Types of Compositions from "Composition of Outdoor Painting" by Edgar Payne

"A general list of the principal forms or stems of composition are described as:

- The Steelyard:

- The Balance Scale

- The Circle or O

- The S or Compound Curve

- The Pyramid or Triangle

- The Cross

- The Radiating Line

- The Ell or Rectangular

- The Suspended Steelyard

- The Three Spot

- The Group Mass

- The Diagonal Line 

- The Tunnel

- The Silhouette

- The Pattern

"This listing is at random and not necessarily by the importance of each type. In studying composition we should not consider one approach better than another but study and experiment with each and every one. At the same time it is well to improvise without considering any particular form of arrangement."

The Painting Process of Edgar Payne

"Canyon de Chelly" by Edgar Payne

In Evelyn Payne's addenda to "Compositions in Outdoor Painting," she lays out her father's painting process:

1. The first step in Edgar Payne's method was to select and arrange the elements of the scene he wished to use. When he had decided what the main subject was to be, he then tried out differing compositions. He did not draw many of these when working outdoors sketching, but went through the process mentally. In planning studio paintings he made many pencil sketches, often in the evening, trying out different compositions and planning the next day's painting.
   
   
2. In the field he sometimes used a little cardboard frame to view a part of the scene and to help select and visualize the composition. Either in the field or in the studio, the second step was to draw the scene on canvas with charcoal, sometimes very sketchily, sometimes in some detail, depending on the subject, with indications of darker areas.
   
   
3. The third step was to establish the pattern of darks and lights (values) by painting a wash or stain (often thin red ochre) over the dark or shadowed areas.
   
   
4. Fourth, working all over the canvas, he used thin paint to establish the color scheme.
   
   
5. Fifth, thicker pigment was applied to the dark areas in hues that would be appropriate for the shadowed places. Then applying heavier paint, he gave attention to the solidity of forms, 'modeling.' He worked to some extent from dark to light, as is traditional in oil painting, but also tended to work all over the canvas to maintain the relationships between dark and light, warm and cool, in accordance with the color scheme he had in mind, leaving only the highlights for the last.
   
   
   

Addenda to "Composition on Outdoor Painting" by Edgar Payne

"Breton Boats" by Edgar Payne

Edgar Payne's daughter, Evelyn, wrote an addenda to her father's book, "Composition on Outdoor Painting." Here are a few excerpts from it:

"My parents shared many basic attitudes towards art, although their styles were very different. My mother was a good teacher, articulate and well organized in terms of preparing lessons on the basic principle. My father found teaching difficult, and did not take students until the Great Depression. He taught by demonstration, and took students outdoors and made suggestions to them individually.

Both of my parents expressed exasperation with beginners who expected to go out on one or two sketching trips and come back with finished works of art. It was the process, the learning, even the struggle that was to them more important than the product. My father considered his color sketches made in the field as studies for his own use. He did not sign or sell them as a rule, although many are highly regarded today."

"A favorite story about my dad is the account of a time when he was out sketching, far from any sign of habitation. He was surprised to find a man behind him, watching. Then the man said, 'Why, that's nuthin' but puttin' on daubs!' A little later the man shook his head and said, 'But you sure gotta know where to put them daubs!' and walked away."

To be continued

Quotes on Composition from "Composition of Outdoor Painting" by Edgar Payne

"Blue Canyon" by Edgar Payne

"A fine painting is a composite of all its factors and influences.  Bringing these together, to form this composite, creates the process of composing. Hence the study of composition is a matter of studying art and all of its factors and influences."

 "Compositional stems in pictures serve the same purpose as armatures in sculpture... With iron pipe and wire, the sculptor builds his central supporting framework, indicating the proportions and direction of the main lines or angles of the plan. To this he adds the principal masses, and finally the smaller planes or more subtle modeling... As a matter of fact, in sculpture this stem is a concrete reality, while in painting merely its principle is observed."

"It is a very good practice for every student to make a collection of reproductions of paintings; hundreds can be accumulated. A large variety of compositional plans is a liberal education to anyone studying art. Seeing the pictorial ideas of others gives confidence and encouragement, and a respect for the profession of artist."

"The first and last thing to consider is the instinctive feeling for balance. The more this can be exercised, the more pleasing will be the harmony."

"Compositional stems should be considered as a means to an end rather than an objective in themselves. Therefore, they should be valued only for their place and limitations - then utilized with a happy anticipation of their worth and possibilities."

