Rosa Bonheur, After the War

"A Limier Briquet Hound" by Rosa Bonheur

"The next twenty years of her life were passed in uninterrupted work, and with little incident save the anxiety caused her by the failing health of her devoted friend and companion Mlle. Micas. In order that Mlle, Micas should escape the cold winters at By, Rosa Bonheur built a villa Nice, and there she carried her friend every year until she died in 1889. The blow was a terrible one for the painter, and during the ten remaining years of her own life she never regained her old brightness of spirits and natural gaiety which had given her somewhat rugged temperament so much charm. 

Nevertheless she continued her work as industriously as ever, and when President Carnot went to her studio in 1893 to present her personally with the Cross of an officer of the Legion of Honour, he found her surrounded by the pictures which she was sending to the Chicago Exhibition.

'I may perhaps be suspected of vanity,' she wrote of this new honour, 'if I say I have received several decorations and other distinctions. In 1865 the Empress Charlotte and the Emperor Maximilian sent me the Cross of San Carlos of Mexico; in 1867 the Academy of Fine Arts at Antwerp made me one of its members; Alfonso XII gave me the brevet of Commander of the Order of Isabella the Catholic; the King of the Belgians the Cross of Leopold; the King of Portugal in 1884 that of the most Noble Order of Saint-James; but of all these dignities that which made my heart beat most was my nomination as officer of the Legion of Honour.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.)

Rosa Bonheur, Franco-Prussian War

"Lion's Head" by Rosa Bonheur

"Then came the Franco-German war of 1870, and the siege of Paris. The Forest of Fontainebleau was overrun by the German soldiery, and the peasants around By were reduced almost to starvation. Rosa Bonheur had resolutely refused to leave her home, and when the villagers applied to her in their distress, she gave them twenty sacks of corn that had been sent to her from Odessa. There was every danger that the chateau, as well as the numerous works of the painter which were kept there, might suffer at the hands of the Germans, who did not respect property whenever billeting was necessary. 

She says herself that during the war she was utterly unable to work; she spent her time in succouring her poorer neighbours, and especially in helping fugitive French soldiers. 'For some months,' she says, 'I had no heart for work. I read. I thought. I waited. When the peace was signed which gave us back our lives, I began to work with redoubled ardour.' 

It was then that she began the series of paintings of lions, tigers, and panthers, which principally occupied her brush during the next ten years. She made drawings everywhere, in the Jardin des Plantes, in circuses, and menageries, in short, wherever she could find wild animals - studying not only the anatomy and lines of the feline race, but also the temperamental characteristics of its various branches, a care that gave her paintings the appearance of being portraits of individual animals."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.)

Rosa Bonheur Criticized

"Head of a Donkey" by Rosa Bonheur

"After receiving the Cross of the Legion of Honour, it was impossible to refrain from exhibiting her work in France, and consequently she sent no less than twelve large works to the Paris Exhibition of 1867. But her long abstention had made her unpopular with artists and critics. Jealousy of her success, and of the large amount of money she drew from the sale of her pictures in England, may also have had some effect, but whatever the reason, the jury only awarded her a medal of the second class, an award that was obviously unfair, seeing that ten of the pictures she sent were amongst her best efforts. 

The feeling of bitterness against her found expression in the newspapers, and especially in an article by a leading French art critic of the time, who said that 'since her adoption by the English, her work had been scarcely seen in French exhibitions, and not even in picture sales.' He accused her of deliberately setting to work to study the methods of Landseer and other favourite painters of 'sport britannique,' and declared that she had practically become a pupil of the English animal painter.

It is not known whether these criticisms and the almost universally expressed opinion that she had practically ignored her own country for the sake of gaining money from foreigners, had any influence with the painter, but after 1867 she did not exhibit again, not even at the great Paris Exhibitions of 1878 and 1889, and it was not until the Salon of 1899 that the French public had any opportunity of seeing her work.

She lived in the greatest seclusion at By, painting and studying from nature with the same ardour and care for detail that had distinguished her as a young girl."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.)

Rosa Bonheur, Chavalier of the Legion of Honour

Rosa Bonheur wearing the Cross
of the Legion of Honour

"In 1865 Rosa Bonheur was made a Chavalier of the Legion of Honour. It happened thusly. When the Court was at Fontainebleau in 1864 the Empress Eugenie had called at By unexpectedly, and after watching Rosa Bonheur at work, ordered a picture. She shortly afterwards begged Napoleon to bestow the Cross of the Legion of Honour upon the artist, but although the Emperor was quite willing to give the honour, his counsellors opposed it on the ground that no woman had ever been admitted within its ranks save for charity or bravery. 

When the Emperor went to Algiers in the following year, and the Empress was Regent during his absence, she made use of her temporary power to bestow the Cross, and that in a most charming fashion. The artist relates that one day, as she was painting, she heard the cracking of postilions' whips and the sound of carriage wheels in the courtyard. The next moment a maid rushed into the room to say that the Empress had arrived, and Rosa Bonheur had only time to cover the male attire in which she always worked with a petticoat and to change her big painting blouse for a jacket of black velvet, when the Empress entered. 

