beside the easel

The Thankful Poor, 1894 Born June 21, 1859 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Henry Ossawa Tanner was an African-American artist. He was the first African-American to enroll in the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1880, where he studied with Realist painter Thomas Eakens and was the only black student at that time. Tanner's work was characterized by an approach that synthesized elements of Impressionism, his Academic Classical training and genre subject matter that was influenced by his Methodist upbringing to include religious themes and a deep appreciation of the landscape. Just a boy during the The American Civil War years, Tanner experienced racism throughout his early life and as an artist in Philadelphia into his twenties, leading to his decision to leave America for Paris to study at the esteemed Académie Julian in 1891. Emboldened by this vibrant cosmopolitan society Tanner grew into his own style with greater depth. He became a highly esteemed Black a...

The Palace Guard, 1900 Ludwig Deutsch was born on the 13th of May, 1855 in Vienna, Austria. He studied in Vienna briefly before moving to Paris in his twenties, where the Academic art of that period focused on Orientalism. Deutsch's work is characterized by high attention to detail, both in architecture and costume, dynamic color contrasts and effortless compositions. His use of body language in how it defines his subjects is also a key ingredient in his work that we'll be exploring more here. In The Palace Guard above, Deutsch uses a full toolbox of painter expertise to narrate this scene. Observe the textures in this painting. The roughness of the stone walls with architectural details in the floral motifs at left. The intricate contrasts of materials in the man's costume is truly mesmerizing here: a black mesh underdress with an orange sash and green patterned headdress and scarf. Note the recurring motif of patterned circles in the ...

Born on the 26th of October, 1859 in southern Ohio, Elizabeth Nourse was an American portrait and landscape painter. Nourse was highly regarded in her day for her social realism and as a role model for female artists, and her extensive art education encompasses schools such as Art Students League of New York and Académie Julian . This is reflected in her work which has strong Classical sensibilities while exploring the feminine 19th century New Woman with incisive genre and portraiture that rivaled many of her contemporaries. In La mere above, Nourse uses complementary colors to reinforce the bond between mother and child while balancing this with a blue that echoes the influence of Renaissance religious themes. The way the mother is posed here is so brilliant in that she is both strong and tender at the same time, and the way the drapery hangs in her lap brings to mind Leonardo. The way Nourse foreshortens the baby is unusual and interesting in its realism, s...

The Garden of the Hesperides‎, 1892 Sir Frederic Leighton was born in Scarborough, England on December 3, 1830. He is one of Britain's most well-known artists from the Victorian Age , typifying a style of Romantic sensual Academic Classicism that foreshadows Art Nouveau . Leighton gives all his figures an elegance and grace—sometimes forced— yet somehow musical to watch, a visual poetry. He has a similar sensibility to the Dutch artist of the same era: Lawrence Alma-Tadema . Leighton also has a strong sense for colour that is more organic than his contemporaries. His use of reds, oranges, yellows, greens and blues are never garish or unnatural. Portraiture was also something he was easily well-versed in, capturing his sitters with a dignity and poise that was distinctive. He often used a lovely female actress of the day as his model whose beauty still inspires today. In The Garden of the Hesperides‎ above, Leighton's feminine side dominates the composition and tone...

Nymphs and Satyr, 1873 If there is one artist today that hardly needs an introduction, it would be William-Adolphe Bouguereau , supreme giant of 19th century Academic art. Born on November 30, 1825 in La Rochelle on the southwest of France, his talent would define the era he lived in only to fall into obscurity for decades after his death in 1905 until as recent as the early 1980's, shockingly. Today he has the distinction of being lionized by the Art Renewal Center as one of the greatest artists of all time while at the other end of the spectrum vilified by modernists as artificially perfect and sentimental. In fact it is quite rare to see such polarization over an artist of a calibre like Bouguereau, whose bravura is difficult to equal yet at the same time thematically his work admittedly tends toward women and children, a subject matter that sold well and he had endless patience for. Over the vast array of his oeuvre, some 820 paintings, I have tried to fi...

The Diet, late 1800's Jehan Georges Vibert was an Academic painter from France born in Paris on September 30, 1840. A contemporary of Jean-Léon Gérôme , Vibert would also find himself at the École des Beaux-Arts where he studied under François-Édouard Picot, who also taught artists such as Cabanel and Bouguereau. Where the breadth of Gérôme's interests and subject matter crossed into many different areas, Vibert had a seemingly insatiable appetite for sarcasm and wit, especially in his anticlerical work. Had he widened his oeuvre we may have seen an incredible eye on humanity, yet ironically within his narrow range he still managed to create insightful and stunningly vivid works that challenge our everyday notions on religion and society. And he did it often with subtle humour, a rare thing in art. In The Diet above, Vibert shows a cleric eating milk and biscuits in what is clearly someone who needs to drop a few pounds. Look at the attention to drapery here. Vibert mad...

A Drink for the Drummer, 1889 A Viennese painter born on August 2, 1848, Eduard Charlemont represents a natural Classical realism from among the last of the great artists born before the 20 century. Inspired by and trained in the Dutch Old Master painting techniques of the Baroque, Charlemont remains one of those underrated treasures you stumble upon and savour like an unexpected rare wine, ripe and full, only getting better with time. Above shows a drummer savoring a drink, quite possibly wine, in a room with soft shadows and cool northern light. Charlemont's gift for natural body language, detailed costume and expression is musical, to make a pun on the subject: the musician smiles broadly as if having just said a joke, and the woman smiles bashfully while cleaning her copper pot. Notice how the angle of the drum and her pot are similar, facing us the viewer. Hers is empty for a reason: there is a clear difference in social class, by the manner of dress in these two people ...

The Carpet Merchant,1887 Jean-Léon Gérôme , Academic painter and sculptor was born on this day in Vesoul , Eastern France in 1824. It's hard to define Gérôme in terms of style or subject matter, since he painted so many different types of subjects and themes...historical scenes, Orientalist portraits and landscapes, Napolean, animals, nudes, religious scenes, and occasionally breathtaking landscapes. It seems that whatever his brush touched, stunning beauty was always the result. In many ways, Gérôme's art is a summary of everything that came before his time in that what he absorbed from the Renaissance, the Venetians, Baroque, and his French contemporaries he was able to merge into his own vision. While most artists have certain strengths that make them distinctly recognizable, Gérôme is one of those artists who seems to have had few weaknesses (except for his draftsmanship, which cost him membership into the Prix de Rome ). He was a master of color also. His portraits defi...