To be continued

More Quotes on Rhythm from "Composition of Outdoor Painting" by Edgar Payne

"Pack Train in the High Sierras" by Edgar Payne

"Rhythm being an attribute of music, is felt in the recurrence of similar sounds, contrasts and subtle nuances of near tones. Poetry, too, must have rhythm. In languages, also, this quality may be felt. For instance, Spanish has beautiful undulation and repetition - a continuity of certain near evenness, broken or interspersed with the contrasts of climaxes and anti-climaxes."

"Painting is like handwriting - the grace and swing in curves, ovals, and the general rhythm in the line of written words is possible only when the hand easily and confidently makes the strokes."

"The significance of line has much to do with rhythm in painting. Lengthy vertical and horizontal straight lines not opposed or interrupted are always more or less static. Curved lines contribute more to rhythmic feeling than any other type of line. Yet a curved line generally needs opposition by at least a few straight lines." 

"The recurrence of contrasts, accents, extreme values or color; the repetitions of closely-related values and color are also some of the visual factors in the picture which cause rhythmic feeling."

To be continued

 

Quotes on Rythym from "Composition of Outdoor Painting" by Edgar Payne

"Eucalyptus Grove" by Edgar Payne

"Rhythm comes mainly from a receptive state of mind, which is usually brought about by what is seen and felt. To feel the spirit of animate and inanimate nature - the rhythm of life and the universe... Sometimes a view will reveal a lazy stream winding through gently moving foliage, with distant meadows, shadowless hills, all perhaps enveloped in hazy atmosphere. Here is peace and quietude. The mood of nature becomes our mood."

"Nature has visual rhythm in form, line, color and movement."

"Rhythmic feeling when observing nature is caused by seeing both the moving and stationary parts. In creating the proper state of mind to feel rhythm, vision and appreciation must be employed... The semi-stationary quality of substance in foliage is balanced by the more rigid limbs and the strong foundation in the attachment of the trunk in the ground. This accents the grace and movement felt in the texture of loose foliage and small twigs as they respond to the varying strength of the breezes... The symmetry in the banks of streams and slow or swift-moving water gives an example of nature's rhythm."

"Whether the movement of clouds is seen or felt, there is always a certain rhythmic quality in them... Here is a fine example of the need for balancing of moving impermanent masses by the more stationary elements. Some of the more stationary ground parts are essential."

"Rhythm may be said to be the lubricating element in pictorial composition. A sort of easy co-ordination of time and circumstances is needed to relax the mind in order to sense nobility and visual quality in nature and relate this in the visual parts on the canvas... As the dancer uses rhythm to integrate time, space and movement, so too, does the painter utilize this element to integrate the factors in art."

To be continued

 

Quotes on Mountains and Clouds from "Composition of Outdoor Painting" by Edgar Payne

 

"Canyon de Chelly" by Edgar Payne

 

"High Sierra" by Edgar Payne

"If we decide to make a specialty of painting hill or mountain subjects, we should study their characteristic forms as the figure painter studies the human figure. Height is one of the strongest points in hills or mountains. They are also massive and suggest solidity and permanence. These characteristics should be brought out when composing such subjects."

"One other important thing to remember when composing hills and mountains is that form extends from their top crests towards the painter as well as to the right and left of their peaks. Picturing this foreshortening is not an easy matter. The ridges and canyons are generally irregular and their form deceptive. Their general appearance is often like an upright flat place. The artist must use considerable ingenuity to foreshorten form, arrange values and color to create recession in hill and mountain pictures."

"There used to be a rule that wherever clouds are used in the composition in considerable quantities, their shadows should be placed on some part of the picture, and there is no laudable reason why this rule cannot be applied today."

"By shadowing the ground, placing the horizon or land contours low and keeping the proportions unequal are the main postulates in cloud compositions." 

To be continued

Quotes from "Composition of Outdoor Painting" by Edgar Payne, Pt. 2

 "The point to be emphasized is, if big simple masses are naturally presented, the composing is simplified and made easier."

"The idea in any composing is to get the work to a sense of completion as soon as possible and then proceed with a feeling that the work may be left off at any time. As a matter of fact, many good pictures are ruined by constant striving to make them better. Over-modeling and accenting detail or highlights is an over-influence of realism."

"There is always a place to stop painting. This is the point where the maximum quality has been achieved. This statement is easily enough made, but judging when this point is reached is quite a different matter. Many artists have the good sense to quit at the right time; others need to be told. THis gives rise to the old saying that it takes two to make a picture; one to do the work, the other to stop him before he spoils it."

"The practice of painting in a broad impressionistic manner is best brought out with considerable preliminary planning, then painting the picture rapidly."