 'I have here,' said her Majesty, 'a little jewel that I have brought to you on behalf of the Emperor. He has authorized me to profit by my last day of regency to announce to you your appointment to the Legion of Honour.' She then pinned the Cross upon the black velvet jacket with a pin borrowed from one of her ladies, and kissing the painter, said she 'was happy to be able thus to reward her talent in which, as a woman, she felt great pride,' adding that in Rosa Bonheur she 'honoured the woman as much as the artist.' 

The official announcement of the bestowal of the honour appeared in the 'Journal Officiel' of 11 June, 1865, the day of the Emperor's return from Algiers. A few days later she was bidden to luncheon at Fontainebleau, being taken to the palace from By in a Court carriage."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.)

Rosa Bonheur at the Chateau of By

"A Lion's Head" by Rosa Bonheur

"After the great Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1855, to which she sent 'Haymaking in Auvergne,' for which she received a medal, Rosa Bonheur practically ceased to exhibit her pictures. 'The Horse Fair' and other pictures had given her work so great a vogue in England and America that she could not keep pace with the commissions that flowed in upon her. 

The periodical return of the opening of the Salon and the necessity of pictures being finished by a certain date, placed a restraint upon her work which she found most irksome, and for twelve years she was entirely unrepresented in the annual exhibition in Paris, a fact that made her most unpopular with the French artists and critics, and, in some degree, also with the French public, and explains in a great measure why her work was always less favourably regarded in France than in England.

After 1855 she devoted herself wholly to supplying the demand for her work in England, leaving Paris in 1860 to settle at the Chateau of By in the Forest of Fontainebleau, where she could have her numerous living models properly housed and be free from all social interruptions. Here, surrounded by sheep, gazelles, deer, goats, birds, horses, cows, every variety of breed of dog, boars, lions, monkeys, parroquets, ponies from Skye and Iceland, bulls and wild horses from America, the next five years of her busy life passed in a round of unceasing labour. 

'I live here happily,' she wrote, 'far from the world, working my hardest and receiving visits only from intimate friends.' The list of pictures that came from her easel during his period was a portentous one, and in 1862 she achieved one of the greatest of her successes  by the pictures she sent to the Exhibition held that year in London."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur"by Frank Hird.)

Rosa Bonheur, Director of Drawing

"Rosa Bonheur" by Anna Elizabeth Klumpke

"Rosa Bonheur, a woman of indomitable energy, was also director of a drawing school for young girls. The post had originally been given to her father but on his death in 1849, it was given to her, who, with the aid of her sister Juliette, carried it on until 1860, when she found that the increasing number of her commissions prevented her devoting sufficient time to the institution.

She was as thorough in her teaching as in her work, and a series of studies which she drew as examples for her pupils was lithographed and put in the collection of the Beaux-Arts, still serving the same purpose for another generation as that for which it was designed.

An address which she gave to the pupils of this school indicates the lines of her teaching: 'Guard against wishing to go too quickly. Before taking up your brushes, be certain of your pencil. Gain a thorough knowledge of the science of drawing, and do not be in a hurry to leave the school. The time here, believe me, will not be lost time. Those who are most gifted, and who have a natural faculty for colour, run no risk of spoiling their gift by postponing for a little time the moment for exercising it, and they do not run the risk of applying their talent wrongly. If one is given the germ of a talent by Providence, it is folly to spoil it by wishing to reap early results from it, results that have no value.'

She was adored by the pupils of the school, despite the severity of her judgments upon their work. Her favourite dictum was, 'Go home to your mother and mend your stockings, or do needlework,' a sarcasm that generally reduced the unfortunate pupil to tears. The next moment a jest or happy phrase removed the sting whilst the lesson remained. Later one of her pupils, who achieved some success, said of her, 'She could not endure weakness. Your drawing might be wrong, but if the lines were firm she would show you your mistake with infinite patience. The least trace of indecision or feebleness would bring a remark like a sword cutting through the air.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.)

Rosa Bonheur, "The Horse Fair"

"The Horse Fair" by Rosa Bonheur
(96.25 in × 199.5 in (244.5 cm × 506.7 cm)

"Four years later Rosa Bonheur exhibited 'The Horse Fair,' which was destined to make her famous throughout the world, and more especially in England and America. It was the sensation of the Salon in 1853, but as the painter had already received the highest honours from the jury, there was nothing left to bestow upon her. It was greatly admired by the Emperor Napoleon III, and the Beaux-Arts wished to buy it, but they could not afford the sum asked by Rosa Bonheur, and the painting was returned to her studio at the close of the exhibition.

Study for 'The Horse Fair"

Study for 'The Horse Fair'

Her preparations and studies for this famous picture were indicative of the painstaking assiduity of her temperament. She attended horse fairs, making exhaustive and minute studies for months beforehand, and was naturally thrown amongst the same class of men as had worked at the slaughterhouses. Here though she had no kindly protector, and therefore took refuge in male clothes, which she wore constantly to the day of her death having been given permission by the Prefect of Police to do so. 

