beside the easel

"When an artist begins to count strokes instead of regarding nature he is lost. This preoccupation with technique, at the expense of truth and sincerity, is the principal fault I find in much of the work of modern painters." Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida Self Portrait, 1904 Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida was born on February 27, 1863 in Valencia, on the east coast of Spain. Known for various subject matter including landscapes, portraiture, and social themes, the key recurring themes in his body of work would be the ocean, sunlight, and children. Few artists have observed sunlight and innocence in quite the way Sorolla has, with his juicy brushwork and mastery of color blending. Sorolla's use of color in particular, is inspirational in how he creates mood and defines his subject by color. In the following examples we'll explore this motif in his work. In his Self Portrait above, Sorolla depicts himself with stern honesty. Note the subtle shades of ...

Piazza Navona, Rome 1699 Caspar van Wittel was a Dutch veduta painter born on 1653 in Amersfoort, a medieval city in central Netherlands. He lived most of his life in Italy, specifically in Rome— becoming a member of the Accademia di San Luca— although he travelled all over the country. Wittel is considered among the very first to spur the veduta genre, even before Canaletto and Panini, making detailed studies from nature and pioneering the format we know today as the panorama, or wide-view of scenery. Affectionately known in his day as Gaspare degli Occhiali , (Caspar of the Eyeglasses) his views of the Italian countryside combined with beautiful architecture with local figures helped forge a rich , seductive genre that would have an immense impact on landscape art. In Piazza Navona above, (painted when Canaletto was about two years old) Wittel offers us a view that, even though we know it well to this day, here it still appears fresh and interesting to us. The cont...

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...

Watch this fascinating BBC documentary on the Italian Baroque Artist Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione by Art Historian Helen Rosslyn. describing the life and art of the man who pioneered the oil sketch and invented the printing technique known as monotype.

Dulwich Picture Gallery, London 2013 Two years ago I had an idea for a blog about art history and my favourite artists of all time, celebrating their birthdays and their great art by in-depth analysis of some of their best works. Over the course of that time I have discovered numerous artists that I never would have known even existed without this blog. I have learned so much. It is truly humbling not only to have discovered artists, but to have learned and keep learning the most important skill any artist needs in this world: observation. The ability to see. And to compose those elements into a meaningful work that truly tells a story or moves you in a unique way. The goal of this blog has been to go beyond the countless blogs out there that show all kinds of art but without context or explanation. A fresh point of view can really change your opinion about an artist, or at least see some of their work with a different perspective. In these past two years I have written about ov...

I don't believe in making pencil sketches and then painting landscape in your studio. You must be right under the sky. William Merritt Chase The Nursery, 1890 William Merritt Chase was born on November 1, 1849 in Williamsburg (now Nineveh), Indiana. Chase was a member of Ten American Painters which included Child Hassam and Joseph DeCamp , among others. Having studied both in America and Europe, he was a multifaceted Impressionist artist working in several kinds of media and subject matter, and was also well-known as an instructor where he opened his own school in 1896, the Chase School of Art . That school exists today as Parsons The New School for Design . Chase's work is characterized by deep saturated color—even when he uses a more monotone palette there is always a sense of depth and richness to those values. In The Nursery above, he contrasts complementary colors red and green under a soft, diffused afternoon light with a very warm-toned earth the figure...

A Rainy Day in New York City, 1905 Born in St. Louis, Missouri on August 15, 1864, Paul Cornoyer was an American Impressionist painter. He studied under a scholarship at the Académie Julian in Paris under Jules Lefebvre and Benjamin Constant before eventually settling in New York years later, where his strong French influences would surface to bring about his own vivid style. Cornoyer had the uncanny ability to meld mood and color together in a way that made his architectural settings seem to speak aloud. In this post I'd like to talk about a few of his works. In A Rainy Day in New York City above, Cornoyer uses reflections and strong darks to balance warm and cool colors under an overcast sky that, despite being grey, actually has many subtle colors. The use of one-point perspective also leads our eye toward very cool distant buildings and an empty sky that brings our eye back to the architecture and pedestrians. Note the use of variance in edges, how the foreground tree i...

I follow the light, where it comes from, where it goes Frank Weston Benson Lily Pond,1923 Born on March 24, 1862 Frank Weston Benson was an American Impressionist painter from Salem, Massachusetts and a founding member of the Ten American Painters which included Childe Hassam and Joseph DeCamp . Of the three, Benson is the most impressionist, with thick dry brushstrokes and a more vibrant use of color both in his highlights and shadows. Benson is known also for his variety of subject matter and use of various media in which he used everything from wet and dry media to lithography and etching to capture not only landscapes and figures but wildlife, especially birds and fowl. His career was filled with numerous accolades and memberships, his exhibitions very successful, and today his work can be found in many museums across the United States. Read more about his life here . Just looking at Lily Pond above, we see a sensitive eye with a deep respect for light and color. A...