To be continued

Quotes on Choosing a Subject from "Composition of Outdoor Painting" by Edgar Payne

"The High Sierras" by Edgar Payne

Recently I've been digesting "Composition of Outdoor Painting" by artist Edgar Payne (while sitting indoors, waiting for my husband as he does his physical therapy). More than once in a while, I stop and highlight one of Payne's thought-provoking insights, and these are what I'd like to share with you in the next few days:

• William M. Chase admonished his students to develop appreciation, have high ideals, select inspiring motives, paint in a grand style, and never be satisfied with reaching for a mere star but for the greatest one.
  
  
• While it is necessary that the painter look for visual qualities in nature, he needs also to sense attributes which are beyond vision. The power is given to him to feel the mystery and charm of fleeting clouds; the immensity and depth of blue skies and atmospheric distances; the grace and rhythm of living and expanding trees and other growths; the nobility, grandeur and strength of mighty peaks; the endless movement and vitality of the sea and its forms. All these and many more offer unlimited material for worthy ideas. The motive selected should not include anything that disturbs the complete ideology of beauty or pure aesthetic pleasure.
  
  
• When approaching nature for depiction, the primary consideration is the station point which will give the best translation of the motive. To get a proper view and idea of any subject, one should study it from several angles. The idea is to locate the easel at a point which will reveal desirable variations, not only of the size of masses but quality in line, values and color.
  
  
• The location of the easel should be in a position where the shadowed parts and lighted areas will suggest the proper measures, that is, the unequal distribution of light and dark.
   

Honore Daumier: Lithographs and Paintings

"The Third-class Railway Carriage"
by Honore Daumier

"All told, some 4,500 lithographs carry the initials H.D.; prints that have set the high-water mark for all subsequent workers on stone - and you can still buy them for a few dollars. Honore Daumier's oils are few and far between, but intrinsically and in terms of the market, almost beyond price. 

One of the best, 'The Third-class Railway Carriage' at the Metropolitan Museum, and one of several versions of the subject, is about as profound a painting as the world has seen in the last hundred years. It represents his models going about their daily business; three seats in a compartment, with two women in the first, one suckling a baby, the other, very old with a sleeping boy at her side; and in the background rows of passengers, some full-face, some in profile, several in back view. Here are models habitually considered and pondered over, filled with pity and magnanimity, with the human substance poured into them by a great soul; here in plain faces and bodies as solid as clay, we have the story of the dreariness of one aspect of French life, and the portraits of God's creatures fashioned of the stuff that endures forever."

(Excerpts from "Artists and Their Models" by Thomas Craven.)

Honore Daumier: Subject Matter

"Grand Staircase of the Palace of Justice"
by Honore Daumier

"Honore Daumier brought his great work to the completion before the hocus-pocus of modernism and the exploitation of claptrap had alienated art from humanity. In some respects he was unique among Frenchmen. He hired no models to pose for him. 'The people of Paris going about their business are my models,' he said, and he studied their occupational attitudes; dug into their battered souls; observed the lines and planes that hardships had written in their faces and the sculptural twist of their bodies as they washed clothes or swept the streets. His subject matter was gathered from the universal aspects of French life, and he painted with a depth of feeling conspicuously missing in French art.

For example, let us look at one of his most cherished models, the lawyer. As an usher in the courts, he had watched the lawyers perform, and had said, 'There is nothing in the world more fascinating than the mouth of a lawyer in operation.' He had seen shysters puffing out hypocritical arguments in the defense of crooks and felons, making justice a snide thing; and after recording his observations in caricatures of wax, had hurried to his garret to amplify them in lithography. 

As his art matured, he put the lawyers in his magazine cartoons, and in his independents studies. The lawyer did something to Daumier's soul and he, reciprocating, did something to them, and the interaction, combined with years of technical knowledge, produced the work of art, the created lawyer who is indisputably a Daumier job."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Artists and Their Models" by Thomas Craven.)

Honore Daumier: Cartooning

 

"Gargantua" by Honore Daumier*

"Honore Daumier turned his heavy artillery on the Orleans politicians, and each week, when his cartoon appeared, ministers of state shook in their boots. After taking a shot at King Louis-Philippe, Daumier was locked up, but he bore his sentence cheerfully and on his release, proceeded in exactly the same direction. When his paper folded, he went to another, and to his death, earned his bread by cartooning.

He lived in an old house on the Quai d'Anjou in the most ancient quarter of the city with his wife, Marie, a seamstress. In 1848, the year of his marriage, he began to paint in oils and his canvases, though rejected by official juries, won the admiration of the best men in Paris. He derived no money from his oils and to keep alive depended on his lithographs, sometimes slaving at eight stones simultaneously to earn a brief interlude for painting. At the end of the day, sitting by his window above the Seine, he would fix his tired eyes on the boats, the fishermen, the laundresses and poor mothers scrubbing children, and he would remark to himself, 'I have my art to comfort me, but what have these wretched men and women to live for?'

