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