The vigour and movement of this picture are familiar to everyone, horses of every kind being led and driven to the fair. In the foreground a magnificent pair of gray cart-horses, with arching necks and glistening coats, are trotting gallantly, their long tails neatly tied. Immediately behind, a colt frightened by the plunging of a white horse by his side is rearing wildly with foaming mouth, his ears laid back and his eyes showing his terror. A man on his back is beating him with a stick; a pony trots meekly on his other side without guide or rider. Under the trees on the right, rows of horses are standing being appraised, whilst where the ring turns a horse is being trotted for inspection. Only the hind quarters and part of the back are visible, but this is one of the finest paintings of a horse in action that Rosa Bonheur ever did. The colouring of the animals is admirably chosen. Each is the perfect expression of its type.

Her growing success now brought her many patrons, and after the exhibition of 'The Horse Fair' she was obliged to take a larger studio where she kept a small menagerie of animals for the purposes of study. Besides her studio in Paris, she had another at Chevilly, where she kept a quantity of goats and sheep. She was an indefatigable worker, but even her unusual energy could not cope with the commissions that began to flow in upon her.

In the meantime 'The Horse Fair' had been exhibited at the towns of Gand and Bordeaux, it being offered to the latter municipality for 12,000 francs, but the offer was not accepted. British art dealer M. Ernest Gambart then expressed his desire to become the owner of the picture, but the artist said that if it was to be taken out of France she could not accept less than 40,000 francs, a sum he immediately agreed to pay. The matter was settled, and then M. Gambard told her that he would give the picture to Thomas Landseer, the celebrated engraver, in order that a plate might be made of it.

She was delighted by this suggestion and made a small copy one-quarter of the size of the original, which was immediately brought to the engraver. When Rosa's masterpiece was hung in Mr. Gambart's exhibition laudatory articles filled the press, and Queen Victoria had it brought to Windsor for inspection. Upon its return to the exhibition with this added prestige, Rosa Bonheur was the most famous woman of the moment in England.

Three half-size replicas were made, one to serve as reference for an engraving by Thomas Landseer and two others as private commissions. A fourth much smaller version in oil and two autographed watercolour versions were also commissioned.

When Rosa died, her brother, Isidore Bonheur, cast a bronze relief plaque based on the painting for her monument at Fontainebleau. The memorial included a large statue of a bull, on a pedestal with four relief plaques reproducing her most popular paintings; it was destroyed in 1941, but a cast of the plaque is held by the Dahesh Museum in New York."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.)

Rosa Bonheur, "Ploughing at Nivernais"

"Ploughing at Nivernais" by Rosa Bonheur

"Rosa Bonheur was a devoted admirer of George Sand, and it was the latter's 'Mare au Diable,' [the opening scene which features oxen ploughing a landscape with the author's commentary, 'a noble subject for a painter'] that indirectly led her to paint the famous 'Ploughing in Nivernais.' She was deeply impressed by that novel when she began the picture in the winter of 1848-9. But before setting this fresh work upon her easel she had made studies from which a strong man would shrink. Although her new studio was at a distance from the slaughterhouse at Roule, she tells us herself that she went there every day, 'in order to perfect myself in the study of nature,' adding, 'one must have a 'culte' for one's art to be able to live in the midst of horrors and amongst those terrible people.'

The slaughtermen were naturally extremely astonished to see a young woman so interested in their work, and they did everything they could to add to the unpleasantness of her surroundings. But she continued on with the friendly aid of an athletic butcher, who took her under his protection. With his help she was able to continue her drawings of animals as they were being driven into the slaughterhouse, and as they were being killed, making studies of every variety of violent action which she found invaluable later on.

It was with the 'Ploughing in Nivernais (Labourage Nivernais)', exhibited in 1849, that Rosa Bonheur first achieved the position she occupied until her death. Its force and simplicity, its fidelity to nature, gave the picture an instant success [it won a First Medal in the Salon], and although the Ministry of Fine Arts could only offer 3,000 francs for it, its finances being low, the painter accepted the small sum. The picture became the property of the French nation, and is amongst the most notable of the modern collection in the Luxembourg. [She also made a number of copies, one of which is in the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.]"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.)

Rosa Bonheur, Salon Success

"Head of a Calf" by Rosa Bonheur

"Rosa Bonheur certainly carried out her intention of 'doing better,' for the next year a great advancement was seen in the five pictures she sent to the Salon, and apart from this it marked her absolute breaking from the tradition which had ordained that when animals were painted only certain types should be used.

A long holiday she spent in Auvergne in that summer, in which she made a careful study of the superb bulls and oxen of that region, and the various types which had been bred from them, was the beginning of a minute examination into the differentiation in type of sheep, horses, and other animals, an examination which brought an added reality to her pictures, for besides the complete anatomical knowledge she had gained by moulding and by dissection, it gave her brush a physiological certainty.

