance and Byzantine art, the infant Christ was a representation of his Incarnation—baby, but also always God. Thus he and his mother must foreshadow his agonizing fate, or depict some other characteristic of God Incarnate.
Personally, I think the answer is mainly a practical one. First, the paintings weren’t intended to be viewed up close; they were meant to be seen at a distance, above an altar, in uneven lighting. That meant heavy modeling was important, and that isn’t compatible with the beautiful delicacy of babies.
"The Ognissanti Madonna," Giotto, c. 1310

“Madonna Enthroned,” Giotto, c. 1310.
Real babies make terrible models. As they approach toddlerhood they tolerate sitting only for limited time. They squirm, they wriggle, and they will do anything to get down and play. They are not miniature adults. Their proportions are different and difficult to capture. Their heads are enormous, their eyes widely spaced, and their noses flattened. They have loose folds of fat dangling here and there.  Try getting that down on paper while your model is screaming to get loose. I suppose the artists could have drugged the little nippers, but I doubt many mothers would go along with that.
"Maria Hilf," Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1530

“Maria Hilf,” Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1530
Ever take a baby to a studio for a photo shoot? If so, you know you can’t always get a baby to smile for the camera, and if you ask a toddler to smile, you’re likely to get something very artificial. Imagine, then, trying to project a look of complex calm and suffering onto a baby face, especially when you only have minutes to work before the baby falls asleep, soils himself, or is hungry and bored. Changing the expression on a model’s face is one of the most difficult things one can do, even with all the time in the world.
My grandson is not the only baby portrait I’ve painted, but I’ve never painted a young child from life. No modern would ever try it without reference photos, me included. Kudos to those early painters who did.