beside the easel

Rear view of the Houses at Schloßfreiheit, 1855 Eduard Gaertner was a German architectural painter born on June 2, 1801 in Berlin. Known for his stunning attention to detail and his natural use of light, Gaertner was a Romantic who captured the everyday life of Germany with a fondness for the world he lived in. By this time it seems the era of the veduta had waned since Canaletto, yet Gaertner's views are more personal and real. He lived during the early years of photography and this had a marked effect later in his career. Looking at his beautiful scenes, we can sense a yearning for experiencing the moment and not just capturing it, as a camera can. The love of nature and architecture together summarize the sharp eye of Gaertner and in these examples we'll explore why. In Rear view of the Houses at Schloßfreiheit above, Gaertner uses perspective in a Classic veduta style with prominent architecture, but it is the way that late afternoon sun bathes the buildings while l...

Portrait of Leonilla, Princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, 1843 Born on 20 April, 1805 in the Black Forest region of Germany, Franz Xaver Winterhalter was an aristocratic portrait painter in Europe and Russia. Known for his sensual use of colors and adding gracefulness to his sitters, Winterhalter may not be a household name today but in his day was quite in demand. Critics from his own era sometimes dismissed his style as superficial and sentimental, a sort of Rococo artist with strong Italian Renaissance roots that painted an enormous amount of portraiture, but Winterhalter gave his clients what they wanted, which was elegance and grandeur without being formulaic. Considering the sheer amount of portraits he painted of aristocrats, including Queen Victoria herself, Winterhalter resisted the cliché that affected many British artists of the period who attempted to be Van Dyck or Reynolds but simply were not. In the Portrait of Leonilla above he graces this beautiful Russian Princ...

Last summer I did something quite ambitious, challenging...something I wasn't sure I could do...something that only after being in Italy for a month in the previous September would rouse my brain to attempt: I decided I needed to do an Old Master study. Up until this point I had done numerous sketches like most artists, but the extent of my practice was mostly visual. I went museum crazy all over Rome in 2010 and in the process I felt like I learned enough to move up to the next level. Somehow, the pastel work I had done made me want to give it a shot. I had found this image online from my usual research of Old Master Baroque paintings: Vision of St. Jerome, c 1627 Johann Liss was a German Baroque painter of the seicento, or 17th century, who lived in Venice for most of his career. Having been inspired by Caravaggio and the deep colors of Titian and Tintoretto he blended those styles into his own craft of drama, solid figures and intense color. St. Jerome has been a subject ...