Pietro Annigoni: The General's Coat, Pt. 1

"General Mark Clark" by Pietro Annigoni

"About ten years after the war, when I was painting Queen Elizabeth, I read an article in an American magazine which alleged that while working on the royal portrait at Buckingham Palace I was wearing a famous American general's coat. The allegation, which was made by the wife of General Mark Clark, was correct. The coat was her husband's. And, as you say in England, thereby hangs a tale, a war's-end tale.

It was 1945. Fighting had already finished in Italy and was rapidly drawing to a close in the rest of Europe. General Mark Clark, US military commander in Italy, had moved his headquarters to Vienna but made frequent visits to Florence, where he invariably stayed at the Excelsior Hotel. There one day, the manager of the hotel, who was a friend of mine, learned that the General's staff officers wished to present their chief with a portrait of himself and were looking for a suitable painter. My friend suggested they commission me, and they did. 

It was agreed that I would have to work from sketches and studies made at the hotel whenever the General was able to spare the time. In fact he spared little time for my sitter continued to work while he sat. We were repeatedly interrupted by the visits of messengers, aides, secretaries, and a stream of telephone calls from and to places all over the world.

It was always a relief to me when the General left the city for Vienna or elsewhere, for then I worked on the portrait in my own studio. Several times, after I had started the final painting, he came there to see how the work was progressing - and he was pleased with what he saw. When at last the painting was finished, it was arranged that it would be presented to him in my studio. Many other officers were already in the studio when Mark Clark and, it seemed to me, his entire general staff, arrived and filled the place. From the demeanour of his staff officers as well as from the expression on his face it was immediately evident that the General was in a terrible mood. He went straight to the easel, studied the portrait for only a moment and then snorted, 'I've never lost a battle in my life.' And with that, he stalked out of the studio like an angry prima donna, leaving us all speechless. No one could offer an explanation and no one tried. Soon I was alone, angry and humiliated." (To be continued) 

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)  

 

Pietro Annigoni: The German Occupation

 

Drawings by Annigoni for "Destruzioni di Firenze"

"Like all Italian anti-fascists in the years immediately before the Second World War, I had watched with alarm Mussolini's toadying to Hitler, his involvement of our country in the Spanish Civil War and his annexation of Albania in emulation of the Führer's 'anschluss [connection]' in Austria. With each new madness came the hope that this time he had overreached himself, that disaster and his self-destruction must follow, that Italy would at last be free of Fascism and dictatorship. Such an act of madness came on 10th June 1940, when the country was thrown into the war alongside the Nazis.

I have called myself an anti-fascist but I was no hero. I did not 'go underground' and join the partisans. Indeed, I did no more than resolve to continue to evade military service by every honest or dishonest means it might require. In 1944 partisan activity was intensified all over the city, signalling the approach of the Allied army. Then one day at sunset, shells came whistling over the city and all of us were ordered to barricade ourselves in our homes. But instead of fear, there was jubilation in our hearts. At last the end of the terror was in sight. The possibility that either German or Allied shells might destroy us before that time arrived scarcely occurred to us.

With the arrival of British, American, and other Allied forces, Florence sighed with relief. The water supply was quickly restored to the parched city and work began almost immediately on the clearance of rubble from the streets. At the same time I was called to the Fine Arts Office and asked by a British officer if I would undertake to make a series of drawings recording the damage done to the city. Armed with permits which gave me access to places forbidden to other civilians, I set to work and, during September and October, produced twelve large and detailed drawings, most of them showing extensive areas of the city. Later they were exhibited at the Galleria Botti and published in lithographic reproduction under the title 'Distruzioni di Firenze.' Now they are in the Gabinetto di Studio of the Uffizi Gallery.

Unknown to us, Hitler had ordered the complete destruction of Florence, and the officer commanding the German troops in Fiesole was later shot for not carrying out that order. Even so, many great architectural masterpieces, including the Giotto Tower, were damaged and the whole areas on the edge of the old city were devastated." 

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)  

 

Pietro Annigoni: First Frescoes

Pietro Annigoni's fresco at the convent of San Marco

"The year 1937 was an important one for me. I began my first important work in fresco - and I decided to get married. I had begun to use fresco in a small way as early as 1934 but did not get the opportunity to paint an entire wall until 1936, when I made a large trompe l'oeil mural in a restaurant which my friends and I patronised and which, incidentally, was destroyed during the Second World War. All the work was done after dinner, by candlelight and with the aid of a flask of Chianti, starting at about ten o'clock and going on until the early hours of the morning.

Now, through an interest in transcendental philosophy, I had become very friendly with Monsignor Tanzella, who was a Professor of Philosophy in the Dominican Order and a man with a serious interest in painting. With his encouragement, I volunteered to paint a series of murals in the convent of San Marco, in Florence, my first ecclesiastical work in that medium, and the first of many that I was to undertake. I regard my frescoes as the most important things I have done, and, certainly, the works that have given me most satisfaction and pleasure. When painting portraits in my studio I have always felt a longing for the hours on the scaffolding, those lonely hours after the plasterer has done his job, and I am left entirely to my own thoughts. For many years now, portraiture has been only a minor part of my work and I have given more and more of my time and thoughts to religious frescoes. Ideas that I would like to realise in churches are going round in my head all the time.

I started the San Marco fresco with a 'Descent from the Cross', and, during the following four years added two groups of Dominican Saints and in two lunettes, 'Adam and Eve' and 'Cain and Abel'. For the first part of the work I decided that I must have a dead body as a model for the figure of Christ, so I consulted the Professor of Anatomy at a teaching hospital and was given permission to choose one from the refrigerator. I took the only one that could possibly serve my purpose and tried to hang it on a ladder, but it was far too stiff for me to do anything with it. In the end, I had to use a living model."

