beside the easel

The Portrait of a Sergeant, 1874 Born on February 21, 1815 Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier was born in Lyon, France. A Classical painter known primarily for his military themes, Meissonier is someone who, within his narrow subject matter, shined as a storyteller through his incredible understanding of people and body language. His portraiture and studies of people have an insight that is absolutely captivating.Where Renaissance and Baroque artists were constrained to focus on the drama and exaltation of religion, by this era the Naturalism of everyday life is what distinguished France as the last great country of art. Meissonier was one of those great Masters. Note the use of perspective in The Portrait of a Sergeant above. Meissonier uses a warm, brick covered wall with a yellowish-grey cobble-stone pavement to frame these soldiers in their greenish-yellow uniforms, who are fascinated by the artist sketching the sergeant. Meissonier also creates depth by varying the distance and...

I remember when I was younger I had photocopied self-portraits of all my favourite artists tacked to the wall in my basement studio...stern black and white faces looking at me...it made me feel safe, like I was surrounded by the All-Stars of Art, encouraging me silently to get over making mistakes and get past them. It was great support for a self-taught artist! And I needed all the support I could get back then. When we think of self-portraits by famous artists, the usual suspects come to mind...Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Kahlo, or maybe Velazquez or Da Vinci, and it is interesting to note that the Renaissance was where the self-portrait really became popular. With the idea of the artist as more than just a faceless member of a guild (as was the case in the Middle Ages) artists began to study nature and, with better quality mirrors, themselves. This was not a conceit. The publicity machine back then was not quite as state-of-the-art as today, and I'm sure most people could not attach a ...