In 1847 her four pictures of cows, sheep, oxen, and horses were so faithful to the various types represented, that they raised heated discussion between those members of the jury of the Salon who were still bound by the old tradition of conventional animals conventionally represented, and the followers of  the newer school whose theory was that nature, under all its forms, should be painted as it is seen.

Luckily for Rosa this struggle of opinion was ended in 1848 by the Revolution which drove Louis Philippe from the throne of France, and instituted the second Republic in his stead. The new government ordered that all pictures sent to the Salon that year were to be accepted without exception, and that the artists themselves were to nominate a commission of forty members who, with the help of the officials of the Musee Nationale, were to hang the pictures for exhibition.

The result proved that revolution had spread from politics to art, for the majority of the men voted to the commission by their fellow artists had been rigorously excluded from the Salon by the old jury. Rosa Bonheur sent six pictures and two pieces of sculpture to that famous exhibition, which placed her feet firmly on the topmost rung of the ladder. Her paintings were surrounded daily by admiring crowds, whilst the commission itself awarded her a medal of the first class."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.)

Rosa Bonheur Enters the Paris Salon

"Sheep and Lambs" by Rosa Bonheur

A lovely detail of "Sheep and Lambs"

"In 1841, when Rosa Bonheur was nineteen, she sent her first picture to the Salon, two common pet rabbits nibbling at carrots, and also a drawing of sheep and dogs. Both were accepted, but excited no comment. The following year, however, she sent three paintings and a piece of sculpture in terracotta which attracted considerable attention, especially one of the paintings called 'Effet du Soir sur un Paturage.'

In 1843 she was again represented, in painting by a picture of horses, and in sculpture by a bull, a powerful study in plaster. Her work now began to be noticed, and all her paintings were sold. This enabled her to go into the country and study closely from nature, with the result that she sent five pictures to the Salon in the following year, all of which deepened the favourable impression made by her previous exhibits.

Her father wrote, 'She has secured for herself a position far above the reach of the malignant criticism of cabal, and is independent of the worthless puffing to which many of her rivals, whom she has left behind, owe their notoriety... I should fear, if I were less convinced of the high character of her mind that she might suffer herself to be unduly elated.'

In the following year she was accorded a medal of the third class by the jury of the Salon. It was then the custom that recipients were obliged to go to the director of the Beaux-Arts who gave them their medals in the name of the King. Rosa Bonheur's father, who wished her to be independent and to rely entirely upon herself, sent her alone, and when the medal was given, with many compliments, she astonished the official by replying, 'Thank the King I beg you on my behalf, and have the kindness to add that I shall try to do better another time.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.)

Rosa Bonheur, Animal Studies

 

"Studies of a Sheep" by Rosa Bonheur

"A Grazing Sheep" by Rosa Bonheur

"In 1841 Raymond Bonheur married again, and the family removed to a part of Paris which was then surrounded by the country. It was here that Rosa Bonheur began to study animal life with a minuteness extraordinary in so young a girl. 

For several months she lodged with a peasant near Neuilly for the sole purpose of studying animals, their habits, and their movements. She declared that every animal had an individual character. Before even beginning to work upon the study of a horse, a dog, or a sheep, she made herself familiar with the anatomy and osteology of each one, even going so far as dissection, which shows how deeply she had become engrossed by her art, and she advised all animal painters to follow her example. 

When she returned to her father's house she received his permission to keep a sheep upon a small terrace, and for two years it served her as a model both for painting and modelling. She used at this time to make models in clay of animals, in order to gain a mastery of every line and every muscle, so that when she painted she had actual knowledge of form besides her acute observation. These models, when finished, she used to draw by candle light, which she said threw the shadows into higher relief."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.)

Rosa Bonheur, Art as a Career

"A White Horse" by Rosa Bonheur

"When Rosa's mother died Rosa was immediately sent to one of her aunts who placed her in a pension [boarding house] near the Champs Elysees, but the child could not brook the restricted life, and in a very short time returned to her father. It became clear to him that Rosa ought to be trained to earn her living, and so he apprenticed her to a dressmaker. But the result was no more fortunate than the pension, and at the end of twelve days the apprenticeship ended. Some friends who made heraldic paintings, kindly took Rosa in, and as her natural taste for working with colours at once showed itself, she was set to daub easy designs, even receiving a small money reward for her work. But her father did not wish to impose on them for too long a time and brought her back home.

One of the rooms of the Bonheurs' apartment had been transformed into a studio, and here the girl worked hard all day, drawing and painting with the hope of showing her father that her true vocation was art. One evening when he returned from his day of lesson-giving he found a picture of a bunch of cherries on the easel, the first picture that Rosa had painted from nature. 'It is very pretty,' he said to her, 'but now you must study seriously because you will become an artist. Her career may be said to have commenced from this moment.

Rosa was set to draw, and to draw continuously, either from still life in the studio, or some statue or picture at the Louvre, her father setting her a daily task. But she found that she was not sufficiently advanced to copy old masters, and threw herself into the work of the studio with the ardour and perseverance which were characteristic of her temperament. In later life she advised all beginners to steep themselves in the work of the old masters, adding that such is the true grammar of art."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.)

