Exercise Working from a photograph

The lane in snow and mist

 

I was attracted by all the subtle beautiful colours in the image, taken in snow and mist, down the lane to the gate.

Having done a very quick sketch in my sketchbook to study these colours, I decided to look at the colours used by Monet in his painting “The Magpie” .

sourced on line Dec 2014 from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magpie_%28Monet%29#mediaviewer/File:Claude_Monet_-_The_Magpie_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Unfortunately once again the French sunshine gives bright and contrasting tones and hence cannot directly be related to the snow in Lancashire..but I decided to go ahead and look at the colours anyhow!

Looking at the colours in the Monet:

I wanted my image to be more misty and less contrasting so needed to keep this in mind perhaps by adding more white to the colours. It is however not easy to study the colours from a computerised image and my printer lost most of the blues in attemtping to print out the picture.

i did however notice that the image of the tree in the far background gave a hint of lilac and pink to the sky and that the trees to the sides gave the mist an orange glow. The path snow had mixes of lilac and blue.

Underlying colours for the picture:

“The lane in snow”

The final image has more diffuse and deeper colours than the original photo and as a point of interest I have moved the gate and added a figure. and narrowed the path to the gate.

I don’t like the final colour …The initial photo is attractive due to its lightness and lilac hint…my final image is too colourful.

 

 

 

Research : The Thames at Westminster

Turner

The burning of the house of Lords and commons 1834

Painted with Westminster Bridge in the foreground, Turner uses the bright yellows and oranges of the flames which reflect in the water and contrast against the dark foreground of the opposite bank of the river.Through these flowing colours reaching upwards in sparks of colour against the purple blues of the sky is the ghostly image of the golden towers of Parliament, and in the foreground an imposing tall cream bridge traverses the image reaching upwards and taking our eye above and beyond parliament to the red heart of the fire. In the shade where river changes from reflected oranges to deep brown greens, is a sketchy boat and in the foreground are the impressions of the crowd who stand and watch.

Albert Goodwin in the style of Turner

Westminster Sunset
Goodwin, Albert  London  1900  Sourced on line Dec 2014 from http://www.eastriding.gov.uk/culture/museums/collections/detail.php?t=objects&type=related&kv=903

Although this image was influenced by Turner’s paintings and captures the glowing sunset, the paint is applied in a much more controlled fashion. The image has only distant buildings and so loses the drama produced by the perspective of the foreground bridge in Turner’s image. It is a record of an evening rather than a representation of an exciting event. Goodwin was born in Kent in 1845, close to  the end of Turner’s life.

 

Monet

Claude Monet – The Thames Below Westminster 1871

sourced on line Nov 2014 from: http://www.thamesdiscovery.org/riverpedia/art-and-the-thames

Monet spent sometime in England and here paints Westminster bridge from a distance. He uses the embankment and jetty to give perspective and interest in the front of the image, the people drawing the eye which is then scooped into the imposing ghostly image of the houses of Parliament. The bridge stretches across the rest of the canvas just below the middle and our view of it is blocked by two tugs which provide further interest. The whole background buildings are painted in a warm pale blue and the sky in light oranges lilacs and blues in very Monet fashion, producing a feeling of mist. The water of the Thames has little activity a pale grey blue-green is broken here and there by grey waves, curves of paint, except close to the right side and embankment where there is more detail and colour, the browns and olives of the jetty reflecting in the water and producing perspective lines which reinforce those of the jetty itself as it points at the figure on the edge of the jetty and behind him to the smaller towers of parliament.

Whistler

Nocturne, 1875-1880

sourced on line from: http://impressionistsgallery.co.uk/artists/Artists/wxyz/Whistler/pictures/Nocturne,%201875-1880.jpg

Who knows if this is the Thames? but with its atmosphere of fog it has to be somewhere in the London of the late 1870s.

The two colours, a pale grey green-blue and a darker green grey blue blend softly into each other as the fog obliterates form and all that exists is a dark band of irregular shape running across the upper third of the canvas, with textured edges indicating its lower half is a reflection. From this band projects the impression of a tower and that of a dim yellow light or clock face –the colour being a very muted yellow which because of its difference to the blues greens and greys is prominent. There are several other patches of lighter areas, two so placed so as to remind us that this is water and another  gives the impression of a human being or something standing upright in the picture.

