Tarbell Art Exhibit March 4, 2016-June 3, 2016

Great show coming up for Boston School painting fans,  Friday, March 4 through Friday, June 3 at Discover Portsmouth, 10 Middle Street, Portsmouth, NH. 

 

           The show features Boston School artist Edmund C. Tarbell (1862-1938) who was a pioneer of the “Boston School” of painting at the Museum of Fine Arts. His work, evocative of 17th-century Dutch artists, is known for its rich hues and an emphasis on light and tone and delicate brushwork. Unlike previous exhibitions of Tarbell’s work, Discover Portsmouth’s show will emphasize, not just his paintings, but engravings, drawings, and oil studies. When shown in conjunction with a careful selection of the finished oil paintings, these will demonstrate Tarbell’s process from conception to completion.  Below is the poster image found on the Discover Portsmouth site, from which I found information about the show.

Read a little about the artist here. His work hangs locally at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston MA, (an all over the world in other museums!).  Here below is one of my favorites at the MFA Boston:

 

"Marion Hiller Frenno at Nine as Mandolinata," Edmund Charles Tarbell, 1887-88. 

              Tarbell painted this portrait when he was young, soon after returning from studying in France. Later he became one of the leading Boston School painters and a teacher at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Below are two later paintings that embody his developed Boston School characteristic.

"Reverie (Katharine Finn)," by Edmund Charles Tarbell, 1913.

 "Girl with the Violin, (also known as the Violinist)," by Edmund Tarbell, 1890.

         Tarbell's "Girl with the Violin" above is particularly interesting to me because my teacher, Paul Ingbretson, a current Boston School master painter and teacher, produced a beautiful painting based on the image a couple years ago in the studio. He had a time lapse video created to record his process. This video has been available to the public to view on YouTube, see it here.   This wonderful version by Mr. Ingbretson of Tarbell's painting will be in the "Illuminating Tarbell: Legacy in Action" companion show upstairs on the same dates.

 "The Bach Bouree in E Minor," by Paul Inbgretson, 2014.

   Illuminating Tarbell: Legacy in Action, the companion show, is located upstairs in the Academy balcony gallery. Curator Alastair Dacey makes the case for Tarbell’s ongoing influence as a painter and teacher. Tarbell’s impact and artistic principles are revealed in close to 50 works by six contemporary painters: Don Demers, Paul Ingbretson, Jean Lightman, Mary Minifie, Colin Page, and Alastair Dacey.



 The show:  Friday, March 4 through Friday, June 3 at Discover Portsmouth, 10 Middle Street, Portsmouth, NH.   The nonprofit Portsmouth Historical Society, which also operates the John Paul Jones House Museum, is open daily from 9:30-5pm.  For further information on exhibitions, publications, gift shop, lectures, rentals, and tours, please call 603-436-8433.

William MacGregor Paxton on Painting

The Nude,24x33, by William MacGregor Paxton, Collection of Boston Museum of Fine Arts

"Let the surfaces flow into one another in a supple envelope of light and paint"

"Find a new motive"

"Make the picture look as if it were painted in one sitting"

"Paint as large a piece as possible at once" 

"Never paint on one piece too long at a time"

"Do Something somewhere else, to rest your eyes"

"Paint neither too thickly nor thinly"

"The quickest way is the best"

"Compose by masses of light and dark or dark and light"

"Chiaroscuro is what makes pictures rich"

"Seek a noble and ample design"

"Make the objects swim in the air"

"Paint all things in relation to the focus"

William MacGregor Paxton, 1901

The Letter, 30x25, by William MacGregor Paxton

"Painting the Visual Impression" by Richard Whitney

While searching online for Mr. Whitney's out of print book, I found an article he wrote at the following web address, including several other interesting related articles:  http://www.worldofportraitpainting.com/commentary-whitney/index.html

 

 This series of articles is a summary of the fundamental ideas used by artists to help them paint the look of nature and the effects of light and shadow. I have listed them in order of importance with the essential ideas in bold type to help the working painter logically solve problems. I have written these concepts in a concise manner so that they can be memorized. Learning to paint involves learning to see and guidance from a master craftsman is necessary. This series should be used as a supplement to studio instruction.

