This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.
Alphonse Mucha's ideas about beauty come across as strongly in his oil paintings as it does in his better known Art Nouveau posters.
In his lectures on art, he said: "The expression of beauty is by emotion. The person who can communicate his emotions to the souls of others is the artist."
"To communicate with the souls of man the artist must address himself to the senses of the body."
"This harmony between the suggestion of the artist and the senses is memory, the first condition of beauty."
The goal of the artist, Mucha said, is to communicate "the emotions of his own soul to the souls of others, even at the price of laborious work, and his greatest joy will be that of seeing other souls also vibrating with the happiness of his emotions."
Otto Greiner (German, 1869 - 1916) sketched from life, and those observations informed his imaginative work.
Here he sketches his self portrait in a mirror. His legs are crossed to raise his drawing board. He seems to have a drawing tool in each hand.
This imaginative etching shows Christ (at center) being led to Golgotha. A convict is bound to the cross at left, and there's a grotesque figure of death with a scythe at right.
Here's Greiner's portrayal of his drawing teacher.
This one is a study for the Triumph of Venus (1909), and seems to be painted from life with the angel wings added.
Speaking of winged figure, here's a tall vertical image of Ganymede:
Ganymede in Greek mythology was "the most beautiful of mortals, abducted by the gods, to serve as Zeus's cup-bearer in Olympus."
Jules Bastien-Lepage, Portrait of my Grandfather, 1874
In his autobiography, Jules Breton said: "[Jules] Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884) will leave a lasting fame. This young artist, cut down in the flush of his promise, was a true investigator. How conscientious was his work! He made his debut with a masterpiece, the 'Portrait of my Grandfather.' Touching familiarity, simple and accurate drawing, admirable truth of tone, strong and fine harmony, just relation of the figure to the background—all are there."
Who are the inspiring progenitors of this movement? Beyond the abstract painters such as Franz Kline and Richard Diebenkorn, several realist painters can be identified as stylistic influencers: Andrew Wyeth, Richard Schmid, Antonio López García, and Gerhard Richter.
Gerhard Richter
Richter, a painter with remarkable range and versatility, became known for taking a realistically painted face and smearing the oil paint with a squeegee.
Johanna Bath still II, Oil on Canvas, 19.7 W x 23.6 H x 0.8 D in
Gerhard Richter's influence can be felt in artists who use the rubbed out look, such as Johanna Bath.
Mia Bergeron
Seeing a painting created this way leaves no doubt that it's a painting, and it may remind the viewer of the struggle of creation or the fickleness of illusion.
Adam by Greg Manchess
When painters efface the surface of a portrait, they typically leave the eyes in a carefully finished state, both because of the psychological importance of the eyes, and to show that they're capable of painting realistically.
But not always. Sometimes artists deliberately disrupt the mouth, eyes, or head.
Artist Zack Zdrale says in the book Disrupted Realism, "I've taken passages of traditionally rendered figures and smashed them, breaking the illusion of form in space. I want to show the paint doing things that only paint can do."
Michelle Kohler
Michelle Kohler says: "Most of my years spent studying were focused on portraiture, as expressed through realism. As an artistic discipline, it has been a constant throughout my life. But it was only after a fortuitous departure into abstract painting that I was able to playfully and courageously combine two disciplines. Deconstructed Realism is my expression of artistic independence and creativity as it pertains to the depth and complexity of human portraiture."
(Link to YouTube) Mia Bergeron says that her approach to painting grew out of a frustration with the academic approaches to realism.
Vasily Perov (Russian, 1833 or 4-1882) painted Arrival of Schoolgirl to Blind Father in 1870. The painting is unfinished, and the unfinished parts give us insight into his picture-making process.
Vasily Perov, Arrival of Schoolgirl to Blind Father, 1870
Two figures in a doorway appear in the pencil line stage at the far left. Presumably the woman in the dress facing away from us is the girl's mother.
Is the man the husband, and is he holding a baby? If so, that would add a lot to the story of the schoolgirl returning to her father and it might explain her expression.
The young woman's hand is also in an unfinished state. It appears that Perov changed his mind about the hand after the first attempt to paint it, and he then removed the paint down to the canvas and redrew it, ready for repainting.
Given that the pencil lines are stated simply without sketchiness, it's probable that he had a full size drawing on thin paper and that he transferred the drawing to the canvas with some sort of graphite coated paper.
Nikolai Astrup (Norwegian, 1880-1928), Rainy Atmosphere beneath the Trees at Jølster Parsonage,
before 1908. Oil on canvas, 35 1/16 x 43 5/16 in. (89 x 110 cm).