Rosa Bonheur, Art from the Start

"The Horse Fair" by Rosa Bonheur

"From her earliest infancy Rosa Bonheur showed signs of the talent that has placed her very high as a painter of animals. Before she could walk she would amuse herself for hours with a pencil and a piece of paper and writing of her childhood she herself said, 'I refused formally to learn to read, but before I was four years old I already had a passion for drawing, and I covered the white walls as high as I could reach with my shapeless sketches. What amused me also was to cut out subjects; they were always the same. To begin with I made long ribbons, then with my scissors I used to cut out, first a shepherd, then a dog, then a calf, then a sheep, and then a tree, invariably the same order. I spent many days over this pastime.'

She was born on March 16th, 1822, at Bordeaux, her father being a drawing-master, named Raymond Bonheur, and a pupil of Lacour. Her mother was a teacher of music, and both parents seemed to have inspired great affection their children, and to have transmitted artistic talent to each of their offspring, for although Rosa possessed it in the most marked degree, her two brothers Auguste and Isidore, and her sister Madame Peyrol, were all artists of merit.

In 1828 Rosa's father went to Paris in order to find a more remunerative position, remaining a year before his family joined him, and in the letters that passed between him and his wife there are constant references to Rosa's early bent. 'I cannot understand,' writes Madame Bonheur, 'why this child who has intelligence should have so much difficulty in learning. I believe that it is obstinacy; but she is very good. She has drawn a landscape which I send you.' And again, 'I cannot tell what Rosa will be, but of this I feel sure, she will be no ordinary woman.' Unfortunately the mother did not live to see the fulfillment of her prophecy, for she died in 1833, four years after the family had settled in Paris."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Rosa Bonheur" by Frank Hird.)

Charles Hawthorne, Observations

"The Fisherman's Daughter" by Charles Hawthorne

"Our metier is not paint and brushes, it's our ability to see."

 

"Realize the value of putting down your first impression quickly."

 

Charles Hawthorne on Landscapes

Landscape by Charles Hawthorne

"The weight and value of a work of art depends wholly on its big simplicity. We begin and end with the careful study of the great spots in relation one to another. Do the simple thing and do it well. Try to see large simple spots - do the obvious first. When you go out to paint and things mean only spots of color to you, you have your painter's eye with you. Make a house a note of color, make the blinds and windows a note of color, make the trees a note, the grass a note, the shadows also and make the sky keep away from it.

See if you can't simply put down spots of color and let the results take care of themselves. You have got to be able to see these spots come together without outline and let the outline come after. Look to the center of color spots and don't be so particular about where the edges come together.

Don't depend upon outline to make dark against light - it's all a matter of silhouettes. To paint a tree look at the sky in comparison. See the tree in relation to the sky, the house, the road. 

Don't see so many little things. Refuse to see details. You don't have to draw the whole town if you paint. Better put it down so that it sits in air than to make a better drawing without the vitality. Have a large general vision so you can discriminate. However, one has to be very careful what one says about drawing, for it isn't that I don't want you to bother with drawing but that I don't want you to do it at the expense of the other thing.

If you will only put a spot of color in the right relation to other spots, you will see how little drawing it takes to make form. Let color make form, do not make form and color it. Work with your color as if you were creating mass, like a sculptor with his clay. Interest yourself in the relation of one color to another. In this way your color rather than drawing creates form. The values rather than the drawing make a boat stay behind the piles of a wharf.

How many people pass this place every day and never see it! Once it is seen, painted, and put into a frame everyone will come to look at it. It's the artist's business,the painter's job to point out to the public the beauties of nature."

 

To be continued

 

(Excerpts from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Webster Hawthorne.) 

Charles Hawthorne, On Painting Still Life

"His First Voyage" by Charles Hawthorne

"This winter do some still life, and I don't mean pretty things like iridescent glass. Do still life because you cannot tell a story about it - paint something that isn't anything until it is painted well. Get stuff that is supposed to be ugly, like a pie plate or an old tin basin against a background that will bring out the beauty of the thing you see. Then try to do it, trying to work for quality of color.

The painting of still life gives one the widest range for study - a bottle is as serious a subject for portraiture as a person. In arranging, place things so they have color and so that you can see it well. If you cannot decide on color and values in the beginning, move your still life around until you get things simple so that you can see big relations.

Select one light thing against a dark thing - a kitchen utensil and a lemon cut in half - try for spots coming together. Don't look up at nature and consider an inch at a time. See what one big spot is in relation to the other big spots. Search always for more beautiful notes of color, don't search to put more things in. Study larger spots of color coming together - don't break objects up into many colors. Establish big general things.

Insist all the time on one spot being right relatively to another. That thought alone is worthwhile and when you put down one or two notes that are right, that's all that is necessary. You'd be surprised at how little work it takes to make a picture.

Have some fun with color. Take a dishpan, some bricks and tell the beauty of them. It would take the study out of the commonplace and and make it a work of art. Do still life and see the beauty you can get in it. There is something elevating in the painting of a side of beef so it can hang beside the Madonnas in the Louvre and hold its own through the centuries."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Webster Hawthorne.)