The Seamstress By Robert Hale Ives Gammell, 1893-1981

This overview was inspired by the teachings of R. H. Ives Gammell who studied with some of the most skillful painters at the turn of the century. The ideas presented here are therefore not mine, nor even his, but rather have been passed down from master to student for many generations. While studying with Mr. Gammell I wrote down much that he told me about these principles. I later organized my notes and added to them from extensive reading to produce this summary.

The first articles on composition and drawing list many concepts and helpful hints that can be used by artists of all stylistic persuasions. The main portion of the series emphasizes the impressionistic approach to painting. I do not mean to imply that this is the only way, or the best way to paint. Nothing in this series is meant to be taken as absolute law since some advances in the field of painting have come from breaking the rules after training is completed. My hope is that these articles will be a useful reference you can use in finding your way when you feel lost.

These ideas are most useful in helping artists paint the visual world. The impressionist paints what he sees, not what he knows. He looks at the whole subject at once and paints this visual impression in a broad manner with only a suggestion of detail. I list the ways in which the impressionist uses light and shadow, values, color vibration, edges and paint texture to achieve an atmospheric appearance. I also discuss methods of training the visual memory so that artists can successfully capture the fleeting effects of nature.

I have included a section on helpful advice to students followed by a listing of some of the artists of the past that I recommend for study. I have decided not to include living painters for fear of unintentionally offending those that I might omit. I have instead decided to illustrate this booklet with some examples of my work to show how these ideas have influenced one contemporary painter. I have also included an extensive reading list for further research.

It has been the dream of Mr. Gammell and others who have survived the onslaught of Modernism that future generations will restore the craft of painting. I hope my articles will contribute to this end.

Richard Whitney
Stoddard, New Hampshire
2006

To Read a book preview online of Mr. Whitney's book, "Painting the Visual Impression, click here. or cut and paste: http://www.crescentpond.com/bookpreview.pdf

To read more of this series of articles, please refer to the website:  <http://www.worldofportraitpainting.com/commentary-whitney/index.html>.
 

Chapter review: “Instilling the Painter’s Craft”

Chapter review: “Instilling the Painter’s Craft”

Adolphe William Bouguereau,

 A Nude Study for Venus, c. 1865.

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts (1578).  (http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft1t1nb1gf;chunk.id=d0e131;doc.view=print)

            In the sixth chapter of “Realism in Revolution: The Art of the Boston School,” Kirk Richards writes about current critical problems in art school training a student must face if he desires to create representational pictures of merit.  Richard echoes the sentiments of a Boston School Style artist R. H. Ives Gammell on the same subject, quoting from Gammell’s “The Twilight of Painting,” when he describes the insufficiencies found in art schools today.  In this chapter these insufficiencies are discussed - even listed numerically - which confound the training an artist needs if they wish to study traditional methods of painting.

For example, the apprentice or atelier methods of training traditional painters are not offered in elementary or high schools therefore its students cannot pursue serious traditional representational art training until college. Once in college they cannot be trained in an apprentice or atelier method either, due to the semester classroom and teacher changes –with teachers who usually own vastly differing approaches to art.  If a traditional representational painting teacher is found there, the student most likely will be shifted away from him or her to another teacher at the end of that semester with only a taste of tradition.   

A smattering of traditional training is not enough to produce a good representational painter. Richard’s metaphoric description of the arduous training a music student must take to become proficient in his calling helps put into perspective the task a visual artist must also take to develop into an equally proficient producer of representational painting.  Why do we accept that the artist of music must endure years of study and practice to please the sense of hearing yet assume a visual artist can merely “spit” and make art?  Richards writes, 

An artist is more than a creative, talented person.  An artist is one who takes whatever talent the Lord bestows upon him, develops and polishes this talent into serviceable skills, and then adds his creative perspective to produce works of art with sincerity and integrity. Desire alone will not produce an artist if the intensity of that desire is not matched by the quality and intensity of training.[1]

 