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)  

 

 

Pietro Annigoni: Oil Tempera

"Mrs. Woolfson" by Pietro Annigoni

"I confess that I was myself more concerned with my work than with the fate of Italy at that time. For the first time I had a group of paintings and drawings on show in my native city, Milan, which was gratifying. But at the same time I was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with oil painting. The freer, 'impressionistic' brushwork that I employed failed to reproduce in the paintings the qualities I had in mind when I was making the preliminary drawings. For a while I gave up painting and devoted myself to etching Ia collection of 113 of my prints was published that year) and to a new study of the Renaissance masters, through which I hoped vaguely to discover some sort of secret by which they succeeded in carrying over, into their paintings, the power and vitality that informed their drawings.

Unwilling to accept that the secret lay entirely in their genius, I worked myself into a thoroughly depressed state. Then, as has so often happened to me during difficult periods of my life, a new friend came to my aid. His name was Lokoff. He was a Russian painter who for many years had been studying the technical methods of the Old Masters, the chemistry of their colours, and the nature of the mediums they used, and he was convinced he had discovered a secret medium used extensively by painters of the High Renaissance, especially the Venetians. This secret he imparted to me and I have made use of it ever since and given it to anyone else who wanted it. 

Briefly the medium is best described as oil tempera. It comprises various proportions of egg yolk, white of egg, standoil, and mastic varnish. In addition, a vinegary white wine is used for the mixing of the powdered paint. The discovery of this medium, which I learned to modify subtly for use with different colours and to produce different effects, sent me back to painting with new enthusiasm and excitement."

Formula for Oil-Tempera Medium

Egg (in the proportion of one whole egg to two yolks) 4 parts 

Mastic varnish - 1 part

Standoil - 1 part

Mix with an electric or hand egg-whisk. Store in refrigerator until required. I have learned to vary or modify this formula slightly for use with certain colours. I mix all my own colours from the basic ingredients, using a solution of white wine together with a little water.

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)  

 

Pietro Annigoni: Paris and Salzburg

St. Wolfgang Altarpiece by Michael Pacher

"In 1935 I had a very successful one-man show, my second, at the Galleria Botti. The critics mostly ignored it but people from all walks of life crowded into the gallery, and at the end nearly all the paintings and drawings had been sold, at prices far higher than I would have dreamed of asking. But that was not all. Included in the exhibition were several portraits of well-known men and women of Florence and these brought me commissions to paint more. Altogether my prospects looked rosy, so the idea of a trip to Paris immediately appealed to me.

Paris lived up to all its promises, and I and three of my friends lived every moment to the full. We walked backwards and forwards across the beautiful city to visit museums and galleries, passed hours in the cafés of Montmartre and Montparnasse, sketching and making caricatures all the while, and at night dined boisterously in some small restaurant before collapsing.  

Then it was on to Salzburg for the Mozart festival and worshipped along with the other tourists at the house where the composer was born and at the museum devoted to his memory. But for me the outstanding attraction was the fifteenth-century altarpiece in a little chapel, the celebrated 10-year work of art by Michael Pacher which I had admired in reproductions but which in reality stunned me with its beauty and perfection. I went to see it every day and stood for hours trying to absorb its every detail. 

I had been drawn to the great German and other North European masters, Dürer, Holbein, Memling, the elder Breughel, and, later, Rembrandt and Callot, very early in my career, and, oddly my friends thought, they meant more to me than the Italian masters, until Renzo Simi and Mario Parri opened my eyes to the tremendous vitality and power of the great Florentines. Not without nostalgia the Pacher altarpiece recalled those earlier loves."

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)  

Pietro Annigoni: Critics and the Public

"Self-Portrait" by Pietro Annigoni

"In those early days I was a 'young man mad about drawing.' Indeed by 1950 I had made so many drawings that I realized that overproduction was reducing even the modest sums for which I was able to sell them. My studio was inundated with them, so one day I consigned more than two thousand sketches and studies to my studio stove. Many more followed later. In the previous year a group of my drawings had been shown in an exhibition at the Galleria Botti, but it was not until three years later, when I was twenty-two, that I was given my first one-man show, of paintings and drawings, at the Palazzo Ferroni in Florence. 

The response from the public and critics set a pattern for nearly all my future exhibitions. Most members of the public who came to the show were enthusiastic, most of the critics were not. Almost alone, the critic of the Corriere della Sera, Ugo Ojetti, gave a reasoned opinion and refrained from damning my work because it did not conform to current fashion. Right from the beginning of my career I have been sustained by the warmth of the public's feeling for my work and have learned not to overrate the importance of critical sneers. After all, if I had to choose between the admiration of the public or that of the critics I would always choose the first. It helped me, if I ever needed help, to stick to my guns and withstand the pressures to swim with the 'modernist' tide. Those pressures were very real and were exemplified by the Futurist artist and propagandist, Carol Carra, when, writing about me in 1936, said:

'No one expects to receive from this exhibition of Annigoni's any artistic impression of a modern character. It is a pity, a very great pity, that the young painter has taken up this stand, given the undoubted abilities which he possesses for figurative art. Let us hope that he will be aware of this in time, and that he will know how to make the effort necessary to abandon this mistaken path...' 

Ironically, when I met Carra thirty years later, he reminded me in a self-congratulatory manner that he had been one of the first critics to recognize me! But, if Carra's criticism ran true to form, Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico's did not. After paying me many flattering compliments in his memoirs he continued; 'Pietro Annigoni works seriously and goes straight on his road without heeding the chatter, the snobism, the intellectualism and the foolishness of this our unhappy period, and also without taking any notice of the spite which his work arouses.'"