Charles Hawthorne, Painting the Figure Outside

"At the Seaside" by Charles Hawthorne

"My artist friends are surprised at my having the class paint a model out of doors, something which they consider extremely difficult. But I consider it the quickest way to get under your skin the idea of the way to paint everything - the mechanics of putting one spot of color next to another, the fundamental thing.

We paint the model out of doors because it detaches itself from other things and is easily seen, obvious - it is still life one cannot escape. The figure stands up and is seen solemnly and very beautifully against the background; it is not part of the landscape. Just four or five principal things to do - it is an ideal problem. 

Do not put in the features. The right spots of color will tell more about the appearance, the likeness of a person, than features or good drawing. Make it so that I could recognize the subject from the color alone, for color also is a likeness. Remember no amount of good drawing will pull you out if your colors are not true. The spot of color that a model makes against the landscape has much more to do with his character than you imagine. Do that and you have something to work with.

Don't be afraid of flesh, think of it as a note of color. See the greener note in the flesh, the solemnity that flesh has out of doors. Get it out of your mind that you are doing flesh out of doors, you're doing nature out of doors."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Harthorne on Painting" by Charles Hawthorne.) 

Charles Hawthorne on Painting

"The Window" by Charles Hawthorne

"It is beautifully simple, painting - all we have to do is to get the color notes in their proper relation. The juxtaposition of spots of color is the only way and he who sees that the finest is the greatest man. I want you to learn to see more beautifully, just as if you were studying music and tried to get the finer harmony more and more truly all the time.

The only way to learn to paint is by painting. To really study, you must start out with large tubes of paint and large palette and not stint in any way as far as materials go. If you look into the past of the successful painter you will find square miles of canvas behind him. It is work that counts, experience in seeing color. Painting is just getting one spot of color in relation to another spot of color - after you have covered acres of canvas you will know.

Don't try to be an artist all at once, be very much of a student. Be always searching, never settle to do something you've done before. Always be looking for the unexpected in nature- you can have no formulas for anything; search constantly. I don't know a better definition of an artist than one who is eternally curious. Every successful canvas has been painted from the point of view of a student, for a great painter is always a student.

Make notes that will help fasten your conception of beauty. The more you study in the right way, the more you progress.Each day's study makes you crazy to go back and do over and do better what you did the day before.

Do studies, not pictures. Know when you are licked - start another. Be alive, stop when your interest is lost. Put off finsih as it takes a lifetime - wait until later to try to finish things - make a lot of starts. It is so hard and long before a student comes to a realization that these few large simple spots in right relations are the most important things in the study of painting. They are the fundamentals of all painting."

To be continued

(Excerpts are from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Hawthorne.)

Charles Hawthorne on Beauty

"The Trousseau" by Charles Hawthorne

"Anything under the sun is beautiful if you have the vision - it is the seeing of the thing that makes it so. The world is waiting for men with vision - it is not interested in mere pictures. What people subconsciously are interested in is the expression of beauty, something that helps them though the humdrum day, something that shocks them out of themselves and something that makes them believe in the beauty and the glory of human existence.

The painter will never achieve this by merely painting pictures. The only way that he can appeal to humanity is in the guise of the high priest. He must show people more - more than they already see, and he must show them with so much human sympathy and understanding that they will recognize it as if they themselves had seen the beauty and the glory.

We go to art school and classes to learn to paint pictures, to learn our job. Our job is to be an artist, which is to be a poet, a preacher if you will, to be of some use in the world by adding to the sum total of beauty in it. 

We must teach ourselves to see the beauty of the ugly, to see the beauty of the commonplace. It is so much greater to make much out of little than to make little out of much - better to make a big thing out of a little subject than to make a little thing out of a big one."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Hawthorne.) 

Charles Hawthorne's Surprising Classes

Charles Hawthorne's Class on the Beach

"Perhaps something should be said about the actual conduct of the classes in Provincetown. The students were forced to concentrate on (to quote my father): 'the mechanics of putting one spot of color next to another - the fundamental thing.'

The problems were presented in an inescapably direct way. For example, a model would be posed on the beach, and the students would work with putty knives so that they could not be tempted to indicate the details of the model's face that they could not actually see under the hat in the blazing sunlight.

Also, as a means of making the student concentrate on the fundamental relationships of the main spots of color, they were urged not to finish, but to do as many studies as possible - a dozen or more - for the Saturday morning criticism, the high point of the week. In these four-hour marathons, my father used to pass judgment on as many as eight hundred to a thousand studies submitted by the hundred or more students, and cause amazement and consternation in the ranks when he would spot an occasional study that was turned on the wrong side, so that it showed one of the previous week's efforts.

On Friday mornings my father would paint for the class. Sometimes it would be a model on the beach, sometimes a portrait or a still life. These examples, greatly prized, were drawn for at the end of the summer.