 

Oscar Kokoshka

reference :  http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/kokoschka-view-of-the-thames-t01252

This is a very  busy and active view of the Thames and its bridges. Swirling paint produces activity, the direction of the strokes and the perspective of embankment and river take sus to the far bridge on the middle right upper third of the canvas. Here a crowd of forms, patches of coloured paints and darker lines give the impression of a crowd of buildings. The sky and river are overlayings of quite watery pinks blues lilacs and golden yellows (particularly in the foreground). A bridge runs across the lower third of the canvas from mid left to disappear at mid right. It is painted in heavy pinks and whites and has the impressions of cars on its surface produced by a dash of a brush of orange. The boats in the foreground of the river are painted amidst swirls of bright light colours. I can’t begin to describe the embankment on the left which is represented by multiple light blocks of colour coming together in places to give a perspective and divided by darker lines to produce images of windows, columns, doors and steeples. A flag pole rises high above the whole image helping to keep the perspective as viewed from a high point. The right embankment uses a red-brown chimney, reflecting the colour of the vehicles on the bridge,and a splash of yellow in the sky to hold the attention. The whole image is mainly lilacs pinks golds and whites but the edge of the left embankment is adorned by blue-green trees with hints of yellow in the foreground.

 

Julian Trevelyan 1975

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/trevelyan-tower-bridge-p06599

An abstract collection of angular forms in greys, black brown and a lilac grey put together to represent the two sides of the river on which stand two representational figures amongst the lines of cranes and boat hooks. Boats represented by white surrounds with a black central hollow sit in the very narrowed waterway. The river is lilac grey but a white tree like form runs down its middle representative of the water and its reflections. The river leads to a block of brown which produces a sky line in which St Paul’s is obviously visible and imposed on that brown is the black image of tower bridge. Beyond the brown band of buildings is a white band of low sky and then a grey purple and white blend of forms overdrawn in fine black lines representing the sky. The image is very contemporary, simple and pleasing but without the drama of the other paintings.

 

Victor Passmore

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/pasmore-the-hanging-gardens-of-hammersmith-no-1-t12615

Another misty view of the Thames but abstracted and devoid of human life or buildings. A grey horizontally brushed in several shades is broken by the very light hint of a pink grey sun. Just above the middle of the canvas runs a horizon with a hint of a darker brownish colour.On the right of the image the sky blends without break into the river but on the right below the sun there is a colour change as overlaid pale pinks and yellow reflect the light. The shore runs from lower right to the horizon at the left once again demarcated by a subtle colour change and the speckles of a dark purple-brown and an acidy yellow-green which are arranged perhaps to express the trees but also a jetty and patches on the floor in the lower part of the image. Fine lines in a dark brown draw out delicate winter twigs of stunted trees or bushes which overlap the river’s edge. These lines become straight in the foreground where they demarcate what could be paving stones and the sides of the jetty. Patches of white in the lower left once again reflect the sun and give an impression of damp under foot. To increase the interest three birds, hints of their image, rest on the fine branches of the tree in the right lower mid of the canvas. The image is peaceful , cold and eerie.

Michael Andrews  source of the Thames 1995

http://www.jameshymangallery.com/artists/25/1886/michael-andrews/source-of-the-thames

A purely abstract image of part of the edge of the Thames as it mixes with the sand. Colours of sand and mud, in ochres,blue-greens , greys textured by the flow of the paint and possible oil water interactions, blend into the blues and whites of the reflecting water.

Andre Derain  1880-1954 Expressionist image of the Thames

Barges on the Thames 1906   sourced on line Dec 2014 from: http://www.leedsartgallery.co.uk/gallery/listings/l0083.php

An image which is dependent on bright almost primary colours and a composition involving the overlapping of shapes representing the bridges over the river, ships masts and curled sails, cranes, railings and the shapes of boats. The river is a mixture of light turquoise and contrasting lemon yellow, the bridges a bright ultramarine,the boats and sky shades of a russet-brown with overlying lines in black and greys. The image crowds up on you with the dominant boats and their masts in the foreground disappearing off the bottom of the picture and stretching to the top. The hear bridge stretches across the image in a curved and descending manner from right to left, giving the image a “dizzy” arrangement. The paint is applied with irregular textured brush strokes which add to the feeling of vertigo. I like it because of its power and bravado.

 

 

Research point optical effects

Optical effects have been exploited by many artists to create movement and depict the effects of light. The Impressionists, post Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists-in particular the pointillists Signac and Seurat made full use of the new understanding of the nature of human perception.