            The near complete loss of the historic and traditional methods of training artists in the apprentice/atelier environment left us with the current state of art training found in colleges. This loss was incurred by the adoption of modern art ideologies, styles, and the inability of college semesters to give a steady, consistent training to students once found in the previous centuries’ ateliers and apprentice methods.  Despite the near loss, the language of painting transferred from master to student since the Renaissance is being revived.  The desire to develop the skills to carry on the tradition of representational painting is on the upswing and with it growing numbers of ateliers.  Richard believes there will be adequate training available to produce the painters of the future.  He offers his own experience as a testimony, writing,

I discovered what was eventually to become the foundation of my artistic life.  As a full-time student for four years under Richard Lack at his atelier in Minneapolis, I became part of the Boston School, the longest continuing tradition of painting in American art.  Its roots, going back to R. H. Ives Gammell, Edmund Tarbell, William McGregor Paxton, Jean-Leon Gerome, Paul Delaroche, and eventually, Jacques Louis David, were profound. It was here that I found my place and my profession.[2]

            Richards explains that an atelier program develops several skills.  First is drawing from life --not quick, three minute college-program gesture drawings; but nine to twelve hour pencil drawings and hundred hour charcoal drawings.  Life drawing is the backbone of this system of training with three or more hours of drawing five days a week. Rendering form, anatomy, and modeling light and shadow, is emphasized, teaching the student to see with accuracy.  In this rigorous training, creativity plays no more important part than it does when a music student is learning to read music.  To overcome amateurism, dues must be paid.  In addition, plaster cast drawings of ancient statues and busts are part of the students first year of drawing, until he is competent in seeing and drawing light, shadow, and shapes.  Many ateliers then begin painting a cast in black and white oil paint—a transition from drawing to painting.  Next is oil painting in color and still life, then head studies in oil.  After this, the full figure in its environment is painted in full oil color and finally, the execution of interior paintings.

A minimum of four years in an atelier teaches serious students the craft of picture making, including how to draw and paint what they see. The author states that this traditional method of training representational painting will keep alive our great Western traditions in art and pass them on to the next generation.  “The importance of the atelier system of training is that the master of each successive atelier teaches his students all that he knows in order to produce competent painters who will then, in turn, teach a succeeding generation of students.”[3]

--review by Sandra Galda July 28, 2011

---

[1] Kirk Richards, “The Art Student’s Dilemma,” Realism in Revolution: The Art of the Boston School, ed. Richard Lack (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1985) 55.

[2] Richards 60.

[3] Richards 60.

Lilian Wescott Hale . The Eyes Have It!

Home Lessons

Never look into the shadows: Artist Lilian Wescott Hale never looked into the shadows. In her drawings and paintings you will not find details in the darks. Not only was this a tenet of her Boston art school training [part of which included classes with the man who would become her husband], but it seemed as if her eyes and mind really could not see into the shadows. As her daughter, Nancy Hale, records in her mother's biography The Life in the Studio:

"On dark days she always called off a portrait sitting. She said she couldn't see anything when it was dark. Her eyes were certainly very different from lay eyes. When she and went out shopping together, I could peer into the dark recesses behind a shop window and make out all sorts of objects - loaves of bread or garden rakes or magazines or whatever we might be looking for - while my mother, confronted by anything in deep shadow, would all her life simply say, 'I can't see a thing.'

In his class in life drawing at the Museum School, moreover, my father taught his students to render the nude in strict light and shade. Some pupils seemed never to be able to learn to find the edge of the shadow, on one side of which all was visible and to be shown, on the other side of which all was considered invisible.

I can see my father now, standing under the stark atelier skylight in his rumpled old gray suit, backing up from some student's smudgy charcoal drawing and coming up to it again, making gestures with his thumb (he never touched a pupil's drawing) and wearing a pained expression.

'Where the light falls is the light. Where the light does not fall is the shadow. Chiaroscuro, the clear and the obscure. Don't go mucking your drawing up with half-light.' Half-lights were the snare that seduced the undertrained; the greatest sin was to go peering into the shadow."

See things with wonder: "When my mother looked at things (and her life was given over to looking at things; in any unfamiliar house she used to keep crying, 'Look at that! Look at that!' about a chair, a picture, a china bowl of flowers, until she became embarrassed by the realization that nobody else joined her), she looked with a kind of innocent stare. I can see that now, too. She held her eyes very wide open and simply stared, as though confronted by the first day of creation."

