beside the easel

A portrait is a picture in which there is something not quite right about the mouth. —John Singer Sargent Portrait of Sarah Choate Sears, 1899 Probably one of the most renown portrait artists of the last century, John Singer Sargent was born on January 12, 1856 in Florence, where his American family lived at the time. Sargent's family travelled extensively throughout his childhood, and it was his Italian influences, namely Tintoretto for his vivid brushwork that would have a lasting impact on the young artist. When Sargent trained under Carolus-Duran, a up-and-coming French painter from Lille, he taught Sargent about alla prima and the lively brushwork of Velázquez and drawing with the brush. This would lead Sargent to travel himself to Spain and study Velázquez up close, subsuming him into what would become Sargent's trademark sort of 'tight' impressionism that is often imitated today by portraitists. Despite this loose and vivacious brushwork Sargent...

Self-Portrait, 1892 Born in Ferrara on December 31, 1842, Giovanni Boldini was a painter from the Belle Époque era. Known as the "Master of Swish" by a Time magazine article published a couple of years after his death, Boldini's style actually evolved over his career in a chameleon-like fashion. Sometimes loose and brushy, other times tightly rendered, it is towards the final years of his painting that we associate the swish of his technique with long, vigorous strokes and distorted figures, emphasizing line and grace, as if a modern Mannerism. Boldini associated with some famous artists of the day, including Degas and Sargent, who would become a life-long friend. The world was modernizing and changing rapidly, especially in France, and with it art itself. Boldini is unique in that he captured both landscapes and portraiture with ease and in the process characterized an era, evolving and moving along with it, never missing a beat, remaining very popular in both Lon...

Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness, ca.1662 A lesser known Dutch Master, Karel Dujardin was born on September 27, 1622 in Amsterdam. Although active during the Dutch Golden Age he spent most of his career in Italy where he developed a rather diverse style ranging from moody landscapes to religious Baroque subjects. Dujardin is hard to pin down for this very reason, as his travels must have been extensive one can see the vast influences that permeate his work. In fact, much of his work doesn't even appear to be from the same artist yet indeed it is. It is this kind of miscellany that is fascinating to me, especially being able to handle the landscape and religious figures with the same fervor since most artists did either one or the other. In Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness above we see the tenebrist influence of Caravaggio yet is stylistically quite distinct from other Italian artwork of this sort. Dujardin uses a triangular arrangement of the figures, with a notable ...

Flight into Egypt, 1685 Luca Giordano was born in Naples on October 18, 1634. Having studied under an aging Jusepe de Ribera, he earned a reputation for his versatility and speed, hence the nickname "Luca Fa Presto". He travelled all across Italy and also lived in Spain for a period, absorbing the influences of past painters to fuse his own style of vivid colors with dynamic compositions. Giordano is not easy to categorize in the sense that his art is not always consistent...at times the influence of Ribera is strong, while in other works there are touches of Titian, Veronese, Correggio, Carracci, Da Cortona and even Caravaggio. As with many artists, a deadline can often determine the quality of a work and in the case of Giordano his work can range from tightly rendered anatomy and figures in wonderful composition to brushwork and figures that seems so rushed it verges on amateurish. Giordano's philosophy was that a popular painter was a good painter and that color t...