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)  

 

Pietro Annigoni: Francesco Bartoli

Drawing by Pietro Annigoni

"In 1923 my father sent me to Milan's famous Calchi-Taeggi College, where I lived a sort of double life. On the one hand, a dreamy student, mad about art; on the other, a juvenile gangster resenting authority and conformity. The good side began when I was befriended by Professor Francesco Bartoli, who subsequently taught me Classics - and oh, so much more - for a whole year. On his desk during the examination was a large art book with an illustrated cover that attracted and held my attention. After the test was over he asked me why I was so interested in the book and I told him it was because I intended to be a painter. He said that he, too, loved painting, and from then on he did all he could to encourage me in my ambition. He believed that none of the arts should be exclusive and taught me to love and appreciate architecture, poetry, music, and great literature.

Bartoli was a leading light of a Milanese society called The Friends of Art, whose members were artisans, craftsmen, or just working men interested in the arts. On Sundays he conducted groups of these men around one of the city's many museums, art galleries, or treasure-filled churches. And he took me along with them. His son, who was about my age, came too. Then, one Sunday that I remember so well, we went to the Brera Museum to see the wonderful collection or paintings there. But I must confess that it was not the paintings that made that particular visit so memorable. The Professor's daughter, accompanied us and I was dazed by her beauty. She seemed to me to have stepped straight out of Leonardo's painting of Beatrice d'Este, a portrait that I had long been in love with.

It would be impossible for me to list all the enduring pleasures of this life that Francesco Bartoli opened up to me. They were not only cultural pleasures. He instilled in me a love of nature, of the open air and, particularly, of mountains. He was himself a mountaineer and spent all his summer holidays in the Dolomites where, tragically, his son died scaling a needle, which was later named after him. My own climbing experiences were not over-ambitious, but sketching expeditions in the smaller mountain ranges of North Italy, alone or with friends and sometimes lasting several weeks, brought me many unforgettable adventures."

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)  

 

Pietro Annigoni: Struggles

"Juanita" by Pietro Annigoni

"At ten began the most miserable period of my life. I was sent to a new school and from the start was unpopular with the other boys and with the masters. This hell lasted nearly three years, during which my whole personality changed. From being a daring and adventurous boy, I became timid and developed an inferiority complex that - and this may surprise all but my close friends - has stayed with me all my life. 

Hating school as I did, I drew even closer to my father, unconsciously looking for protection. He was still giving me drawing lessons and that, in turn, gave him a renewed enthusiasm for drawing himself. He made portraits of my brother Giovanni, and me, that seemed to me so good that I strove still harder to equal his skill as a draughtsman. Sometimes he would read to us from his favourite books and talk to us about them as though we were his equals. In that way, inevitably, we absorbed most of his ideas, including his hatred of the Church.

Ironically, my nickname at that time was 'Canonicus,' a holy-sounding name inspired first because I was a heavily-built and serious child, and second because I lived in the Via Canonica. Then, and for many years afterwards, I signed my drawings 'Canonicus.' Later, it gave way to the cipher which I still use today, a 'C' followed by three crosses representing the Via Crucis - the hard Road to the Cross which the artist has to travel.

I believe that (in spite of being the son of rabid anti-clericals) the longing for a certain and revealed faith in the Divine has deep roots in my spirit and determines one of its essential, if contradictory, traits, which does not fail to be reflected in my actions as man and artist. On the other hand, the spiritual anarchy of our time often arouses in me a furious sense of rebellion that tends to reinforce this longing, which is above all, the, the nostalgia of one who is not in accord with the epoch and the society to which he belongs." 

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)  

 

Pietro Annigoni: A Prediction

"St. Joseph the Worker"(detail) by Pietro Annigoni

"When I made my first visit to England in 1949, I was embarrassed, even frightened, by my ignorance of the English language. Five years later, when I painted the Queen at Buckingham Palace, my English was still so poor that we talked to each other in French. And yet, the very first word I learned as a child was an English one, 'cow'. The house in which I was born, on the outskirts of Milan, overlooked fields where cattle grazed, and my mother held me in her arms at the window, pointed to the cattle and repeated the word over and over again until I, too, could say it.

My mother's parents were Italians but she had been born and brought up in California, and English - or American - was her language. My father, Ricciardo Annigoni, was a mathematician and engineer working in America when he met my mother, Teresa Botti, and married her in New York. Then returning to Italy, they made their home first in Lucca, then Milan where I was born. Not long after my younger brother was born my father told me that when I grew up, I would be an artist. I had myself decided that even earlier but without knowing, as my father did, how hard I would have to work to become a good artist. He had some talent for drawing, and as a young man, may well have thought of becoming an artist himself. 

There were several of his drawings hanging in our home, one of them a self-portrait which was really good and which I tried to imitate at a very early age. But I was six when I made a curious drawing that/ presumably because it had some element of originality, prompted my father to say, 'You'll become a great painter one day.' From then on he did all he could to make his prediction come true. Even before I went to school he gave me lessons in drawing, painting - and his beloved mathematics."

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)  

Ivan Olinsky: A Quiet and Successful Career

"Madonna" by Ivan Olinsky

"During the 1920s, Olinsky experimented with new approaches such as showing figures against translucent curtains or in front of mirrors. His style became progressively simpler, however, and by the late 1920s, his works were characterized by spare compositions in which abstract values are accentuated. In the 1930s, he continued to create minimalist designs. The portraits he executed during the decade show women who exude the energetic spirit associated with modern city life. Olinsky also explored symbolic portrayals, depicting a few images entitled “Madonna,” one of which featured his daughter Leonore. During the 1940s and 1950s, Olinsky continued to portray women, at times showing subjects engaged in reverie and at other times depicting confident subjects dressed in the casual attire typical of their time.