Perceive the color that is actually there: "Often she saw things quite differently from other people. Colors, for instance, appeared differently to her from what they seemed to me to be. She would keep talking about a blue house on the road to Gloucester, and couldn't imagine what she was talking about, and then one day we would be driving that road together and she would cry, 'There's the blue house! Look at that!' I would look, and it would be white.

'You're so literal,' my father and mother used to complain to me. This was in no sense a compliment but referred to the instantaneous reflex of reading into color what I figured it had to be, instead of seeing it for what - in that light - it was.

I remember a dress my mother owned in the latter part of her life. She called it her black dress. Although it was a very dark dress, I couldn't help knowing that it was really navy blue. It did take peering to see that, though, and my mother never peered. She just stared, and her vision and the image met for what they were."

1. Never look into the shadows
2. Look at the world with wonder
3. Let your eyes see the color that is actually there

to be continued...

Hint on Finding the Shadow: It's not always easy to see where the shadow begins or even if something is actually a part of the shadow. If in doubt, take your brush, pencil or charcoal and set it on the subject so that it casts a shadow into the area in question. If you can see the implement's shadow, then that area is not a part of the shadow. If you can't see the implement's shadow, then the area in question is definitely in shadow.

* The Life in the Studio by Nancy Hale

Learning To See: Article review by Sandra Galda

    

          Lindesay Harness’s Journal article is immensely interesting to me for its description of the challenges presented to an artist due to the biological structure of the eye.  Her article helped me to understand more fully what I was up against when trying to "see" in order to produce the best kind of art (in my opinion) which is the Boston Style of painting. My study in Ingbretson Studios has impressed upon me that learning to make beautiful art is, in a large part, learning to see.  In her article Harkness writes, "The fundamental design of the human visual system causes great confusion to the artist attempting to render accurately from nature (Harkness, Lindesay, "Values: When Seeing Isn't Necessarily Believing," Classical Realism Journal 2.1 (1995) 10-17).   Along with some great visuals, she explains that when an image falls on the back of the eye, the retina, nerve receptors wired to the brain pick up the image as it falls on a mosaic of rod and cone structures.  The mosaic becomes increasingly more crude in detailed information as it moves from the center back of the eye where both rods and cones are located, (the foveal receptors) to the surrounding areas where only rods are found (peripheral receptors). 

          In Tobii Technology's Blog, an article about the function of the eye explains:   "The retina is a light sensitive structure inside of the eye responsible for transforming light into signals, which are later converted into an image by the visual cortex in the brain. The fovea is a section of the retina that contains a high density of both kinds of light receptor cells found in the eye, i.e. Cone and Rod cells. Rod cells, which are mostly located in the outer retina, have low spatial resolution, support vision in low light conditions, do not discriminate colors, are sensitive to object movement and are responsible for the peripheral vision. Cone cells, which are densely packed within the central visual field, function best in bright light, process acute images and discriminate colors. ("An Introduction to Eye Tracking: Part 1-How does the eye work?" 2010, Tobii Technology's Blog 2.12.2010, <http://tobii.posterous.com/an-introduction-to-eye-tracking-part-1-how-do>.).

          I have learned that it is important for an artist interested in more accurately depicting nature to be aware of the strategies needed to work around the natural functioning of the eyeball. When giving in to the natural tendency to "look in" directly using his most sensitive nerve-wired foveal receptors, the abundance of information confounds the observance of the unity of values and colors.  Therefore viewing the subject with a less direct gaze helps the artist see and paint a better whole, unified impression of his subject.  This awareness will help the artist see one consistent set of value calibrations instead of giving into the eye's tendency to recalibrate the value settings each time he looks directly at an area of the subject being painted with his most piercing, nerve sensitive, direct sight----using the eye's foveal receptors. By learning to "defocus," "get the big picture," "half-closing his eyes," and  "looking at the whole picture simultaneously," among other strategies, the artist can get a better idea of the value and color relationships he is trying to convey in his artwork.  ----until next time,  Sandra Galda