Aug 6, 2012 | Brooklyn Museum, painting
The painter’s eyes are hidden by the brim of his hat as he delicately applies paint to the canvas, pinky up. I’ve always found paintings of painters painting so unique; as an opportunity to reveal what they think about their own craft. This one glorifies by simplifying, as the painter’s companion lies next to him in the grass, with their shining canoe resting behind them – tail end still in the water.
He’s even using his fishing rod to prop up his canvas, as a way of officially merging these two very leisurely activities. The wisps of grass flow up all around the couple, raising them up into a cloud of green and white. The lake behind is one flat color, like a plate of glass with nothing behind it.
Post addition!
Thanks to a comment left by an fellow art-enthusiast named Adrian, I’d like to add the following image to this post, which could very well be Sargent painting this very piece! The grass looks exactly the same and the angle would fit perfectly.
Jul 27, 2012 | museums, painting, The Morgan Library & Museum
“Juxtaposing two colors puts me in a state of intense excitement” –Josef Albers
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Color Study for Homage to the Square
oil and graphite on blotting paper with varnish |
An exhibition that began in Germany and worked its way around Europe has finally landed in the States at the Morgan Library & Museum. Josef Albers in America gives you a behind-the-scenes look at the work of this German-born artist, most famous for his studies of color and the series, Homage to the Square.
It’s interesting to see what came before that famous colored squares series; how much work went into choosing just the right pigments and color combinations. There are even notes carved into the paint and scribbled in the margins, notes like “Try Again.”
I found the opening pieces most interesting, as squares that play with perspective and color do more than just with color alone. His three “Studies for a Kinetic” placed side-by-side, give three different versions of the same lines becoming squares, each playing with the canvas space in its own way based on the angles and colors chosen. But it wasn’t perspective that most interested Albers, who once described the square as “the dish I serve my craziness about color in.”
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Study for a Kinetic, ca. 1945
oil and graphite on blotting paper
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Jul 24, 2012 | painting, The Frick Collection
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| Oil on canvas. Part of the Frick Collection, see it on the Frick website for more info. |
A fairy-like pink-haired mother sits with her two young children standing beside her. Her little daughter looks up at her, wearing a white cotton dress, matching hat and blue-bowed shoes, her blonde hair shining and cheeks flushed. The little boy stands separate on the left, in his navy colonial-looking jacket with it’s white frill collar. His blonde hair looks just like his sister’s and he stares out at us with the same blue eyes as his mother.
Their features are perfectly synchronized, the family resemblance expertly rendered. The withdrawal behind their expressions makes it seem as if they’re trying to keep the secret of their beauty from getting out.
Jun 28, 2012 | Museum of Fine Arts: Boston, painting
I absolutely love portraits of women. There are so many layers to them that any other kind of portrait seems to lack. Especially in older portraits like this one, there are all sorts of things to wonder about. Like did she want to be portrayed this way, and which parts of the portrait exist because of her input and not that of the painter or her father/husband? She was a New York society girl with a well-off family, but did she dress herself or did she have others do it for her? And my biggest question: why does her pinky linger at her mouth? It seems to be a pose representing deep thought and high status, but some part of me wishes she was doing it ironically.
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| Oil on canvas. |
According to differing reports from Ancestry.com and Geni.com, she was between 16 and 19 when this portrait was painted. The white dress makes it seem as if it’s to commemorate her wedding to Frederick Philip Nash, but I think that probably came later, since the reasons for portraiture went well beyond event-marking by the late 1800s.
Her eyes are so deep-set that you nearly fall into the painting looking at them; they’re dark and round, contrasting with her long pale face and narrow nose. Only her hair styling keeps her from looking too doll-like– it’s a sophisticated up-do that continues the long vertical line of her body down the center of the canvas. Her head tilts back enough to invite us in, and even though her stance might seem pretentious, her face is soft and empty of judgement.
Jun 14, 2012 | Museum of Fine Arts: Boston, painting
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| Oil on canvas |
A pastoral film blankets the scene in the warmth of a summer day on a simple hillside. The girl relaxes, guarded by her dog and watched over by a farmer who leans against the fence that divides them. The warm-toned, tender brush strokes give only faint outlines in some areas and great detail in others, making the whole scene seem like the dream of the sleeping girl– too beautiful to really exist anywhere besides a painting.
Jun 7, 2012 | Museum of Fine Arts: Boston, painting
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| Oil on canvas |
The saint’s body swoons, as if he’s just kelt over from the intensity of all of it. A small angel, with the face of a boy but a strength that must be many times what’s expected, holds all of the falling saints weight, his wings touched with red and his young cheeks flushed. In comparison, the saint looks nearly dead, his face the same gray color as his robe; his three-dimensional halo floating softly above his tilted head.