An impeccable craftsman, Olinsky created works that not only captured the realities of his subjects, but also expressed his enthusiasm for them. Although his art received considerable attention from the press during his lifetime, there were no articles or critical reviews devoted to him. His achievement was recognized by a memorial exhibition at the Art Students League in 1962 (where he had taught for years), but it was not until 1995, that it was given scholarly attention, when an exhibition accompanied by a catalogue was held at The William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and at the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Olinsky’s work may be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Art Students League, New York; the Brooklyn Museum; the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia; the Dayton Art Institute, Ohio; the Everhart Museum, Scranton, Pennsylvania; the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut; the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, Hartford, Connecticut; the Hood Museum, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London, Connecticut; the Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New York; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Academy of Design, New York; the National Arts Club, New York; and the New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut."

Olinsky suffered a stroke in December 1961 and died at the home of his daughter, Leonore, on February 11, 1962.

To be continued

(Excerpts from the biography of Ivan Olinsky from Spanierman Gallery's website.) 

Ivan Olinsky: Work & Family

"The Poetry Reading" by Ivan Olinsky

"While Ivan and Genevieve Olinsky were living in Venice from 1906 until 1909, he created small scale spontaneously rendered street scenes. In 1907, their daughter Leonore was born. Their second daughter, Tosca, arrived two years later, around the time that the artist and his family moved to Paris. In the French capital, Olinsky established a studio and studied masterpieces at the Louvre and the Luxembourg museum. He also spent time in the Normandy town of Vernon, where he began to concentrate on the figure.

Olinsky returned to New York with his family in 1910 and set up a studio at Washington Square, where portraiture became his emphasis. At first, he painted his wife and daughters, but soon, he was flooded with commissions. By 1912, he was supplementing his income from portraits by teaching at the Academy, where, two years later, he was elected an associate member and awarded the Thomas B. Clarke Prize in its annual exhibition. He gained full membership in the Academy in 1919. He also taught at the Art Students League.

In addition to painting portraits for his living, Olinsky created paintings of figurative subjects for exhibition. Often depicting attractive women, he demonstrated his skills at modeling with color and treating three-dimensional form in a convincing fashion. Critics remarked on his skills, admiring 'the dash and verve that all his things have,' and commenting that 'his color modelling and surety of line have made him known everywhere.'”  

To be continued

(Excerpts from the biography of Ivan Olinsky from Spanierman Gallery's website.) 

 

Ivan Olinsky: Studies & Apprenticeships

"The Adjustments of Conflicting Interest" by John LaFarge
in the Supreme Court Room, Minnesota State Capitol, Saint Paul

"Moral and Divine Law" by John LaFarge
in the Supreme Court Room, Minnesota State Capitol, Saint Paul

"The Relation of the Individual to the State" by John LaFarge
in the Supreme Court Room, Minnesota State Capitol, Saint Paul

"The Recording of Precedents" by John LaFarge
in the Supreme Court Room, Minnesota State Capitol, Saint Paul

"On the basis of a drawing of an antique sculpture that Ivan Olinsky submitted, he was able to enroll in the National Academy of Design in 1894, when he was sixteen. At the Academy, he initially enrolled in the antique class, but quickly advanced to the life class. His teachers included Francis Coates Jones, Edgar Melville Ward, Charles Yardley Turner, and George Willoughby Maynard.

At the conclusion of his studies at the Academy, Olinsky assisted Maynard, an important mural painter, with decorative commissions. Through Maynard, Olinsky met Elmer E. Garnsey, who had a firm on Park Avenue that specialized in decorative work for public buildings. Garnsey, in turn, introduced Olinsky to John La Farge, who hired him as a studio assistant. Olinsky worked with La Farge on mural commissions for the Supreme Court Room of the Minnesota Capital and for the Baltimore Courthouse. He also assisted La Farge with designs for stained glass windows.

Although Olinsky craved a career of his own, he continued to work for La Farge until 1906, when he left for Europe with his wife, Genevieve Karfunkle, the sister of a fellow student from the Academy, who he had married in 1904. While living in Venice from 1906 until 1909, he created small scale spontaneously rendered street scenes."

To be continued

(Excerpts from the biography of Ivan Olinsky from Spanierman Gallery's website.) 

 

Ivan Olinsky: Prodigy

"Purple and Gold" by Ivan Olinsky

"Distinguished as a painter and teacher, Ivan Gregorovitch Olinsky (1878-1962) is best known for portraits and images of female figures in interiors, which he rendered in a vivid Impressionist style. Often he showed figures who appear to blend in with floral backgrounds, demonstrating a decorative approach similar to that used by Robert Reid and Frederick Frieseke. Like Reid and Frieseke, Olinsky complied with the taste for depictions of attractive, pensive women, but he also captured the individuality of his subjects, conveying their intelligence and strength of character.

The son of a farmer, Olinsky was born in an agricultural part of Ukraine and grew up in Elizabethgrad, Russia, a town near Odessa. Having begun to draw before his family settled in Elizabethgrad, he was sufficiently talented to study drawing at the university when he was only nine or ten years old--most of his classmates were twice his age. When he was twelve, his family emigrated to New York City, settling on Henry Street in lower Manhattan. In New York, Olinsky initially attended public school, but when he heard about the National Academy of Design, he was determined to attend."

To be continued

(Excerpts from the biography of Ivan Olinsky from Spanierman Gallery's website.) 