Savings Bank Foundation DNB / KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, Bergen
The Clark's website says: "Astrup’s oeuvre is notable for its intense, colorful palette, and the magical realism of his remarkable landscapes. Paintings and woodcuts from all periods of his career are presented in the exhibition, including multiple impressions of print compositions that reveal how Astrup modified the mood and meaning of these works through changes in color and the addition or deletion of motifs, often using multiple blocks to create his complex prints.
"Astrup’s work responded to, and helped shape, Norway’s emerging national identity. He created a distinctive visual language that expands on the intentions and achievements of composer Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) and playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) in Norwegian music and literature, respectively."
Anders Zorn, The Little Brewery, 1890 oil on canvas, 47.5 x 78cm
The museum website says: "In this interior from a brewery, women workers are bottling beer and corking the filled bottles. In the background, a supervisor is watching over their work. Women factory workers were not a new phenomenon in the era of Swedish industrialization. Their work could be both heavy and hazardous, but Zorn’s painting can hardly be interpreted as social criticism. On the contrary, he seems to have been mostly interested in capturing the light, the humidity and their concentration as they worked."
Footnote: I think the museum curator is right. He's not doing social criticism but rather has a deep affection for the people and the process of the brewery. Zorn's dad owned a brewery, and he grew up around the types.
I'm guessing this painting was his response to the work scenes that Sargent painted in Venice, kind of a way of saying "I can pull this off, too."
José Moreno Carbonero (1858-1942) was a Spanish painter who brought moments of history to life with grandeur and pageantry.
Prince Don Carlos of Viana, 1881 by José Moreno Carbonero
He studied in Paris with Gerome, and spent time in Rome.
The Entry of Roger de Flor in Constantinople by José Moreno Carbonero
Height: 350 cm (11.4 ft); Width: 550 cm (18 ft)
One of his large works shows "the Italian mercenary Roger de Flor and his troops of Almogavar warriors entering the city to relieve the Byzantine emperor from the Turkish."
The Conversion of the Duke of Gandía by José Moreno Carbonero
This painting illustrates a spiritual—and gruesome—moment as San Francisco de Borja, Marquis of Lombay converted to Christianity "after contemplating the rotten corpse of Empress Isabel of Portugal, wife of Emperor Carlos I of Spain. The empress died in Toledo on May 1, 1539, her body being transferred to Granada, the city where the scene represented in the painting took place. When the duke contemplated that the corpse of the empress, whose beauty had captivated the entire Castilian Court, had decomposed due to the heat of the trip, the nobleman decided to 'Never again, never again serve a lord that I may die,'" He then entered the Order of the Jesuits.
In “La aventura de los mercaderes” (Adventure of the Merchants), Carbonero illustrates a scene from Don Quixote where the knight from La Mancha confronts a group of silk merchants in his usual psychotic fashion and ends up getting beaten by one of their servants with his own broken lance.
Adventure of the Merchantsby José Moreno Carbonero
Here's a detail showing the care he lavished on each figure.
Tatiana (or Tetyana) Yablonskaya (Ukranian, 1917-2005) produced more than 300 drawings and studies for her composition showing the grain being harvested for the making of bread.
She traveled to a working farm to document the harvest. Her painting expresses the optimism of the early Soviet years. She said: "The vast scope of work performed by the united, happy workers at the collective farm astonished me. Being there made me clearly realize what a big debt our art still owed to our great people, how little it had done to reveal all the greatness and dignity of the Soviet people."
In planning the composition she said that she "did not paint individual people or details of the landscape, I tried to capture whole groups, along with trucks, sacks, and structures, naturally forming a unique composition that one can only find in real life."
Yablonskaya "wanted to show the communal energy of work, the joy of collective labour... Happy, always accompanied by song, shared work. Its vigorous pace and joyous cadence left a strong impression on me, and I tried to express it in all my studies, and especially in my sketches and drawings."
But according to a museum publication, conservatives criticized the work because they felt that her expressive paint handling undermined the the realism of the scene, and that it "revealed the harmful influence of Impressionism, and where 'realism was sacrificed to the so-called painterliness.'
Tatiana Yablonskaya, detail of Bread (or Grain), 1949
Fortunately, critics later exonerated her, and the painting is one of the most cherished images in the Russian collection.
Yablonskaya said, "In order to create truly valuable works of art, the artist has to live with the people and learn about every aspect of their lives. To observe life in its entirety. Only then one may be able to sum it up. This is why I am convinced that I was absolutely right to make so many sketches during my stay at the collective farm." ----
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