Find out what you can about these artists’ aims and study their pictures to see how they achieved effects such as optical mixing. Look also at the work of Bridget Riley or the Op artists.

Vision involves the translating of light, with its wide spectrum of wavelengths,  geometric forms and movement. The light stimulates the rods(sees white light) and the cones of the retina(see coloured light) to produce nervous impulses which translate into images in the brain’s occipital cortex. The resulting image fits into the brain’s previous perceptions and results in our response. Perception, learning and as yet unknown actions of the brain are as important as the light rays entering the eye, in producing the colour  that we finally see,

In recent years Land has demonstrated that the plasticity of the eye and brain actually change colours :Land theorized that even if lighting conditions change, the retina and cortex will cooperate to ensure that the image of a specific object will not become unrecognizable, and will maintain a similar color . 

It was Newton’s study of white light which first described it’s structure as consisting of the spectral wavelength of colours , Young (1803 )who postulated how the eye sees the variety of colours. and Hemholtz who described how wavelengths of light stimulate the retina.(circa 1850s).

There are three main colours in light which cannot be made from any of the others: these are red, green and violet. These three colours are primary because the human retina has only three kinds of colour receptive cells : S (respond to the short wave length light of blue, M which responds to the medium wave lengths of green to yellow and L (long wave )responding to red light. The light waves release chemicals which stimulate nerve impulses to the brain where once again there are areas specific to the three primary colours. The secondary and tertiary colours arise from mixed sensations from the three primary receptors. (Some animals have four receptors, with one responding to the ultraviolet very short wave lengths).

Reflected light has three different primary colours because of the pigments involved in making the reflecting surface (e.g. paint) ( these are yellow, blue and red).

In the mid nineteenth century(1839), Chevreul, a chemist and director of a textile dyeing firm investigated the production of dyes from vegetable matter and the interaction of colours in fabrics and realised that different colours laid closely together had an effect on the overall collective image. His papers and lectures on the law of simultaneous contrasts, in which a colour induces its opposite in the colour wheel on its surroundings and will leave its opposite as a ghost image when viewed in bright light and then removed, lead others to study the effects of colour as a subject in itself.  Until this, colour was part of the overall picture, now, it took centre stage and has continued to do so in the medium of photography.

In the 19th century ,with the rise of scientific investigations several artists were coming to the fore and were stimulated by the importance of light and colour:

Ruskni summed up some of the theories of the era by describing how colours are but flat patches, a medley which is built by experience into form and echoed Chevreul’s theories by emphasising how colours affect each other , how white and black affect colours.

Impressionists:   Manet b 1832 (1863 “Dejeumer sur l’herbe”), Monet  b1840 (1872 “An Impression sunrise”), Pissaro b 1830, Degas b1834 band Renoir b1841  . Sisley b 1839 and Berthe Morisot b 1841 al; included in the 1874 Impressionist exhibition

Hence, the Impressionists were born into a world of developing technology, insight into the structure and interaction of light and the appearance of the photograph and the development of new colours in oils in easily transported tubes. Fifty years earlier the artist Turner b1775 had used paint to express drama through light effects. The Impressionists painted quickly, leaving brush strokes visible often outdoors to capture the changing light and colours. They laid pure colours together on the canvas rather than mixing them on the palette so letting the viewer’s eye and brain mix them together and give a fresher brighter impression in which patches of broken harmonising or discordant colours played in a symphony.

Claude Monet Garden Path at Giverny  sourced on line (August 2014 from claude-monet.com

 

Post Impressionists: (1880s) Gauguin b 1848 , Cezanne b 1839 , Van Gogh b 1853

Van Gogh left many letters to his brother Theo in which he discusses the use of colour as an effect and a reflection of his inner  moods.He and Gauguin based their use of colours on the mode of painting in Japan , pure, flat  and either used as complementaries to produce dissonance or as harmonies to produce calm. Van Gogh speaks of the colours in his Bedroom at Arles paintings as including violets,yellow,orange, scarlet.lilac -most of them secondary colours which he felt induced a state of rest.

Neo-Impressionists: Seurat b 1859 and Signac  b 1863 pointillism circa 1884  followed the teachings  of colour theory researched by Chevreul in 1839.  Starting as Impressionists these artists looked further at the scientific basis of colour theory and the law of simultaneous contrasts, as proposed by Chevreul and their use of unmixed dots of colour on the canvas were a reflection of this theory. That colours affect each other and change each others appearance , that colour boundaries may have halos of complementary hues were used by the  artist.