Frederic Porter Vinton: Observations

"Alexander Moseley" by Frederic Vinton

"It is not fitting for the present writer to attempt a technical criticism of Frederic Porter Vinton's qualities as an artist, but certain points were apparent to artists and laymen alike. No one could see his portraits or know the man without being struck by the seriousness and integrity with which he did his work. He was a realist in the sense that he rendered what he saw with the most simple and direct frankness, but from the faults which may result from a realism too exact, his art was saved by the manner in which what he saw was qualified by his thoroughly artistic temperament.

How close to the fact he came is illustrated by the remark of a physician from Philadelphia, who, seeing in an exhibition at the St. Botolph Club, a portrait by Vinton of a subject who had lost the use of his ears, remarked to a friend: 'He's painted a deaf man.' He was asked why he supposed the original to be defective in his hearing. 'Why,' the other answered, 'can't you see that he's listening with his eyes?' When Vinton was asked if he had intentionally given this expression to his sitter, he answered simply: 'I only painted what I saw.'

Although Vinton was known by his portraits, he has done enough in other lines to prove that had he devoted himself to landscape, he would have won a place no less notable. During his early stay in Paris he was naturally under the influence of the Barbizon School. His landscapes of the time show this affiliation with complete frankness. When, however, during his stay in Europe in 1889-90, he came in contact with Impressionism, then his whole method of painting nature altered. He embraced the new gospel of sunlight and open air with the artistic enthusiasm which was characteristic of him, and the brilliant landscape bought by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the last week of the painter's life indicates how intelligently and effectively he was able to apply it without effacing his own individuality." 

(Excerpts from "Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Frederic Porter Vinton" by Arlo Bates on behalf of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1911.)  

 

Frederic Porter Vinton: A Good Finish

"Alanson W. Beard" by Frederic Vinton

"In June, 1889, Frederic Porter Vinton and his wife went abroad, and remained for eighteen months. They visited France, Italy, and Holland, with a week in England. The artist's enthusiasm over the work of Franz Hals was hardly second to his admiration for Velasquez, and subtly influenced his later work. During his stay in Paris Vinton painted the well-known portrait of his wife, which, exhibited in the Salon of 1890, received Mention Honorable. This picture, with others, also won a gold medal at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893.

After his return to Boston in the autumn of 1890, Vinton took up his work with fresh vigor. He had abundant commissions, and that general and undisputed recognition which stimulates an artist to his best. In 1891 he was made a full Academician of the National Academy of Design. In 1894 he painted the admirable portrait of the Hon. Alanson W. Beard, which by its wonderful vitality deservedly won a silver medal at the Paris Salon of 1900. In 1909 his work was awarded the Temple gold medal by the Pennsylvania Academy. The finished portraits that he painted number between two and three hundred, and embrace a surprising variety not only in subject, but no less in treatment. The fervor with which he worked, and his nervously sensitive temperament, combined with so much labor, wore him out. Although he showed no failure in his artistic powers, his friends were deeply troubled by his physical condition long before the end came on the morning of May 20, 1911."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Frederic Porter Vinton" by Arlo Bates on behalf of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1911.)  

 

Frederic Porter Vinton: Success

"Portrait of a Gentleman" by Frederic Vinton

"Frederic Porter Vinton now settled down to steady work, and commissions followed one upon another. That winter he painted Sir Lyon Playfair, Mr. Samuel H. Russell, Dr. Alexander Vinton, and others. In the next ten years came portraits of more than sixty others. Vinton took a leading and undisputed place in the front ranks of American portrait painters, and this he held without challenge to the day of his death.

In 1880 he was made a member of the Society of American Artists, New York. In 1881 he removed to the studio most strongly associated with his name, that which had been occupied by William M. Hunt in the building (not now standing) at the corner of Park Square and Boylston Street in Boston. It is hardly too much to say that the studio became the artistic centre of Boston. 

Mr. Vinton was a man whose personality would make itself felt anywhere. He was concerned in all the important art events of the town, and for that matter was in request all over the country as a member of art juries and hanging committees. The critics of the Boston papers were constantly consulting him, and his opinion was held in general esteem. As he had in 1875 stirred up a commotion by his frankness, he not infrequently aroused antagonism by his plain speech, but his hatred for shams and for what he felt to be bad in art was too strong to pass off in silence because of any fear of consequences."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Frederic Porter Vinton" by Arlo Bates on behalf of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1911.)  

Frederic Porter Vinton: First Boston Commission

"Thomas Gold Appleton" by Frederic Vinton

"In the autumn of 1878 Frederic Porter Vinton returned to Boston, and established himself in a studio in Winter Street, at the top of a six-story building. Mr. Appleton had sent to the the artist in Paris a sum of money as a commission, and to fulfill this contract the painter offered him the painting he had entered in the Paris Salon. Vinton said: '

'He came pounding his way with his cane up my five long flights of stairs to see the picture. He at once exclaimed, 'You don't mean that for me, do you?' I answered yes, if he would accept it. 'My little order didn't amount to anything, but this does!' He brought a bevy  of pretty women with him on the day following to see my work, and on the day following that he came and proposed that I paint his portrait, for, as he remarked, he felt as though he had robbed me by taking my little painting, and wished to make it up to me in some way. 'When can you begin?' he asked. 'Now,' said I, 'at once.' 'Good!' he exclaimed, 'What fun!' When I said at last, 'There, it is finished,' he exclaimed, 'I like it. That is the man I shave every morning!'

