For more insight into Figurative Realism in the real sense, we need to look at three painters depicting the realism of and for their own time. The painters to be examined here are William Coldstream, Euan Uglow, and Antonio Lopez Garcia. Coldstream was born in 1908 and died in 1987. He was educated at and […]
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Jean Siméon Chardin was born in 1699 and came to manhood a when the Rococo of Watteau, Fragonard, and Boucher was the style de jour. Rococo rivaled in decadent frivolity, depicting erotic nudity, romantic trysts, and carnality. The reality we associate with painting how we see in the manner of Velasques, Vermeer, and Chardin was […]
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Fiske (1878-1961) was a Boston School Painter, a student and colleague of American Impressionists Edmund C. Tarbell, Frank Benson, Philip Hale, and Charles Woodbury. Fiske (1878-1961) was a Boston School Painter, a student and colleague of American Impressionists Edmund C. Tarbell, Frank Benson, Philip Hale, and Charles Woodbury. Her paintings were composed with an eye […]
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Let us begin with what is known as the Boston School of Painters. Key figures in the Boston School were Edmund C. Tarbell, Frank Weston Benson, and William McGregor Paxton, all of whom trained in Paris at the Academie Julian and later taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Other painters associated […]
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Once upon a time, the French Academy dictated what was defined as Fine Art and what was not. If one did not follow the Academies rules, he was considered unskilled, untalented, and scorned by the Academy. We use ‘He’ here because the official Academy did not admit women. These regulated regurgitated governmental dictums held sway […]
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In his book ‘Secret Knowledge’ Hockney and Professor Martin Kemp, discuss known visual procedures of past Masters. This evidentiary material allows the reader to arrive at their own conclusions. There is more than enough scholarly evidence that Vermeer, and many others, used a form of ‘Camera Obscura’ or curved mirror as a visual aide in […]
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The Putti Paintings of William-Adolphe Bouguereau pose an openly disturbing question. Are these fluttering Putti, naked Ninos and pre-pubescent young girls Angelically endearing or Bacchanalian? These Images of breast caressing maidens awaiting spoil were typical of the Salon paintings of the era that saw the demise of Academic History Painting Bouguereau is, without doubt, objectifying […]
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Sight-size and the Bargue debacle do not align with the main-stream of traditional artistic practices. There is an inherent danger that over absorption in this kind of academic study neglects the development of the students’ intuitive, creative abilities. It is the possession of said abilities, which will enable them to become an artist. IMITATION is […]
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FRENCH ACADEMIES Chronicles of information are available about the French Academies from 1850 to the early part of the next century. They provided us an array of notable painters and educators: Willian Macgregor Paxton, John Henry Vanderpoel, John Singer Sargent, Thomas Eakins, George Bridgman, Kenyon Cox, Frank Vincent Dumond, to name a few. MUNICH SCHOOLIt […]
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CLASSICAL TRADITION “For me a work of art must be an elevated interpretation of nature. The search for the ideal has been the purpose of my life.” – William Adolphe Bouguereau – Not my favorite painter from the Beaux-Arts tradition, but as I have said many times, he and his contemporaries vision of classcism was […]
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