The Pine Tree at St Tropez by Paul Signac

This is painted in small brush strokes of juxtaposed colours ranging from a lime green through blues and violets to oranges and pinks. The tree’s orange, pink and pale yellow  trunk is surrounded by the blue and purple hedge, complementaries being used to accentuate and bring forward the trunk against the hedge.

I find the colours too acid and I am not convinced that the small dots of colour produce a mix –they remain dots so placed as a to represent a tree!

George Seurat Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the grand jette

Seurats dots of colour are much smaller and closer together and so give a greater impression of unity, but I am still aware that the image is made of dots so much so that its appearance is grainy. The colours are much more to my liking, less acid. He has contrasted a foreground of lilacs, dark green-blue and blacks against a bright background of lemon green yellow and orange browns.

 

The brightness of a colour depends on ambient light and how many of the functional rods and cones are picking up the colour and so “firing” but it is affected by surrounding colours and their intensity. There is a halo effect of the complementary colour around the border of a colour. It is also known that colours in the middle of the spectrum (yellow/green s) look brighter than those at either end (reds or blues)The brain is thought to concentrate on borders in an image where light meets darks or one colour another,(ref: book : R.L. Gregory The eye and the brain. (2005) Oxford University Press ISBN-10:0-19-852423-4 ) and change the colour to a complementary beyond a boundary (a halo effect) in order to make that boundary more visible. The brain is less interested in large flat areas but more so in these boundaries that it works on to accentuate so form can be more easily read.

It is also known that an area appears brighter if surrounded by dark and lighter if set against dark.

Ruskin described the changes in colours when put in relation to black or white, how the very same colour can appear much lighter if accompanied by white than by black, he voiced the theory of the innocent eye (1856)….”every hue …is altered by every touch that you add in other places…so that what was warm a minute ago becomes cold when you have put a hotter colour in another place, and what was harmony when you left it,becomes discordant as you set other colours beside it” (ref book E.H. Gombrich Art and Illusion A study in the psychology of pictorial representation.(1995) London Phaidon press ISBN 0 7148 1756 2 )

Van Gogh was very fond of yellow and of the bright yellows and oranges of the South of France, (where it is said the light is the best in Europe.)

 Sunflowers by Vincent Can Gogh

This painting is almost entirely yellow the bright flowers appearing dark against the even lighter yellow background.

 

and Gauguin contrasts dark against light and yellow for visual impact:

Still Life with Japenese print  Gauguin

Motion

It is also known that certain patterns can instill the impression of motion and that colour and form and motion are linked in the brain. In 1935 Wallach demonstrated the link between colours and the perception of motion.   Hoffman, in the last twenty years has investigated what he called dynamic colour spreading , explaining which areas of the visual system were responsible for the conscious perception of colour and which for motion and how the two (as demonstrated by Benham in 1895 ) are linked. He has employed diverse experiments which investigate how the eye and brain can be deceived when colour, tone and motion meet but the mechanisms by which our eyes and brain deceive our consciousness are as yet unknown. It is however clear that the brain adds to information in order to make its sensory stimuli fit with the world that it knows. If it looks to it as though something should be moving (as that is how movement would look), we will see it move, even if our intelligence tells us that it is just a collection of static shapes.

In the mid 1960s Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely exhibited visually stimulating geometric pictures inducing a visual  sense of movement at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was named optical (or Op art)

Bridget Riley  used geometric black and white or colour images to produce a sense of movement with the intention of using that sense in a psychological manner.

She started with the production of movement with black and white imagery:

Her 1963 work “The Fall” is a vertical image of waving black and white lines which appear to vary in thickness and to approximate to each other across sections of the painting, the waves become shorter from  top to bottom and they produce an overall impression of movement, of a swaying sensation that almost leads to dizziness and as Riley states in her explanation of the image “in a visual energy …that reaches a maximum tension”

Bridget Riley The Fall 1963

Other black and white works of a similar era are:

Hesitate    

Here the simple shape is the black spot which by changing its shape to a small ellipse, appears to also change perspective giving a feeling that a piece of spotted paper has a fold in it –this is accentuated by the presence of what appears to be light falling across the paper as the spots change to a lighter shade, again she is using this imagery to invoke emotional feelings of tension and relief as the round spots crowd closer and flatten into ellipses (at the fold) and then pass over the fold to reform into rounded shapes.

