beside the easel

The Tame Magpie, 1708 Born on February 4, 1667 in Genoa, Italy, Alessandro Magnasco was a late Baroque painter, aka. il Lissandrino. His style was highly distinctive and idiosyncratic—elongated, muscular forms in brisk brushwork reminiscent of Tintoretto along with some of his contemporaries: Tintoretto, Sebastiano Ricci, Francesco Solimena, and Giovanni Pellegrini. His strong shadows and vibrant colors are reminiscent of a Venetian style, yet suggest an ominous influence of Piranesi in his architectural capriccios. What makes him interesting is his highly idiosyncratic subject matter that was not common during his era, making him a genre painter by definition, or Bamboccianti as some may have described him. Highly individualistic or Romantic, his work is interesting so let's take a closer look. In The Tame Magpie above, an odd collection of people gather round to watch a man attempt to teach a magpie to sing. Some appear to be drunk and destitute, the woman ...

Portrait of Florence, 1898 Thomas William "Tom" Roberts was born on March 8, 1856 in Dorchester England and a prominent member of The Heidelberg School , which was an Australian Impressionist art movement of the late 1800's. His family moved to Australia when he was 13, where he stayed for 12 years before returning to study in England and travel through Spain, where he met artists such as Ramon Casas . Roberts painted mostly landscapes and portraiture. His work is characterized by distinctive brushstrokes, subtle contrasts of edges, and a muted but natural palette in contrast to many of his contemporaries, who often used vibrant colors in their shadows. In Portrait of Florence above, Roberts shows us the scale of his talent and the Spanish influence. I love the wistful look on her face. The tactile fabric of her dress, in warm neutral tones seems to resonate with the background even though the tones are very similar. The pink ruffled collar is what g...

The Organ Rehearsal, 1885 Henry Lerolle was born on October 3, 1848 in Paris. He studied at the popular 19th century Académie Suisse , whose alumni include Monet, Cézanne, Pissaro, and Manet amoung others, and under the private instruction of Louis Lamothe , who taught Degas and Tissot. Despite his incredible eye there seems to be a lack of productivity compared to his contemporaries yet what makes Lerolle unique is his dramatic use of light and bold colors. In The Organ Rehearsal above, we see one of the most breathtaking and underrated paintings of the 19th century. A singer rehearses a hymn at the Saint-François-Xavier in Paris to an open space of light— a brilliant composition that eschews any audience below completely and focuses on the main figures of the choir loft. This remarkable earth toned palette of browns, yellows and blacks, with a few accent colors, is superb. A couple of the standing figures off to the left have been painted in burnt sienna and y...

The Three Droves, 1656 Born October 1, 1620 in Haarlem, Netherlands, Nicolaes Berchem was a Dutch landscape painter. Berchem is known for his strong use of light, lush verdant landscapes and elegant figures yet sadly, is not given due attention for his incredible gifts. Berchem was an incredibly prolific painter and also produced many etchings and drawings during his lifetime in Haarlem and Amsterdam. Although not exactly a household name, Berchem was highly esteemed in his day. He taught some of the leading Dutch artists of the Golden Age, including Karel Dujardin , Pieter de Hooch , Jan van Huchtenburg, and Jacob Ochtervelt among others. In The Three Droves above, Berchem's stunning light bathes this scene in romantic warmth. Judging by the greenish-yellow tone in the sky we see that Berchem glazed it in warm yellows, and the way that tree off to the right is silhouetted against that orange glow is breathtaking. He uses the warm tones as a motif throughout the painting, ...

Leonardo's most cryptic and virtually unknown work, Salvator Mundi sold for a mind-boggling $450 million dollars at Christie's New York to break a world record, more than paying for the painstaking restoration by the incredibly skilled hands of Dianne Dwyer Modestini . Read more about her process in this CNN article . This article by Gary Meisner talks about Da Vinci's use of Golden Ration proportions within the painting. Although this kind of selling price has outraged many art critics and skeptics alike all over the world—how dare an Old Master work outsell a Van Gogh or other modern work? I'll leave the art market talk to the experts. In this post I hope to examine the painting more fully and explore how much of it is the hand of Leonardo and the rest possibly the hand of others including Melzi, among others. Am I disputing its authorship? Not necessarily. I have profound respect for Professor Martin Kemp and I'm sure he's right when he says that stand...

The Birth of the Virgin, ca.1660 Born on November 19, 1607 in Antwerp, Erasmus Quellinus II was a Flemish painter and engraver who worked under Peter Paul Rubens . Erasmus came from a family of artists that profoundly influenced Flemish Baroque in the 1600's. Unlike Rubens, Erasmus had never been to Italy and so his style evolved from the influence of Rubens and others around him, including his brother, sculptor Artus Quellinus II. Although the influence of Rubens is very strong—sometimes easy to mistake—Erasmus developed into a deeper Baroque sensibility with less emphasis on color and sensuality and more on chiaroscuro and architecture. Today little is mentioned about Erasmus, especially in that he worked with Rubens for less than ten years yet became a major painter in the years after Rubens' death in 1640. In The Birth of the Virgin above, we can see here that the cluttered confusion of this composition doesn't quite have the flow and grace of his Master, Rubens....

A Girl Crocheting, 1904 Edmund Charles Tarbell was born on April 26, 1862 in northern Massachusetts. Tarbell studied in Boston and trained in Paris under Jules Joseph Lefebvre where he learned the Academic rigors of Classicism in the late 1800's, and while studying in the museums he was also inspired by the French painters of Impressionism. This new approach to color and light would have a profound influence on his work. Tarbell would synthesize this soft brushwork with his Classical training into his own distinctive aesthetic of mood, light and silence while capturing his American era. While most of his contemporaries painted both in plein air and interiors, Tarbell painted mostly quiet interiors with pensive women that is unique in that his brushwork is breathtaking. In A Girl Crocheting above, Tarbell uses a dimly-lit window as his light source for a woman crocheting. Note the loose copy of Velázquez's Portrait of Innocent X on the wall. Her chair seems to echo simi...

The Cellist, 1908 Joseph DeCamp was an American painter born in Cincinnati, Ohio on November 5, 1858. Having studied in Europe he returned to America where he worked under the Boston School with artists such as William McGregor Paxton , Edmund C. Tarbell and John Joseph Enneking among others. Later on he would form a group of American Impressionists known as the Ten American Painters, including artists such as Childe Hassam , Willard Metcalf, John Henry Twachtman, and once again Edmund C. Tarbell. DeCamp's work is characterized by the Tonalism of predominantly women in deep shadows, vibrant color, elegant body language and pensive mood. In The Cellist above, DeCamp's palette is monochromatic yet he makes effective use of highlight and texture to convey his mood. Dry brush and warms illuminate the wall behind her, where the shadow side has traces of violet scumbled on top of grey and yellow tones while the bright side is smoky white. This technique continu...