His friends were the celebrities of Paris - Delacroix, Courbet, Baudelaire, and Gautier - but he did not seek them. They assembled in his humble quarters in the spirit of homage, sat on the floor because there were no chairs, smoked and drank beer together. They knew who was the great man among them. One night, while Daumier was busy with his lithographs, a remark was passed. 'Isn't it too bad,' the speaker asked, 'that old Daumier has to work for a living?' Overhearing the comment, Daumier turned, straightened up, and with a toss of his magnificent head, replied very slowly, underlining each word. 'It isn't too bad that I have to work,' he said. 'The trouble is that I have to work too hard, for my eyes are getting pretty bad. But I must remind you kind-hearted gentlemen of something: you have an income - but I have a public. And I'll take the public.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Famous Artists and Their Models" by Thomas Craven.) 

* "Probably the most famous of Daumier’s caricatures was one he completed in 1831, entitled 'Gargantua' (see above). It was one of the first major political lithographs completed by Daumier. In the work, we see King Louis-Philippe seated on his high throne, which is actually a giant commode!  It is an unflattering caricature of the monarch but this pear-shaped head was Daumier’s constant caricature depiction of Louis-Philippe.  From the king’s mouth runs a stepping board to the ground on which the servants carry the sacks of money which, on reaching the top, tip into the king’s mouth.  Daumier is portraying the king as a devourer of his subjects’ hard-earned money." https://mydailyartdisplay.uk/2013/11/20/honore-daumier-lithographs-and-caricatures/

Honore Daumier: Humble Beginnings

"The Print Collector" by Honore Daumier

"Honore Daumier was born in Marseilles in 1808 and came to Paris as a child when his father, an excellent glazier but a mediocre poet, hoped vaguely to gain recognition in the world of letters. The recognition was denied him and the Daumiers, desperately poor, allowed their son to take his destiny in own hands and make what he could of it. There was no need to lie awake at night worrying about the boy: he was sure of himself from his seventh year and his life, though hard and materially less profitable than a hod carrier's, was artistically rich and satisfactory.

Honore began to draw before he learned the secrets of the streets, and hating formal training, had the best education open to a boy of his resolution - the gutter. He grew up in the streets, and to mitigate the sting of poverty, roamed the Louvre, looking at pictures. In middle-age, a famous man, he made a lithograph of a party of visitors in the big museum of art: two pedagogues shepherding groups of helpless children. One says to the other: 'You take yours on this side, and I'll do the other, and we'll finish the room in a jiffy.'

Nobody told him what pictures to admire. Nobody tried to impress him with a little learning. He was on his own, and naturally, was attracted to the works of art containing something of himself - to Rembrandt who binds together all unfortunate souls and to the sculptures of Michelangelo for there was, as Balzac pointed out, 'much of Michelangelo in the boy.' The art student from the gutter made sketches in emulation of his favorites, and from the sketches, little modelings in clay or wax which hinted of the power to come.

For a time he was an usher at court, which meant that he wore a black gown and conducted idlers to their seats to watch the behavior of the law. Next, he was a bookseller's drudge and after that a professional artist. Before he was twenty he had somehow mastered lithography and had published in this medium a series of pictures which, for draftsmanship and characterization, are unexcelled in French art. His work caught the eye of the editor of a radical sheet, and he joined the staff, at twenty-one, on the promise of unlimited freedom."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Famous Artists and Their Models" by Thomas Cravens.)

Patience Wright: Postrevolutionary Plans

Illustration of Wright modelling a
waxwork head in "Wonderful Magazine"

"Patience Write saw a great future for herself in America, a new nation in need of icons, and wrote to George Washington that she hoped to make a wax portrait of him, based on her son Joseph's study. Washington replied that it would be 'an honor done me and if your inclination to return to this country should overcome other considerations, youwill no doubt, meet a welcome reception from your numerous friends; among who, I should be proud to see a person so universally celebrated; and on whom Nature has bestowed such rare and uncommon gifts.' Using this letter as a reference, she now began to drum up business seeking to 'make the likeness of the five gentlemen who assisted at the signing of the peace that put an end to so bloody and dreadful a war.'

"While laying plans for a grand finale to her career, Wright kept in touch with John Adams, now the American ambassador in London. She haunted the embassy, supplying Adams with inside tips about trade with Ireland and other tidbits. It was on returning from such a visit in 1786 that she fell and subsequently died of the injuries at age sixty-one.