Blaze

This is a circle divided by a line which runs like the shell of a snail from the circle’s periphery to its centre. From the edges of this line are black projections which run out in an angled fashion to produce a feeling of spinning and being dragged like the water swirling down the tap, into the centre of the circle. It is difficult to fix the eye on one place as it is dragged around by the image and force into the hole which is off centre from the middle.

These images are similar to that of the Fraser spiral illusion (1908) in which concentric circles appear to be spirals because of the lines of different shades which sweep into the centre of the image

Coloured pictures  “

“She has ” taken imagery primarily orientated to the colour spectrum to a spatial plastic approach to colour” Ref: book: U. Grosenick    Women artists in the 20th and 21st century   (2003) Taschen )”

Nataraja  1993 

Vertical lines divided by unequally spaced diagonal lines divide the canvas into blocks of multiple colours with what appears to be a preponderance of blue and violet.

“The complexity of the colour relationships is formidable. Many of the colours exist in as many as twenty different shades. The position of each of these elements has been carefully judged in terms of correspondence, contrast and proportion………“Riley’s use of the term Nataraja (Indian God of dance)…… refers to the emphasis on rhythm and counter-rhythm, which are central elements in the painting.

 

 Victor Vasarely

Vega 1957 by Victor Vasasrely

A board of black and white checks with distorted areas that look as though a convex or concave lens has been overlaid which seems to move and pulsate.

Vega Nor 1969 by Victor Vasarely

Here a board of muted coloured lines appears distorted by a round object pushing from behind and increasing the intensity of the colours such that yellow becomes dominant in the foreground. As it says on the op art web site ” it gives the feeling of something trying to recede or push out from the surface. The image consists of line either curved or straight but the eye and brain give it the meaning of a round object pushing through  a grid.

 

 

 

 

Research: Dutch still life ,iconography and the development of still life through the centuries

Look at the work of some of the 17th century Dutch still Life and Flower painters. Make notes on paintings you admire and find out more about the techniques that were employed at the time.

notes based on information from the website sourced on line August 2014: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/nstl/hd_nstl.htm

Still life was found in paintings before the 17th century ,often depictions of images related to moral values. These meanings ran over in many instances to the paintings of the 17th century but it was during this century and particularly in Holland where the still life took off.

The development of painting in oil on canvas, as opposed to the tempura on walls of 100yrs previously, allowed the artist not only to work in his studio but to use the medium to express sensuality. It had much greater freedom than the tempura which dried instantly and could not be redone. Emotion through tempura was in the faces and iconic objects in the picture,emotion through oil was now in the application of the paint, the manipulation of light and shade and of colour.

The Flemish and Dutch society at the beginning of the seventeenth century became concerned with commerce and possessions in the home, as well as with learning and travel, they were breaking free from Spanish rule and many were becoming very rich.

The Netherlands included not only Holland and the Dutch but also Belgium,Luxembourg ,parts of Germany and Northern France and until the middle of the 17th century was ruled by Spain with which it had a prolonged war (ending in 1648). Antwerp,in the South was the economic centre, but collapsed in 1585 with the war with Spain.  The North around Amsterdam was rich and booming and cosmopolitan.There had been the break with Catholicism which in itself would have freed art from religion, the merchant bourgeoisie were taking power and the Dutch peoples  had set off on voyages across the globe searching for better lives, for scientific understanding and new experiences. rehttp://www.guideholland.com/hist/17th_cent.htmlf:

Art in the Netherlands boomed and paintings were mass-produced for all walks of life    … “” All in generall striving to adorn their houses, especially the outer or street roome, with costly peeces. Butchers and bakers not much inferior in their shoppes, … , yea many tymes blacksmithes, coblers, etc, will have some picture or other by their forge and in their stalle.” ref:http://www.guideholland.com/hist/17th_cent.html

Flowers, objects  reflecting wealth,  tables with luxurious food  were the subject of paintings in the 17th century, but  images of common life were also common. Because of the popularity and affordability the number of paintings produced were prolific.

Many of the still lifes included flowers from around the world as well as herbs. It was the time when the tulip was worth more than gold in areas of the world, particularly the Netherlands “Until 1630 the bulbs were grown and traded only between connoisseurs and scholars but more commercially minded people soon noticed the ever-increasing prices being paid for certain Tulips and thought they’d found the perfect “get rich quick” scheme.” ref:  http://www.tesselaar.net.au/flowerandgarden/thetulip.asp     “Those who could not afford the bulbs settled instead for art, furniture, embroideries and ceramics which featured the flowers. ”

 

 

However, it seems that the 17th century artist was obsessed with contrasting colour and light against a very dark background, even vases of flowers, often embellished by sparkling glass are made to look foreboding by contrasting their delicacy and light colour against black backgrounds-this I find garish and inconsistent.

