Millet Gleaners — copy, pen on Moleskine, 3.5 x 5.5 inches (9 x 14 cm), 05/19/11 Millet Sower — copy, pen on Moleskine, 3.5 x 5.5 inches (9 x 14 cm), 05/19/11 Millet Knitter — copy, pen on Moleskine, 3.5 x 5.5 inches (9 x 14 cm), 05/19/11 … [Read more...]
Gouache Copies
Periodically I paint small gouache copies of great artists's work. The copies are made using a limited palette — red, yellow, blue, and white — to create approximations from print reproductions of the originals. Aside from learning about subject and relationship, design and facture, the act of copying reveals my dread or thrill as each aspect of depiction is encountered, when care is sustained or … [Read more...]
Titian’s Supper at Emmaus
Boston's Museum of Fine Art is showing an exquisite collection of Titians, along with the work of two other fine Venetian painters, on view through August 16, 2009 — Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice. Included is Titian's Supper at Emmaus from the Louvre. A confrontation plays out between a dog and cat beneath the table cloth. The dog is familiar. It is the same type of … [Read more...]
Manet’s Modernity
Manet’s The Railway, 1873, gouache copy, 5.5 x 7.25 in (13.97 x 18.42cm), 2/26/2009 Reynold’s Nelly O'Brien, 1763, gouache copy, 5.5 x 7.25 in (13.97 x 18.42cm), 3/2/2009 Manet is often referred to as the first modern painter of European art, one of many it turns out, due to both his application of artificially flattened thick, abbreviated paint and for his use of contemporary subject … [Read more...]
Master Still-life Copies
Last week I saw the Giorgio Morandi show in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (closing Dec 14, 2008). Of the many branches in the family tree that can be traced between painters, Morandi leads, among others, directly to Paul Cezanne. In a New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell (Late Bloomers, Oct 20, 2008), he quotes a letter to Cezanne's from his friend Zola to the then young, undeveloped … [Read more...]
Goya and Bonnard
There is an absurdity to making small gouache copies of extremely large, well known oil paintings. I enjoy it. It feels like the difference between gazing through a window at delicious cakes compared to going inside to taste one. It's not the same as painting in a gallery before the original, or groping through the uncertain dark alleys of one's own work. It involves a deeper involvement than just … [Read more...]
Anne Vallayer-Coster
Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744–1818) was an outstanding French painter, whose name and similar work is less well known than Chardin, her senior by 45 years. Her extraordinary talent was recognized when she was still a teenager. She was elected by unanimous vote to the Royal Academy at age 26, a remarkable achievement occurring at a time when its membership of women was strictly limited. She enjoyed … [Read more...]
La Cena
The recent show in Boston of exquisite work by Spanish artist Antonio Lopez Garcia included a painting called "La Cena" ("The Dinner"), 1971-80. The subject of the dinner table has a long history in painting going back to Pompeii and probably Greece. Seeing Lopez Garcia’s painting of the family meal made me want to re-examine three of my favorite paintings of this subject: one by Monet and two by … [Read more...]