Wright's flamboyant personality threatens to overshadow her art, yet according to contemporary accounts the realism of her figures was extraordinary. The sculptor sent many pieces to her sister Rachel, which were later bought by an exhibitor who showed them with his own work until a fire destroyed them. Only two of the fifty-five perishable waxes remain. Even formerly attributed small wax portrait medallions have since been reattributed - the one of George Washington to her son Joseph.

Only an authenticated full-length figure of William Pitt in Westminster Abbey's Islip Chapel remains to give a substantial idea of her style and working methods. When the statue was cleaned in 1935, the keeper of the muniments of the Abbey found the realism 'striking and convincing' - even the hands were 'veined and tinted by coloured underslips with hairs painted on the surface.' The wax head is attached to a wooden trunk with cardboard and glue-filled papier-mache strips, and the forearms are also cardboard and glue. The figure is supported at the back by an iron that screws into the wooden trunk.

A legend in the United States and England, Wright received obituaries that claimed her for both lands. The 'New York Daily Advertiser' wrote on 16 May: 'America has lost in... the celebrated Mrs. Wright... a warm and sincere friend, as well as one of her first ornaments to the arts... Those brave fellows who during the late war were fortunate enough to escape from the arms of tyranny and take sanctuary under her roof, will join us in lamenting her loss.'"

(Excerpts from "American Women Sculptors" by Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein.) 

Patience Wright: Spy

Lifesize waxwork of "William Pitt"
by Patience Wright

"Patience Wright's reputation as one of the 'lions of London' was soon threatened, however. War was imminent, and as an ardent patriot, Wright used the waxworks as a rendezvous for plotters, a place where military information could be wormed out of visitors and sent in hastily scribbled letters to Franklin, Adams, and others - or stuffed into wax heads and sent across the sea to her sister Rachel in the States. After the Boston Tea Party she sent information to Lord Chatham that helped him support the American cause in Parliament.

The value of most of this amateur spying is dubious, but Wright was certainly effective in her efforts to help a number of endangered Americans. Although she was tolerated for a while by the Crown, Wright soon overstepped the bounds. According to several accounts, she stamped into the palace after the battles of Lexington and Concord and berated the king for his oppressive policies. At a public gathering she announced that the Americans could never be defeated.

The laudatory articles in the newspapers stopped abruptly; her movements were closely watched and her correspondence intercepted. The political climate was so warm that Wright wrote to Franklin in Paris:

'I have moved from Pall mall with the full Perpose of mind to settel my afair and get Ready for my Return to america... I shall take France in my way and call at Parris where I hope to have the Pleaser of seeing my old american Friends - and take off some of your cappatal Bustos in wax. England will very soon be no longer a pattron for artists. The Ingeneous must flye to the Land of Pease & Liberty... I beg the favr of you to Recommend my Performans. Yr. old Friend, P. Wright'

In spite of this, after the American victory, Wright returned to London and lived quietly with her daughter and son-in-law, distinguished portrait painter John Hoppner."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "American Women Sculptors" by Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein.)

Patience Wright: Taking London by Storm

Profile bust of Benjamin Franklin
attributed to Patience Wright, ca. 1775

"Patience Wright sailed to England in 1772, intent upon making a name for herself in the great center of art and power. Bearing a letter from Benjamin Franklin's sister, she visited the statesman and showed him a bust of his old friend Cadwallader Colden. Franklin, astonished and delighted, consented to pose for a bust. He wrote back to his sister saying, 'She has shown me some of her work which appears extraordinary. I shall recommend her among my friends if she chooses to work here.'

Indeed Patience chose the best part of town near Buckingham Palace, amidst the ateliers of such renowned artists as the American, Benjamin West, painter to the king and a Quaker, who soon became her friend. Lesley Parker wrote, 'She could not have made a more propitious move. In the metropolis of empire she felt at home and established herself immediately as a personality to be reckoned with. Tall, broad of beam, with sharp features and a sharp tongue, she brought to the precious society of the time an arresting candour and zealous hospitality.'

To the sophisticated nobility who began to crowd into her exhibition rooms to see her marvelous waxworks, she was a droll original who brought to their jaded world a fresh vision of an Arcadian land. Even the liberties she took - kissing the men on both cheeks in typical Quaker greeting or speaking to her 'betters' as equals - were greeted with amusement as the symbols of a new order of being.