 

 

William Van Aeist’s Vanitas Flower still life   see web page:http://www.mystudios.com/artgallery/W/Willem–Van–Aelst/Vanitas-Flower-Still-Life.html  

 

consists of an image of carefully reproduced flowers in a golden bowl with crystal trinket placed close on a marble table but it  is set against a featureless black background which produces a feeling of foreboding rather than of opulence.

 A Basket of Flowers
Jan Brueghel the Younger (Flemish, 1601–1678)  Oil on wood; 18 1/2 x 26 7/8 in. (47 x 68.3 cm)
Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876–1967), 1967 (67.187.58)   sourced on line Aug 2014 ref:http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/nstl/hd_nstl.htm

A feeling of beauty overflowing, of so much that the flowers are falling over each other and falling from their basket, A basket perhaps a reflection of rural life in association with the beauty of the countryside. I don’t know if the flowers are native to Holland or are, as some of the texts explain from around the world and so indicating the richness of Dutch travel

 

 

 

DIJCK, Floris Claesz van

Dutch painter (b. 1575, Haarlem, d. 1651, Haarlem)

Laid Table  1622   Oil on wood, 100 x 135 cm    Private collection

sourced on line (August 2014) from:www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/d/dijck/index.html

This painting, is once again full and overflowing, carefully reproduced fruit, pewter cups, sparkling glass and large rounds of cheese and small loafs of bread. Is this a mixture of Dutch produce with that from warmer climes? The cloth on the table is richly decorated in silken thread and once again the background is absent fading into blackness. I do however find the image very staged and overpowering.

 

 

 

Techniques of the Dutch masters of the 17th century:

Gerard de Lairesse, a Dutch artist of the 17th century produced two books on techniques in art in which he praised classical, mythological or religious imagery against everyday realism. He believed art was a means to moral improvement:” he said: (the artist).. must learn grace by mingling with the social and intellectual élite, must allow his subject matter to teach the highest moral principles, and must strive for ideal beauty. He must follow closely upon nature but overlook its imperfections.^{” ref:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_de_Lairesse}  

Art was taught as a period of apprenticeship and so techniques were learnt  from the master painter by practice and copying ,hence little was written down. The training was long and lead eventually to the incorporation into an artist’s guild.

The images were often complex and accurate in detail and perspective and small areas of the painting were worked on at one time. The overall light, basic colour areas and shapes would have been laid down as  underpainting. Because of the slow painstaking method artists worked seated and mixed ony limited colours at once. These colours may not have been compatible and so techniques existed whereby underpainting helped the overall colour. Glazing was common practice, layer upon layer built into the picture to produce light,form and colour. Highlights with white would have been added at the end. The painting  “The Artist’s studio” by Vermeer gives insight into the artist at work. sourced from August 2014 ref: http://www.essentialvermeer.com/technique_overview.html#,U-nOcGOB-oO  and book “W.Januszczak ,M Beal,E. Bowes, A Callen. “Techniques of the Great Masters of Art” (200) Kent Grange Books

image sourced on line from: wwww.vermeer-foundation.org

 

Research at least one painting that has iconographic significance. Which of the objects depicted carry particular meaning and what was that meaning?

The symbolic pictures of the 17th century known as vanitas, contained collections of objects to highlight the transience of human life and the vanity of achievement and riches. During the late renaissance portraits often had skulls painted on the reverse as reminders against vanity.

The symbols used included  “symbols of arts and sciences (books, maps, and musical instruments), wealth and power (purses, jewelry, gold objects), and earthly pleasures (goblets, pipes, and playing cards); symbols of death or transience (skulls, clocks, burning candles, soap bubbles, and flowers); and, sometimes, symbols of resurrection and eternal life (usually ears of corn or sprigs of ivy or laurel). The earliest vanitas pictures were sombre, somewhat monochromatic compositions of great power, containing only a few objects (usually books and a skull) executed with elegance and precision.”  sourced on line August 2014 ref:http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/623056/vanitas

In this image by Jacques de Gheyn II circa 1603 the message is clear: the bubble , the cut flower  and the skull all represent human existence. The coins at the front of the image represent the fate to all including those with wealth. In the upper corners are two figures, one laughing and one weeping and they represent the vanity of human life -there are also similar meanings associated with articles floating in the bubble.