Mudhead Figure Study by Charles Hawthorne

Several years after his death we had occasion to look over a good number of these studies, gathered from all corners of the continent. As we looked at them I was tremendously impressed - or better, impressed all over again - for since last seeing any of them I had acquired a boat and done a lot of sailing in the harbor. This had made me most conscious of the part the direction of the wind played on the general weather, the kind of day, and the quality of the atmosphere. Each study recreated a particular day so well (as well as the model!) that I could tell from which direction the wind was blowing when each one was painted. These quick sketches had always had a special place in my affections, but this quiet demonstration, in a field I now knew well, was a revelation."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Webster Hawthorne.)

To see an exhibit of these studies: https://www.juliehellergallery.com/mudheads

Charles Hawthorne, Provincetown

"The Girl in White" by Charles Hawthorne

"Probably Charles Hawthorne, more than any other one person, was responsible for the growth of Provincetown as an art center because of the success and popularity of the school. Originally attracted to its classes, many of the students have kept their close connection with the town even after becoming established painters in their own right.

In his "Notes" are many references to the part played by hard work in the development of a painter. No one ever practiced better what he preached, for he was always at work in his studio by eight o'clock, and the volume of work he produced was impressive. With all this he was a warm and enthusiastic companion because of his ability to enjoy life. He loved people, and convivial occasions were numerous in the household.

There were an amazing number of scholarships at the Cape Cod School of Art. Certainly the talent that assembled there each summer - sometimes only through extraordinary hardships - deserved them. Besides providing this large number of scholarships at his own school, he was instrumental in helping talented students in other schools, and also did such things as get up a purse to start off a gifted young African-American painter in Europe, since he would have no opportunity on this side of the Atlantic. To me, as his son, it is most heart-warming to discover, when I meet his former students, with what esteem and affection they still hold him."

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Webster Hawthorne.)

Charles Hawthorne, Student

"A Study in White" by Charles Hawthorne

Charles Hawthorne's son Joseph wrote: "My father started to study with William Merritt Chase at his Shinnecock summer school in 1896, and became his assistant the next year. I believe that it was as students there that my mother and father met. On the same Chase school literature that showed my father listed as assistant, the name of Miss Ethel M. Campbell (the future Mrs. Hawthorne) appeared as corresponding secretary. 

There at Shinnecock he lived in a shack on the beach where fishermen stowed their gear. Thirty years later we received a pheasant at Christmas from one of those fishermen, turned gamekeeper, who had seen an announcement of a national prize won by my father. This is one example of his ability to make friends. His acquaintance covered a tremendous range of diverse personalities.

His fascination with the sea and the people who worked and lived by it led him to Holland in 1898. Thenext year he went to Provincetown. There he found not only an unspoiled fishing village with spectacular contrasts of sand, sea and sky, but also a clarity of atmosphere and a unique quality of light."

To be continued

(Excerpts are from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Webster Hawthorne.)

Charles W. Hawthorne, Humble Beginnings

"Refining Oil" by Charles W. Hawthorne

"Charles W. Hawthorne, was the son of a sea captain, and grew up in the seaport town of Richmond, Maine. Money was scarce during his boyhood there. He put in long hours cutting ice in the river but he seemed always to have known that he wanted to become a painter.

He went to New York in 1890 at the age of eighteen, worked days in a stained glass factory and studied at night at the Art Students League. George de Forest Brush and Frank Vincent Dumond were his early teachers.

To illustrate how precarious existence was for him in those days, he told of having been notified of an award which was to be given him at a formal reception. To his dismay he realized that he had no presentable shirt. Lacking funds to buy one, he ingeniously used quick-drying china white paint to cover his cuffs and shirt front. Thus attired, he claimed his prize with aplomb."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Webster Hawthorne.) 

Mariano Fortuny, Gone Too Soon

"Hollyhocks" by Mariano Fortuny

"Mariano Fortuny left Portici on the 1st of November, and arrived at Rome on the 6th. The day after he took his pen to give us news of himself. A few days after, the 14th, he felt unwell and soon went to bed.

It was thought his indisposition was but a slight one, and he himself did not suspect the gravity of his case. He made, without leaving his bed, some pen drawings, particularly some after the casts of Beethoven. His illness was, however, very serious. It was the return of an attack of pernicious fever, from the ill effect of which he had already suffered in 1869, and which, was complicated by ulceration of the stomach.

However, the physicians did not yet despair, but unhappily the disease rapidly grew worse, notwithstanding large doses of quinine, and Fortuny died on the 21st of November, 1874, at six o'clock in the evening. The news of the death of the great artist was as a thunderbolt in the city.

He was so beloved that no one could believe in such a loss. It was a general mourning. All contended for the sad honor of bearing the coffin to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, and thence to the cemetery of San Lorenzo Fuori. The Syndic of Rome, the Spanish Ambassador, the Director of the Academy of France, and the Director of the Academy of Naples, were selected for pall bearers.

Many artists, and I speak of those who hold the first rank, share their appreciation, and, doubtless, posterity will confirm the judgment they have given of one of the most extraordinary painters that ever lived."