But her exhibition was more than a sensational sideshow - it was something of a propaganda statement. In addition to the portrait of Franklin, Wright modeled several Britons sympathetic to the American cause: William Pitt, who opposed the Stamp Act; Lady Macaulay, another supporter of the colonies; Viscount Augustus Keppel, a British admiral opposed to the American war; and the Prince of Wales, who was hostile to his father.

Be that as it may, the King and Queen induced her to do their portraits as well. Soon she was striding in and out of Buckingham House, modeling the king and queen in wax and addressing them as 'George' and 'Charlotte.' The appearance of the royal busts in her exhibition gave it the ultimate cachet."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "American Women Sculptors" by Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein.)

Patience Wright: Marriage

"Patience Lovell Wright" by Robert Edge Pine

 "By 1748, Patience Wright was back home in 'straitened circumstances' and, acceding to custom and necessity, married Joseph Wright, 'a substantial Quaker, who had nothing but Age and Money to recommend himself to her Favour.' They settled down in a house in Bordentown which is still standing. 'This Connection, however, enabled her to buy such materials as she wanted and to pursue the Bent of her Genius; and while the old Gentleman produced her four living Children, she modelled him an hundred in Clay, but not one to his taste.' Mr. Wright evidently disapproved of his wife's messy habit of modeling.

Patience bore a son, Joseph, and three daughters. Her once prosperous husband was now working as a cooper and living in Philadelphia when he died in 1769, leaving behind a peculiar will. He left his small estate to the children but willed her the house in Bordentown on condition that she raise and educate them. Now a forty-four-year-old widow with children to raise, Wright decided to use her lifelong hobby as a means of support. She and her widowed sister, Rachel Wells, who was already modeling portraits in wax, set up a waxworks show and were soon touring the colonies with it, traveling to Boston, Charleston, and other cities.

No ordinary exhibition, it was innovative for its time. While it was considered 'lower-class' than sculpting with bronze or stone, it was cheaper to manufacture and gave the sculptures a more life-like quality. Wright sculpted the hands and the faces of her sitters in wax, created a metal frame, attached the wax appendages, and dressed the wax/metal mannequin in clothes provided by the sitter. These sculptures and busts were life-size and fascinated the local population who visited her waxworks in Philadelphia and New York City. 

After moving to Queen Street in New York City, Wright returned from a business errand one day in 1771 to discover that her children had accidentally set fire to the house, destroying almost all her work. Diligently, the two sisters repaired or replaced the work, which was acclaimed by the 'New York Gazette,' as showing 'superior skill and judgment.'" All of this served to precipitate a significant change in the days to come.

To be continued

(Excerpts from "American Women Sculptors" by Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein and "Patience L. Wright" from a page on the American Battlefield Trust site
.)

Patience Wright: America's First Professional Sculptor

Framed wax bust of Washington, circa 1864,
by Patience Wright

"Patience Wright (1725-1786), considered by many to be America's first professional sculptor, was so highly regarded that the following lines about her were part of an epic poem by Joel Barlow dedicated to the new nation:

'See Wright's fair hands the livelier fire control,
In waxen forms she breathes impassion'd soul...
Grief, rage and fear beneath her fingers start,
Roll the wild eye and pour the bursting heart.'

Freely associating with men of power, demanding a role in the artistic, social and political structure, an expert at publicity and self-promotion, she made her way by sheer force of personality as well as exceptional talent. 

Born in Oyster Bay, Long Island, the fifth daughter of a prosperous Quaker farmer, John Lovell and his wife, Patience, she moved to Bordentown, New Jersey, with them when she was four. Lovell raised ten daughters and one son in accordance with the rather extreme religious principles of an obscure theologian, Thomas Tryon. A vegetarian who was opposed to the taking of animal life (the Lovells wore wooden shoes rather than leather), he insisted that the girls go veiled to protect them from defilement and that they dress in white clothing from head to toe as a symbol of 'temperance and innocency.'

According to Patience, it was in response to this color-drained and sensually repressed early experience that she and her sisters rebelled by secretly engaging in bouts of colorful painting, using natural pigments such as berry juice. and despite her community's injunction against 'graven images.' Patience began to model small figures from bread dough and local clay at an early age.

Her family, however, was not devoid of links with the art world. One of her Oyster Bay cousins became an outstanding colonial portrait painter and may have been her escort when, in 1745 at the age of twenty, she 'became a little disobedient' and ran away from her strict family to Philadelphia in order to see the dazzling works of art she had heard existed in that city. It was also there that she tasted meat for the first time."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "American Women Sculptors" by Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein.)