This portrait, which is owned by the Harvard Museum, and is included in the present exhibition, may be said to have determined Vinton's career. It was exhibited at the private gallery of Messrs. Doll and RIchards, and excited much interest and attention. Its sure and vigorous handling struck a new note, and while it was somewhat suggestive of the painter's French masters, it was so individual and sincere as to show conclusively that a new and noteworthy personality had entered the field. Vinton had painted it with a direct simplicity, much as he might have painted a French peasant. Dr. Rimmer, who came into town to see it, congratulated him upon the success of the portrait, and then added with a smile, 'It is perhaps too strong.' It certainly did not indicate an artist who would make his way by painting pretty flatteries, but as time goes on the work gains steadily in favor."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Frederic Porter Vinton" by Arlo Bates on behalf of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1911.)  

Frederic Porter Vinton: Study Abroad

"Portrait with Yellow Shawl and Fan"
by Frederic Porter Vinton

"Frederic Porter Vinton was bent upon going abroad to study, and with this end in mind practiced the closest and most patient economy. He exchanged commerce for banking in order to have some hours of daylight free for drawing, and was for five years each in the National Bank of Redemption and the Massachusetts National Bank. 

During this time he was associated more and more closely with artists, and eagerly absorbed whatever aesthetic nourishment came in his way. He began also to contribute art criticisms to the Boston papers, and the excitement and discussion which in 1875 followed his outspoken notice of a Studio Building exhibition led to his appointment as regular art critic for the 'Boston Advertiser.'

In the autumn of this year he felt justified in cutting loose from the desk of a clerk and devoting himself to art study. He went to Paris, and by his friend Edwin H. Blashfield was presented to Bonnat, in whose popular atelier he was at once enrolled as a pupil. In the following June, however, Frank Duveneck, who had come to Paris to attend the opening of the Salon, induced him to continue his studies in Munich. Bonnat, although he did not approve of the change, gave the young man a letter, which was never used, to Piloty. Mr. Vinton was received into Piloty's studio, but he did not take kindly to German methods, and after a year of work in Munich he returned to Paris, in, as he says, 'a happy frame of mind.'

In the Salon of this year, 1877, Jean Paul Laurens exhibited his 'Death of Marceau,' and received for it the 'medaille d'honneur.' The picture so impressed Mr. Vinton that he at once went to call upon Laurens, and asked that he might be received into his newly opened atelier. In this studio he was the only American, and although he has recorded that Americans were not wanted there, his relations with the master and with the clever young French painters by whom he was surrounded were most cordial. Here he painted his first Salon picture, 'Une Bohémienne,' which was afterward presented by Mr. Thomas G. Appleton to the city of Lowell, Massachusetts." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Frederic Porter Vinton" by Arlo Bates on behalf of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1911.)  

Frederic Porter Vinton: Early Studies

"The River Loing at Grez, France" by Frederic Porter Vinton

"While in the West, Frederic Porter Vinton had worked somewhat in pastel, and had painted a few ornamental signs. His spare hours were devoted largely to drawing, and an inborn instinct attracted him toward whatever pictures of merit came in his way. The time was in many respects fortunate for a young artist, since Boston in the sixties was being aesthetically enlightened by a group of vital and virile spirits, who, with William Morris Hunt at the head, had brought to this country an enthusiasm kindled in the Paris of Corot, Couture, Millet, Courbet, and the other masters of the Barbizon School. Albion Bicknell, John La Farge, Elihu Vedder, Foxcroft Cole, Winslow Homer, Thomas Robinson, and other men of less note gathered around Hunt. 

Long before any other city in the country had quickened to the influence of the new departure in art, Boston had not only responded to it, but had become the one market for canvases which then no other American city would buy, yet which are now recognized as masterpieces. Nowhere else in the land could a young man have found an atmosphere so wholesomely stimulating.

Vinton had come to the resolution to carry to Hunt some of his sketches. The famous artist perceived the talent in the crude work, and cheered the young man by saying: 'You've as much art as I had when I started; go ahead.' By his advice Vinton began to work more systematically. He entered the drawing classes of the Lowell Institute, and afterward took three courses of art anatomy under Dr. William Rimmer. He obtained permission to draw from the casts in the old Athenaeum gallery, and in an unpublished paper of reminiscences he writes:  

'The room was often closed in winter, and rarely heated. I have sat there in overcoat and gloves, drawing away for dear life until I could no longer see, - not feel, I was so benumbed by the cold. As I ramble through the Museum galleries now, I find my old friends in their new home, and rejoice with them in their prosperity. I wonder sometimes if their stony hearts did not pity the friendless, lonely boy who came day after day to that great cold room overlooking the old burying-ground to dream, to wonder, and to work.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Frederic Porter Vinton" by Arlo Bates on behalf of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1911.)  

 

 

Frederic Porter Vinton: Beginnings

"La Blanchisseuse" by Frederic Porter Vinton

"Frederic Porter Vinton was born in Bangor, Maine, on January 29, 1857. He came of New England stock, although he believed that the Vintons were originally of Huguenot descent. His parents removed to Chicago when he was ten, and his formal education was gained largely in the public schools of that city; although in a wider sense his mind was formed and developed by intelligent and continued reading, by contact with cultivated minds, and by travel. After five years in Chicago, the family returned to the East, and the boy of fifteen obtained a place as clerk in the house of Gardner Brewer & Co. In the following year, 1862, he changed to the employ of Hovey & Co., and here remained for three years. It was during this period that he determined definitely to be a painter, his decision being greatly influenced by the sympathy and advice of William M. Hunt.