Vanitas Still Life, 1603  Jacques de Gheyn II (Netherlandish, 1565–1629) Oil on wood

 

Still Life with Oysters, a Silver Tazza, and Glassware

Willem Claesz Heda   (Dutch, Haarlem? 1594–1680 Haarlem)

sourced on line (August 2014-permission given for personal use:  http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/438376??rpp=30&pg=1&ft=Willem+Claesz+Heda%2C&pos=1) Metropolitan museum of art New York

This image is visually more peaceful than many of the Dutch still life paintings with their striking colours, pale pinks and bright whites against the black background. The silver or pewter ware sparkles with dapples of white against a muted orchre grey cloth and background. The glass stands quietly with its left over wine and perhaps represents the bubble of human transience seen in the painting above. Another glass has tumbled in the background and a small glass jug stands in the shade quietly watching and waiting. The silverware chalice is richly decorated but it too has fallen over, indicating an end to the merriment. Oysters, which must, then as now, have depicted a good diet for those who could afford are empty and “spent” perhaps being consistent with money which is not needed in the next life. There is a small scroll of paper on the plate perhaps representing learning and a lemon which could represent the bitterness of life’s end. It is rich yet quiet in its colours and composition. It feels as though everyone has retired, but that that retirement is for a little more than night. I find the painting beautiful in its peace.

 

The explore the development of still life through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For example look at how traditional still life subjects were dealt with in some early cubist paintings by Braque and Picasso. Investigate how some contemporary artists are interpreting this genre.

 18th century still life 1700-1800

The eighteenth century saw a decline in the attention given to still life painting. I have come across a woman artist (Anne Vallayer-Coster) who persisted through the grand years of Marie Antoinette, in France ,to paint realistic still lifes consisting of very closely observed and carefully rendered objects ranging from raw meat,flowers, fruit, papers, musical instruments and pottery. She was patronised by Marie Antoinette until her downfall in 1789. I am unsure if her images contain iconic references but they do not have the same feel of fate about them as those of the earlier Dutch paintings.

attributes of music by Anne Vallayer-Coster    sourced on line from ref:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Vallayer-Coster

The eighteenth century was the era of Jane Austen, Walter Scott,Joseph Priestley,Robert Burns, James Hargreaves (and the spinning Jenny), William Blake, Gainsborough,De Goya. The era was one of scientific discovery,loss of rural life and Romanticism.

I found these images by an artist called Jean Simeon Chardin (1699-1779) who lived in France before the revolution.

the silver beaker   basket of peaches walnut and glass of wine

strawberry basket

sourced on line (August 2014) from:commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Still_life_paintings_by Jean_Simeon_Chardin

He painted in the style of the Dutch still life artists but expressed a desire for feeling in his art. This he achieved by the softer use of paint, blurring of edges and the lightening of the backgrounds. His still lifes are much more humble than those of the Dutch and seem to have no deeper iconic meaning.

 

19th century still life 1800-1900

The 19th century saw the onward march of industrialisation and the reaction against the changing environment. It includes the writers, Wordsworth,the Brontes,the Romantic poets,Shelley and Byron,Robert Louis Stevenson, the scientists Charles Darwin, Marie Curie,Edison, Pasteur,  the artists Turner and Constable and the beginning of the Victorian era.

The end of the 19th century saw the dawn of Impressionism, photography had been born in the early 1800s and the need to reproduce objects to perfection had been replaced by the camera’s ability.

The century began with still life images such as those rendered by de Goya, who continued to paint plants or dead animals in a descriptive manner backed by a dark background. His work moved towards the use of broad brush strokes, surface pattern and the play of light which echoed the coming changes in technique. He continued to use iconic or even descriptive imagery.

A still life of dead hares by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes

By the mid 1800s the Impressionists emerged, softly painted impressions of harmonious colours. Monet’s still life with flowers and fruit in 1869  still reflects the techniques of the earlier era but 10years later his images have altered

Still Life with Flowers and Fruit     Claude Monet
French, 1869
Oil on canvas  ref: Paul Getty museum

Still Life with Pears and Grapes. 1880  ref: http://www.abcgallery.com

This is a play of colours forms and textures-painting for the sake of the paint and the impression rather than a depiction of reality or a message about human existence.