Bartolome Murillo: Death

"Nicolas Omazur" by Bartolome Murillo

"In 1682 Bartolome Murillo was sixty-four years of age. He was possessed of a sufficiency of this world's good, and a reputation second to that of no painter in Spain. Still an almost passionate love of Seville remained one of his strongest characteristics. It must, therefore, have been his sympathy with and affection for his friends the Franciscans that induced him to accept an offer to visit Cadiz and paint five pictures for the church of the Capuchin Friars.

He was engaged upon this work when he met with the accident which caused his death. He had almost completed the principal group of figures and was mounting a scaffolding to reach the upper part of his canvas when he stumbled so violently as to cause a rupture in the intestines. We are told that the natural modesty of the master deterred him from revealing the nature of the injury. His reticence cost him his life.

He was brought home to Seville, where he grew rapidly worse. His notary received instructions to draw up his will, but at six o-clock on the evening of the same day, the 3rd of April, 1682, and before he could sign the will, he expired. His friend and patron, Justino Neve, held him in his arms when the end came, and beside his deathbed was his second son, Gaspar Esteban Murillo, and his pupil, Pedro Nunez de Villavicencio.

During the long days of his painful illness Murillo had himself carried into his parish church of Santa Cruz. Here he performed his devotions before Pedro Campana's powerful painting of the 'Descent from the Cross,' which hung over the altar. It was Murillo's wish that his body should be laid beneath this picture, and thither it was conveyed on the day after his decease. 

His funeral was celebrated with great pomp, the bier being borne by two marquesses and four knights, and attended by a great concourse of people of all ranks, who loved and esteemed the great painter. At last in 1864, a bronze statue of Murillo was placed in the Plaza del Museo, at the entrance of the old Convento de la Merced, now the Museo Provincial, the shrine of his works. But his pictures are the noblest monuments of his fame, while the record of his life is a memory that will last while Spain endures."

Bartolome Murillo: El Pintor de las Concepciones

"The Immaculate Conception"
by Bartolome Murillo

"Bartolome Murillo painted no fewer than twenty pictures on the subject of the Conception - the 'darling dogma of the Spanish Church' - and the unrivaled grace and feeling for his treatment won for him the title of 'El Pintor de las Concepciones.' The worship of Spain in Murillo's day was, in fact, practically centered in the adoration of the Virgin Mary. The doctrine of the immaculate conception had just become an official article of the Spanish Catholic faith in 1617, and the event had been celebrated in a frenzy of joy.

The rules for the guidance of painters in their treatment of the Mother of Jesus were strict, and it is interesting to see what Pacheco, father-in-law to Velazquez, laid down for the treatment of this all-important subject:

The Virgin's feet were not, on any account, to be visible. It was enjoined that 'Our Lady is to be painted in the flower of her age, from twelve to thirteen years old, with sweet grave eyes, a nose and mouth of the most perfect form, rosy cheeks, and the finest streaming hair of golden hue; in a word, with all the beauty that a pencil can express... Our Lady's eyes are to be turned to Heaven, and her arms are to be meekly folded across her bosom; that the mantling sun is to be expressed by bright golden light behind the figure. The pedestal moon is to be a crescent with downward pointing horns, and the twelve stars above are to be raised on silver rays, forming a diadem like the celestial crown in heraldry. [These symbolic elements reflected verses from the book of Revelation.] The robe of the Virgin must be white and her mantle blue, and round her waist must be tied the cord of St. Francis.

Reactions to Murillo's portrayals of the Virgin were varied. Some criticized them harshly, while others found them absolutely inspirational. 'Standing before that picture,' wrote Edmondo de Amicis, 'my heart softened, and my mind rose to a height which it had never attained before. It was not the enthusiasm of faith. It was a desire, a limitless aspiration towards faith, a hope which gave me a glimpse of a nobler, richer, more beautiful life than I had hitherto led...'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Murillo, a Biography and an Appreciation" by Albert Frederick Calvert.)
 

Bartolome Murillo: Marshal Soult's Rapacity

"The Immaculate Conception of
the Venerable Ones" by Murillo

"Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult was one of Napoleon's best generals, but notorious for looting artwork from territories under his command, including Spain. Indeed, the whole story of the long premeditated picture-stealing campaign of Soult fills one with indignation. Spies preceded his army, disguised as travellers, and furnished with Cean Bermudez' 'Dictionary of Spanish Art History,' were thus able to track down the prey of plate and pictures.

Convents and cathedrals - venerable shrines of art - were beset by these 'connoisseurs' provided with squadrons of soldiers, demanding the surrender of the Murillos, Canos, Zurbarans, and Pachecos within. Some may say that to strip some dark churches and convents was often to rescue fine works of art from oblivion or from the decay caused by monkish neglect; but to despoil others of its pictures was to rob them not only of their glorious heirlooms, but the poor of the charity of strangers, whom these pictures attracted and inspired gifts of charity to the institution's causes. Regardless, it was robbery.