His acquaintance with Hunt came about through an incident seemingly sufficiently trivial. As a clerk at Hovey's he was sent across to the old Mercantile Library Building to secure a rope from which a campaign flag was to hang over the street. Arrived on the roof, he found himself looking down into the studio in which Hunt was at work on 'The Listener' Thoroughly absorbed, he hung over the skylight, forgetful of his duty in the store across the way, and then and there he came to the resolution, might for the modest and unknown youth, to carry to the famous artist some of his sketches."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Frederic Porter Vinton" by Arlo Bates on behalf of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1911.)  

Charles Hawthorne: Concluding Thoughts

"Three Women of Provincetown" by Charles Hawthorne

"Art is a necessity, beauty we must have in the world. Painting and sculpture and music and literature are all of the same piece as civilization, which is the art of making it possible for human beings to live together. When I speak of art I mean painting, architecture, music, the art of literature, sculpture, the theatre, in fact everything that's creative - anything that makes a thought, an idea, or a thing grow where nothing grew before; or a fundamental truth expand and show some new angle of beauty which calls special attention to its being a fundamental truth. All these things and many more come under the category of beauty which is a better name for art than the word itself."

"The most important thing is to have something to say - it's so simple as to be almost idiotic. Look at nature as a silhouette and tell how beautiful it is. You cannot begin too early to practice this, for a painter's job is to see a tone more beautifully than others do. If a man lives a lifetime and seriously and humbly studies these things about nature - the beauty of the spots of color made by objects as they come together - it cannot but react on him as a man, and, by the time he has painted for forty years or so, he'll begin to have a glimmer of what beauty is. If he has sufficient humility he may become eligible to help other people."

"You'll have to draw one of these days. No matter how much ability one is born with, training of the eye is necessary. Drawing you will struggle to do until you are ninety. We first learn academic drawing; how to put a nose in the middle of a face and so on. Then we begin to develop a sign language, more and more a convention of drawing from the point of view of selection, eliminating the small forms and getting the ones that express best the thing that we have to do. We make a convention for a nose and everyone recognizes that nose. But, if a man is humble enough, every time he does a nose it is as if that were the first nose he had ever seen. Each time, he develops himself, not the nose. Thus we never learn to draw. One can spend one's whole life and never really know. If we are lucky we do so spend it, for beauty of design and line is the final expression..." 

"This is my final word to you: See the way things come together. It's only a beginning but I believe it is a beginning. From it you have all the world ahead of you. If you believe as I do, that you have to draw, go ahead and learn; learn how to make use of all these things."

"As long as one is simple and childlike and humble, one progresses. Keep this point of view and there is no limit."

"The spirit that moved the greatest master is the spirit that moves us. He may do it more beautifully, but he approaches it in the same way."

To be continued

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

 

Charles Hawthorne: Indoor Model, Pt. 2

"The Waiting" by Charles Hawthorne

• "Note the different quality of the edges - try to analyze the variety of an edge. Take the figure of the little boy. That edge of the shoulder is too sharply cut. It went around easily on the shoulder and on this fold while on the contrary this other shadow was sharp. These differences give a sense of the illusion and make the object go around."


•  "Be careful of the darks on the light side of the face. They are not holes punched in, they are on the surface. Always remember that a dark color happening in a large plane of light isn't as dark as it seems."
  
  
• "Feel the skull under the hair. Study carefully where the hair meets the flesh. The head falls into shadow very beautifully."
  
  
• "Watch the edge of that shadow down the edge of the nose a little more sharply. See where the shadow goes hard and where it loses itself. There are some places where the shadow should be a little lighter and the light on the nose a little lower - the result would be that it would be more like flesh and less like a plaster cast."
  
  
• "You have tried to carry that farther than you knew how. If you don't do what you don't know, you don't give yourself away. If what you have done is right, people will think you have all the power in the world - believe me, you will get on faster by stopping on the right side. If you conduct your work in that way by carrying it each time as far as you know, each time you will go a little farther. Consider the great singers, musicians. They always make you conscious of a reserve of power, something greater that they are capable of. Never fire your last shot. Power is real strength - don't give all, have reserve."
  

  To be continued

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

  
  

Charles Hawthorne: Indoor Model

"The Lovers" by Charles Hawthorne

• "Approach your subject in all humility and reverence - make yourself highly sensitive to its beauty."
  
  
• "If in painting a head you encounter difficulty, just disregard it as a head and treat it as you would a still life. You should go after the big spots, the relation of the figure against the background, the light spot of the figure against the shadow of the figure, first establishing highest light and darkest shadows."
   
• "You must establish a background, in the right relation to the head. Until you have the spot of the face true against the background, you have nothing to build on. Watch the big spots of color make them more subtle in relation to it. Remember that the background becomes a background only in relation to the thing you are doing in the light."
  
  
• "Pay attention to the big note that the head makes. Don't be afraid to paint flesh, think of it as a note of color - get the mass against the background. Close your eyes and remember back and you can visualize the beautiful note of color that was. See it on canvas before you begin - after you get that note of color you can resolve it into feature. Half the likeness lies in the colors - they are the first things we recognize. Your three of four general spots coming together make the portrait, make the likeness. Everyone can supply the rest if the spot of color is fine."
  
  
• "The first color you put down influences you right straight through. Do not put things down approximately - you will start with a wrong note of color and unconsciously key everything to it, making it all false... Separate the canvas into a pattern and give one color its true weight in relation to another."

  To be continued

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

  
  

Charles Hawthorne: On Still Life Painting

"Still Life with Fish" 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.

An old bit of white china - the way one paints white or black is the test of being able to paint at all. Old restaurant ware used a long time acquires a wonderful beauty of color. Go into a cheap restaurant and if you see a beautiful piece of white crockery, get it. Try to make it look clumsy, it will keep you from being satisfied with well turned edges. Clumsiness indicates a struggle to put things down right, an honest effort to grasp the truth. The study of old crockery is very exacting, very wonderful." 