 Excerpted from "Life of Fortuny with His Works and Correspondence" by Charles Davillier, 1885.

Mariano Fortuny, The Beach at Portici

"Beach at Portici" by Mariano Fortuny

"To the Baron Davillier from Mariano Fortuny:

'My Dear Friend, I regret much to learn that you have been suffering, and that I have not been in Paris to keep you company. I could at least distract you by prattling about old curiosities. On the subject of my works, I will speak only of my picture which is 1 metre, 37 centimetres long by 0m 72 high. There are women on the grass, bathers who are taking headers into the waves, the ruins of an old castle, the walls of a garden, the entrance into a village, etc., etc. All that in bright sunlight, not a single ray omitted. Everything is fair and gay, and how could it be otherwise, since we have so happily passed our summer. My picture is not yet finished. It wants a month's work yet.

I have commenced another, a smaller one with portraits of my two children, and besides a number of detached sketches, as well as two aquarelles - one tolerable, the other bad. I have in view several other things. As to business matters, my prospects look well. I am already offered 75,000 francs for the picture of 'The Beach at Portici.' There are two bidders. One of them is here from Paris, and the other has written to me [from America].'"

Recently Fortuny's "Beach at Portici" was acquired by the Meadows Museum in Dallas on January 19, 2018, which gives the picture's history after the artist's death. "In the artist's possession at the time of his death, 'Beach at Portici' was acquired by the prominent New York collector Alexander Turney Stewart in 1875, and remained with Stewart's heirs on the East Coast until the Meadows acquired it. From June 24 through September 23, it is the subject of a focused exhibition, "At the Beach: Mariano Fortuny y Marsal and William Merritt Chase,' where it will be paired with Chase's 'Idle Hours.' Chase knew Fortuny's work well and greatly admired it." 

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Life of Fortuny with His Works and Correspondence" by Charles Davillier, 1885.)

Mariano Fortuny in London

"The Rare Vase" by Mariano Fortuny

"Mariano Fortuny had invited Charles Davillier, the author of this book, to spend a week in London with him. Davillier wrote of the trip: "Our time was to be devoted to monuments, museums, and studies of fashion. A happy chance meeting led to a visit with Millais, who received his young brother in art with the liveliest sympathy and with that frankness which is one of the bright sides of the English character. The celebrated painter, even exacted from us the promise of another visit for the year following - which much pleased Fortuny. He also wished to see two painters he had known at Rome, Alma Tadema and Leighton, but unfortunately they were not at home.

Fortuny had almost constantly, according to his habit, his pencil in his hand. We went to the British Museum, South Kensington, the Tower and the Indian Museum. He found many things that interested him much, especially arms and armor and he also quickly filled his album. The Zoological Garden so much interested Fortuny that we passed a whole day there where he found many subjects for studies and made a delicious sketch of a group of babies, fresh and rosy, mounted on a huge elephant. He purposed later to make a picture of it.

After having passed part of an evening at the theatre, we retired to our little chamber with two beds, exhausted with fatigue, which did not prevent our talking until late in the night. He made me the confidant of his dreams for the future. He spoke of putting himself safe above want of the absolute necessities of life, and to make for himself an independence that would allow him to paint what he would, as he understood it. He had a true passion for the 15th century, all the beauty of which he fully comprehended and intended thereafter to attack subjects belonging to this interesting epoch. He particularly spoke to me of a Borgian supper and other scenes, borrowed from the time of the Italian Renaissance.

Fortuny was delighted with his trip to London, one which we would renew the following year. Some days later he started to return to Rome, and I accompanied him as far as the Lyons depot, together with his brother-in-law, Raymundo, and we embraced him just as the train was starting, far from thinking we should never again see a friend we loved so much."

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Life of Fortuny with His Works and Correspondence" by Charles Davillier, 1885.) 

Mariano Fortuny Never Exhibited

"Antiquaries" by Mariano Fortuny

"It is known that Fortuny never exhibited. The true reason which kept him from exhibiting was his natural modesty, increased by the dread of notoriety. Theophile Gautier, poet, writer, and art and literary critic, explained: 'If exhibited at the Salon, as we hoped they would have been, his paintings and watercolors would have made for him in the course of a few days a popular reputation, but the young painter, very wrongly we think, did not wish to venture into this great crowd of paintings, not from pride but from true modesty, and the nervous sensitiveness of an artist that would be embarrassed with the thought that during the whole period of the exhibition he, through his works, would be liable to the contradictory judgments of the crowd.'

Fortuny has had the happiness, so rare today, of freely blooming in a mysterious half light, distant from circles where criticism flourishes. No advice, however good, affected his first inspiration. He painted what pleased him, and not having behind an eye armed as with a magnifying glass or spectacles, which curiously watches the growing work and finds fault with it, even before it is finished.

The thought of making a sensation at the exhibition, the torment of young painters, never occupied his mind, and he never troubled himself to learn what was the style of the day, or what kind of subject was in fashion. In fact, it was many others who copied Fortuny's style."

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Life of Fortuny with His Works and Correspondence" by Charles Davillier, 1885.)