By the end of the nineteenth century Van Gogh had released energy and emotion into the still life

VanGogh Sunflowers 1888 sourced from the National Gallery webpage national gallery.org.uk

His sun flowers are unrealistic in colour, set against a light background, painted with brush heavy textured brush strokes and in wild shapes and forms. His aim in painting the flowers was to produce panels for his room which would result in a symphony of blues and yellows…his mind was on the impression and emotional impact not on detail or iconography.

Following on from Van Gogh Cezanne’s use of form beyond that seen in the object itself lead into the development of cubism. In his painting “Still Life with water jug” ref: Tate gallery  he changes the angles of view of the objects on the table and destroyed the idea of single perspective as we do not view things in this way.

 

20th Century Still Life 1900-2000

Cezanne lead the way for the development of cubism, the viewing of objects from multiple angles and this creeped into the depiction of still life as rendered by Braque and Picasso.

Georges Braque 1882–1963

Title Glass on a Table Le Verre sur la table Date 1909–10   Medium Oil paint on canvas

Here the everyday objects are painted from different angles and planes reminiscent of a page of geometry. The whole image starts to enter the domain of abstraction. There is an obvious image of the glass, but it is not evidently made of glass -there are no white tints of light-it is solid and malformed. The edges of the round table are evident painted in small blocks of browns whites,blues and orchres. The rest of the objects are indistinguishable, just geometric forms, there could be a divided plate a square piece of cheese, but their colours reflect the “glass” and the table and their forms are not readable as normal objects on a table. The paint is thick and the brush marks part of the image.

 

Picasso often used pieces of material to collage a subject and his paintings are often reflective of this mode of building up a picture.

Picasso Bowl of fruit,violin and a bottle

Pablo Picasso 1881–1973  Title  Bowl of Fruit, Violin and Bottle  Compotier, Violin, Bouteille  Date 1914

Medium Oil paint on canvas

Here everything on the table is mixed together (are they on a table?) There are hints of lines relating to the forms of a guitar, there is possibly a brown topped bottle and a few curved lines that could indicate fruit. However, the full image is lost in abstraction.

Looking at an earlier image of Picasso’s using similar objects : he has started to divide the objects and background into lines and geometrically shaded shapes, but retains some recognisable colours which are quite solidly applied –his glass has no sparkle as those in the Dutch paintings of the 17th century and the image lives for itself not as a record or allegory.

Compotier, Fruit, and Glass. 1909. Oil on canvas.

One of my favourite still life painters of the early 20th century is Morandi. His simple pots line up in patient fashion on the edge of the table. There is no bright colour and no detail to distract from these rural pots. They make me smile as though they are children waiting to be told what to do next. They make me feel as though they are to be protected and looked after -perhaps bringing out a maternal instinct which none of the other paintings so far discussed have done.

Giorgio Morandi 1890–1964

Title Still Life Natura morta Date 1946

sourced from tate.org.uk

 

The twenty first century

Anything goes in this century. We have a return to the clear depictions of the Dutch artists:

Tony De Wolf

In a visit to a London gallery a few years ago I came across the paintings of Tony de Wolf. These return to a classical carefulness in depicting glass pots and fruit. His colour scheme is usually reduced with whites contrasting against orange, glass and silver reflecting white or grey blue backgrounds. His images look photographic, clear and crisp and his objects stand in virtual straight line on the table which is on level with our eye. His compositions and lack of colours remind me of the still paintings Morandi.

see “Still life with brown ceramic bowls” at:     artsy.net/artwork/tony-de-wolf-still-life-with-brown-ceramic-bowls

 

Gillain Carnegie 

“Thirteen”  image visible at Tate.org.uk

glancing thrtough the book Vitamin P on contemporary artists, there are very few renderings of still lives, however I was taken by Gillian Carnegie’s painting “Thirteen” which depicts a bunch of white flowers in a cut down plastic milk bottle. The colour plays around greys and orchre browns with two brown pink shaded flowers and one bright yellow sphere. The Tate describes the image as having been painted so as to appear tilted towards the viewer. The flowers are slightly sculptural and not reailistic and their colours blend into the similar coloured background. It reminds me a little of the Morandi images in the use (or non use ) of colour and appeals to me

We are reminded by the Tate information that the light on the subject is stylized and flat and there are few shadows.The paint is applied both in the careful manner of the Dutch still life painters and in a messy thick manner in the background.