To be continued

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

Charles Hawthorne: Bits of Critiques

 

"The Fisherman and His Daughter"
by Charles Hawthorne

• "Don't model little blue hats in an outdoor portrait - you saw this too much as a hat and not enough as a spot of color. Look at some positive dark to get the value of water behind the head - hold up the black handle of your palette knife to compare it with the darks in the subject."

•  "We must all teach ourselves to be fine, to be poets. Spend a lifetime in hard work with a humble mind. In his attempt to develop the beauty he sees, the artist develops himself."
  
  
•  Try coping with different sized canvases. There is a certain influence that the big area of canvas gives you - it makes you see things larger. There is one thing of which you may be sure, being able to paint large canvases does you no harm when you come to paint a small one. Take out large canvases - when I say a little one I mean a 16" x 20".
  
  
• "Simply graying won't do - in natures it is more than that. If you have done your job well, anyone can tell if it is morning or afternoon light by the color you use."
  
  
• "Don't be afraid of mixing your colors. Some of the most beautiful colors in a canvas are nothing but mud when taken away from their combination. To see a beautiful flesh tone against brilliant sand and to be able to recognize that a piece of mud color from the palette put against a brilliant yellow on the canvas will give the illusion of flesh on the beach - that takes an understanding which comes as a result of study."
  
  
•  "Make background and figures represent the same kind of day - think of your work as the portrait of a day rather than of a model."
  

To be continued

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

 

Charles Hawthorne: Color

A Study by Charles Hawthorne

"The model out of doors ceases to be the same human being that she is inside - in a head on the beach the features show as reflections, are not drawn as in an indoor head. It is amusing how little one needs features for likeness - think of color notes; spots, not planes, when doing the face out of doors.

Draw as little as is compatible with your conscience - put down spots of color. Seeing things as silhouettes is drawing - the outline of your subjects against the background, the outline and size of each spot of color against every other spot of color it touches, is the only kind of drawing you need bother about. If you do that faithfully you will be surprised at the result. 

Think in color, think in color volumes. The majority of painters don't realize what it is all about - they believe in reproducing nature instead of expressing themselves in beautiful spots of color. Let color make form - do not make form and color it. 

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. Our tool of trade is our ability to see the big spots. 

Starting with a note of truth in a picture is the most important thing - the first color you put down influences you right straight through. Do not put things down approximately - you will take a wrong thing and unconsciously key everything to it, making it all false."

To be continued

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

 

Charles Hawthorne: Painting the Figure

"By the Window" 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. We paint problems in order to be able to paint pictures, and, if we are good, we keep on doing problems all our lives and the more humbly we stick to that attitude the better we paint.

It seems sometimes as if the figure painted out of doors is easier than the landscape. Landscape differences are more elusive and delicate - a figure in sunlight is more easily seen. The house may look like part of the landscape but the figure outdoors does not.

If the figure is against the sky, the water or the light sand, keep it as a silhouette against its background - it is surprising how violent things are up against the light. Keep the separation of figure from background out of doors. Have the courage to set down the colors you seed there - overdo in color rather than be weak. See brilliant color, then paint it a little more brilliant than you see it. Working out of doors your eye will be brought up to color - it has the effect of shaking off the shackles of your mind, showing you that you can do anything you please, making you dare. It is the most direct way of learning to see color. You will gain great delicacy and strength painting out of doors."

To be continued

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

 

Charles Hawthorne: Learning to Paint

"Girl in White" by Charles Hawthorne

"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 be in a hurry to do something more - think how young you are. Suppose you spend ten years of your life just putting things together - think what an equipment you will have.

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. Don't learn how to do things, keep on inquiring how. You must keep up an attitude of continuous study and so develop yourself. 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 finish 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 from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Webster Hawthorne.)

 

Charles Hawthorne: Seeing Beauty

"A Study in White"
by Charles Hawthorne

"A great composer could find inspiration for a symphony in a subject as simple as the tinkle of water in a dish pan. So can we find beauty in ordinary places and subjects. The untrained eye does not see beauty in all things - it's our profession to train ourselves to see it and transmit it to the less fortunate. The layman cares for incident in a picture but the artist cares rather for the beauty of one spot of color coming against another, not a literary beauty. There are just so many tones in music and just so many colors but it's the beautiful combination that makes a masterpiece.

It is beautifully simple, painting - all we have to do is to get the color notes in their proper relations. 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.

You must find the beauty of the thing before you start. You cannot bring reason to bear on painting - the eye looks up and gets an impression and that is what you want to register. Good painting is an excitement, an aesthetic emotion..." 

To be continued

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

 

Charles Hawthorne: On Beauty

"Artist in Plein Air" 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 through 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. Here is where the artist comes in.

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 like to do it. There always have been and always will be people of our kind, who like to look at nature and make representations, and others who like to look at what we do.

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. In every town the one ugliest spot is the railroad station, and yet there is beauty there for anyone who can see it. Don't strain for a grand subject - anything is painter's fodder."

To be continued

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

 

Charles Hawthorne: By Example

"Two-Hour Study of Blanche Stillson"
by Charles Hawthorne

"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. 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.

One last observation should be made about the book: it is manifestly impossible for it to represent the total of my father's ideas on teaching. A more eloquent testimony to the power and foce of his ideas is the great number of former pupils, now painters of reputation, who hold him in the greatest esteem, no matter in what style they themselves now paint."

Joseph Hawthorne
Toledo, Ohio
November 1959 

To be continued

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