In Seville only the Capuchin monks, who knew the intentions of the French beforehand, took down works by Murillo, moved them to Cadiz, where they hid them in private homes. They returned the artwork to Seville at the end of the war. For this reason, the Sevillian Museum of Fine Arts now has an important collection of Murillo artwork that would otherwise be hung in the Louvre or distributed in various private collections.

It was well they had done so, for Soult took the first works Murillo produced, the ten paintings produced for the Franciscan convent; 'The Birth of the Virgin' from the Cathedral of Seville, now located in the Louvre; four paintings from the church of Santa María la Blanca and the 'Immaculate Conception' painting from the Hospital de los Venerables. From the church of the Hospital de la Santa Caridad, Soult removed four paintings that would decorate his own luxurious mansion.

Although much has been written in denunciation of the collecting propensities of the French generals during the Peninsular War, it must be admitted that their robberies did draw wider attention to the stores of artistic masterpieces that until then had been unknown, unappreciated and unsuspected, hidden away in Spain. Twenty-five years before that war Murillo was very little known beyond the boundaries of his own province of Andalusia. Afterwards it was a different story."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Murillo, A Biography and Appreciation" by Albert Frederick Calvert and "The Looting of Murillo's Works."

Bartolome Murillo: The Public Academy of Art, Seville

"The Birth of the Virgin" by Bartolome Murillo

"Bartolome Murillo established the Public Academy of Art in Seville in 1660. He had remembered the disadvantages under which he had laboured in his own artistic beginnings, and his estimate of the importance of painting as an educational and religious influence enabled him to overcome all obstacles. 

Twenty-three of the leading artists of the city assembled on the 11th of January, 1660, and drew up a constitution for the new society. Murillo and Herrera were elected to the two presidential chairs and officiated on alternate weeks as director of studies and the guide, philosopher and friend to the students. The other officers formed the council of the president and superintended the business side of the Academy. The working expenses were to be defrayed by the members of the society, whose liabilities were limited to a monthly subscription of six reals each, while the pupils were admitted on the most liberal terms. 

They were only asked to pay whatever they could afford and to faithfully obey the few simple but strictly enforced rules. Each students, on admission, was to pronounce his orthodoxy in these words - 'Praised be the most holy Sacrament and the pure conception of Our Lady,' to bind himself to refrain from swearing or loose talk, and to eschew all conversation on subjects not relating to the business of the school.

Students were numerous from the first, but differences among the subscribing members led to many changes among the officeholders, and in the second year of the Academy's existence Murillo appears to have had sole control in the management of its affairs. While Murillo was actively interested in the direction of the Academy, it flourished, and it continued to exist until his death, when it was closed."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Murillo, a Biography and Appreciation" by Albert Frederick Calvert.)

Bartolome Murillo: Marriage

"A Peasant Boy Leaning on a Sill" by Bartolome Murillo

"In 1648 Baratolome Murillo's circumstances were so secure that he was accepted as the husband of a rich and noble lady. Of Dona Beatriz de Cabrera y Sotomayor, who he married in that year, we know little beyond the fact that she possessed property at Pilas, a village situated five leagues from Seville. That she made him a discreet and dutiful wife is generally accepted, and there is certainly no evidence to the contrary.

There is a kind of legend that Murillo first met her at Pilas, where he was painting an altarpiece for the Church of San Geronimo. The story alleges that he wooed the lady by painting her as an angel in that composition. But it is extremely doubtful whether the painter employed her as a model in any of his pictures.

Murillo appears to have had great fondness for his models, and he reproduces the same faces as saints, angels or beggar boys with unfailing persistence. One of his favourite models is said to have been the son of Sebastian Gomez, the painter's Mulatto attendant, who profited so well by the tuition he acquired in the studio that he was able to finish the head of a Madonna that Murillo was prevented from completing. In appreciation of his skill, the artist gave the slave his freedom. The juvenile Gomez is immortalized in the head of the 'Boy Looking Out of Window' in the English National Gallery, and he is seen in other pictures by Murillo as an angel, a fruit seller and a figure in a crowd.

Murillo's house after marriage became the resort of the brethren of his craft and of the most cultured men in Seville. But the artist, instead of limiting his output, devoted himself to the production of pictures with unabated, self-assured industry and enthusiasm."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Murillo, a Biography and Appreciation" by Albert Frederick Calvert.)