beside the easel

The Annunciation, ca.1540 This Venetian Master, relatively uncommon from the Renaissance, was born in July 5, 1500 in Treviso. Having studied under Titian, his style seems to fuse the Renaissance with Venetian color and heavy Mannerist influence. We often hear plenty about Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, and even Tiepolo, but Bordone is the kind of artist you find out about only in art history classes or, better yet, in a museum. And his style is definitely worth discovering. The deep earth tones and dramatic light of Titian are immediately evident, but what really makes Bordone unique is his composition and anatomy, more specifically, how he used them together to make paintings with a definite style that deserves attention. Where Titian became more loose in his later years, and Tintoretto painted fast and furious, and Veronese big and colorful, Bordone paints with specific attention to detail and skin tones in a way that is more pure somehow. He may have lacked the psychological in...

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The Victory of Joshua over the Amalekites, ca.1624 Born on June 15, 1594, Nicolas Poussin was another giant of French painting whose attention to composition, line and color make him easily identifiable as one of the greats. I wanted to do a post of him earlier but ran out of time due to a new work schedule (better late than never, I always say!) Poussin is unique in that he could more than hold his own in Classical, landscape and historical painting...his name is synonymous with harmony and perfection, which would have a massive influence on French art from the Academic style right up until the Cubists. The painting above is an extremely busy composition, and very atypical of Poussin's usual balanced, quiet subject matter. In this particular battle, Joshua and the Hebrews are determined to completely destroy the Amalekites , a ruthless tribe who were considered even worse than the Philistines, who attacked the Hebrews shortly after they fled Egypt. So, under commandment by Go...

Legend of Tomyris, 1622-1623 In the art world of the Baroque, Rubens' bio reads like the stuff of legend: scholar, art collector, diplomat, polyglot (spoke seven languages), knighted by three kings, independently wealthy and one of the most prolific painters in history. Although he ran an enormous workshop of nearly a hundred artists, his design and finishing touches were on every single piece, and he painted on a scale that even today makes anyone's jaw drop. In fact, Rubens painted so much and often scenes of vast complex figures that it is challenging to pick only a few, not to mention his incredible drawings and studies that often give insight into his techniques. In this post I will attempt to show a sample from one of his various categories. In the above painting, Rubens has separated the women on the left and the men on the right. The kneeling figure holds the head of Cyrus the Great before Queen Tomyris of Massagetae—he is actually draining the blood into an urn. ...

Portrait of Giovanni Paolo Pannini by Louis Gabriel Blanchet One of my favourite vedutisti , Pannini was born on this day in 1691. During the Rococo of the late 1600's two major ideas evolved in landscape painting: the capriccio and the veduta , which eventually sort of merged into a kind of scenic cappriccio. The Capriccio, meaning caprice or fancy, evolved from the idea of imagination triumphing on the base of Classical architecture, often depicting it with deep shadows and bold colours, whereas the veduta. or view, arose from the British who frequently visited Spain, France and Italy (the Grand Tour) where they became so inspired by the glorious vistas they wanted to take a souvenir back home with them, a veduta. This of course launched the careers of some artists, especially Canaletto. Pannini, although he didn't invent the style, was the one who inspired all of them and as we can see by his portrait above by Blanchet, Pannini was held in high regard in his lifetime. ...

Self-Portrait with Pipe, 1848-1849 The rebel. Innovator. Realist. Gustave Courbet painted landscapes, portraits, still-lifes, seascapes, and nudes. Born in 1819 on June 10, he was the man who wore many hats and refused to be categorized by any of them. He was among the first to paint rural and poverty scenes in a social and political context, without melodrama or pretense, and more often than not in a plain and "ugly" way, as some critics called him. In the above famous self-portrait, he is smoking marijuana in his pipe, which explains the "fuzzy" look in his eyes; few self-portraits have this much character. Stream in the Jura Mountains, 1872 In the above painting Courbet uses strong diagonals to contrast with a heavy horizontal middleground. This piece is all about contrast. The color palette here uses cool against warm, and even the textures of this composition contrast jagged rocks against smooth green grass and trees, deep blue sky above against cool ...

Self-Portrait, ca. 1645 Yesterday was the birthday of Spain's greatest painter, Diego Velázquez, the man who inspired the awe of several painters from his own era right up to the modern day including Manet, who referred to him as the "painter of painters". And justly so. It is hard to overestimate the influence of Velázquez as portraitist and allegorical painter. Everyone from art critics to philosophers have written about him; his Las Meninas changed art and painting in a way that still ripples deeply today, and it's meaning is not entirely certain. Having been born in the same year as Anthony Van Dyck, Velázquez lived a full nineteen years longer and unlike Van Dyck who painted the aristocracy exclusively, Velázquez painted everyone from King Philip's court including dwarfs, court fools, giants, dancing bears, and gypsies. In his self-portrait above we see a man with full confidence. What makes Velázquez so unique is how he varies his brushwork in such a ...

Taverne Olympia advertisement, ca.1896-1900 Jules Chéret, lithographer and painter who created posters for cabarets, theatres, music halls and various other advertisements of the day, was born on May 31, 1836. Why I include him here in this blog is because of his very colorful and well-designed approach to his posters, which are both works of art and effective advertisements. Capturing the spirit of the late 1800's, known as the Belle Époque , Chéret took his influences of the Rococo and made it into something fun and eye-catching without being tacky or melodramatic. In fact, Chéret displays an uncanny ability to utilize colour harmony with effortless charm, and his drawing style is based on a Classical sensibility but slightly exaggerated for the sake of entertainment. In the above example despite its simplicity we see design elements at work, from the way her dress points downward to the restaurant info to the way the two figure's glasses are raised unevenly to heighten...

L'Alabardiere, 1529-1530 Jacopo Carrucci (known as Jacopo da Pontormo or Pontormo) is one of those painters who fully embraced Mannerism in a way that makes him quite likeable in spite of himself. He is not easy to define though. His style ranges from bright colors to a dark, sombre Baroque-like palette; his drawings are exciting to study, full of energy and, like many artists, more accurate than his paintings. As a portraitist, Pontormo is in a category unique to the Florentines, both real and unreal at the same time due to his Mannerism; being the teacher of Bronzino we see strong similarities. In the above example, we see an Alabardiere (Halbardier) or guard with the distinctive two-handled pole spear but Pontormo focuses on the young man himself, proud and confident, yet with an innocent face. Pontormo bathes him in warm window light against a dark wall of some sort, again to heighten the textures and colours of the guard. In typical Mannerist fashion, his physique is im...

The Old Bridge, ca. 1775 Born in Paris on this day in 1733, Robert was not only one of the active vedutisti , or highly realistic scene painter but also a set designer for plays and landscape garden designer. Having studied in Rome for 11 years—part of that under the studio of Giovanni Paolo Panini —Hubert made numerous sketches and capricci which lead to paintings with a distinct flavour for dramatic light, antiquity and architecture that puts him in a category that few others can match. And living during the tumultuous French Revolution where he narrowly escaped death himself makes his life all the more interesting as a person; someone should make a film of his life. In the above example, Robert uses strong chiaroscuro for this bridge in two point perspective. The fact that he shows every dilapidated stone to illustrate its age and character contrasts with a youthful sky and bright blue river underneath it...Robert seems to make a statement on the age of man-made c...