Constable's Painting Room

In 1813  John Constable had moved into his house in Charlotte Street in London. He was in the process of redecorating his painting room. Note that he says "painting room" rather than studio. Constable writes in a letter to to describe how he wants the room to be painted. And what colour did he choose? White, the all purpose choice of today's artist? Or something else? Constable chose a purple brown colour.Constable was working in his own home. This was a normal practice at the time. He did not have a separate dedicated workshop such as many artists now have. One  can only guess at how he would react to the idea of a white cell such as many  artists accept/demand. I think that he would have found this depressing and emotionally chilly--and of a colour which does not suit his work.

...my front room where I paint shall be done with a sort of purple brown from the floor to the ceiling-not spareing even the doors or doorposts for white is disagreable to a painters Eyes-near  pictures-

(Letter to Maria Bicknell, 30 June, 1813 .Capitals, spelling etc are JC's own)


So Constable chose to work in a relatively low toned room. He specifically mentions that the woodwork-the door surrounds for example, are painted the same colour as the walls. They are not picked out in white or some contrasting colour.

He does not give his reasoning for this choice of colour.He surely thought that this colour scheme would not be too gloomy. Can we reconstruct/guess what these reasons might be? He may have thought that it would complement the silvery  colour schemes found often in his own work.And at the least it would not be distracting. The paintings would surely appear more luminous against this relatively low key background.White skirting boards and woodwork would have caught the eye.He surely wanted the flickering effects of his painterly touch to have no competition.

Constable's text quoted in : Constable the Art of Nature, The Tate Gallery, 1971. The organisers were L Parris and C Shields

COTMAN THROUGH THE CAMERA LUCIDA

John Sell Cotman as drawn by John Varley with a camera lucida.
Dated 1810.Yale Center for British Art

Anthony Vandyck Copley Fielding. Also drawn with the camera lucida. Same date and provenance
as the Cotman.

Artists do sometimes use mechanical devices in their work. One gadget  is the camera lucida which is a device that can be used in portraiture. Here are two drawings made by the British watercolourist John Varley. The he first bears an inscription which confirms that it was made with the cameras lucida. The other is so similar in style that  if the one was created with the device then the other must be too. Interestingly enought the subjects are both distinguished British watercolourists J S Cotman and Anthony Vandyck Copley Fielding. Both works are in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art.
The Cotman dawing in particular proves that male hairstyles are relatively unchanging.

The inscription on the front of the Cotman states "Johnny Cotman of Norwich",and on the back,"Mr John Sinclair Cotman/Done with the Camera Lucida/June 1810. (Varley gets Cotman's middle name wrong, it was Sell.) And it also appears that the camera lucida used was most likely that invented about this time by John Varley's brother Cornelius who certainly had strong scientific interests.For further information look here . And for information regarding scientific aspects try this site of the American Philosophical Society.Cornelius called his apparatus a Patent Graphic Telescope. He was an artist but worked mostly as a maker of scientific instruments.

The camera lucida is basically a prism fixed above a drawing board.To use it the artist normally sits at a table and looks into a prism at eye level. Then the artist traces what is seen in the prism -which appears to be on the paper which sits on the baseboard.

The quality of line is also a giveaway which suggest a kind of tracing or copying activity. If you look at the neckwear of the sitters you will see the clear and slightly perfunctory quality of line which is common in traced work.You can see a similar simplification in some of the drawings which Rodin made when he copied a work by holding it up against a pane of glass to allow tracing onto another sheet.

OX-GALL FOR WATERCOLOURS

Yes, that is just what it is, another traditional feature of the British watercolour tradition. And yes, in the past you could have sent someone round to the slaughterhouse to obtain enough to last a lifetime.It is also used by people who make marbled paper. But apart from this gory facet, why is it of use to a watercolourist?

If you use quality watercolour paper you will often find that it is difficult to cover the paper, difficult to spread your wash because the colour will not take and balls up into patches no matter what you do. Watercolour papers are often hard-sized so that the colour stays on the surface and maintains its brilliance.This is what ox-gall helps with. It is a water tension breaker or wetting agent.You can add some to your painting water and see what the results you get.It may only need a few drops.Available from reputable art stores, you don't need to go to the slaughterhouse.

CLOUD STUDIES-A TUTORIAL

Here are the stages in the making of a small watercolour exercise done to practise the visualisation of clouds, one of the hardest of subjects for an artist to imagine.Done on a sheet of watercolour paper with a slightly rough surface. Sometimes I lift  the dried watercolour with a wet brush-no colour.The blue shapes eventually define the white shapes of the clouds.

Haphazard dabs of very liquid blue watercolour

Dark blue starts to define clouds.Orange brown to represent land/horizon

Green band to represent another patch of land. it dries in a puddle with a hard edge. Some blending of sky at lower left.

Further work on the sky near the horizon  where the clouds are blurred by rubbing with brush loaded with clean water.

More blurring of clouds on the horizon and upper right with clean water. Land areas strengthened.

Trees are introduced and the horizon is strengthened.Clouds are blurred with a brush loaded with clean water

Trees are strengthened and some light ochre is added to the shadow sides of the clouds.The clouds are redefined a little at lower right.

Does Blue recede? Does red advance?

The Valley of Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland,
John Ruskin, watercolour, circa 1866. Metropolitan, New York.

Cliches get repeated from time to time. That is their nature. You will probably have heard the one which says that blue colours recede and red comes forward.It was evidently a commonplace in the C19 and it is still a commonplace now. But here is its demolition from the great Victorian art critic  John Ruskin. He was many things as well as an art critic but let us leave that for now. This comes from section 184 of The Elements of Drawing, a book which all artists who work from observation can read with profit. I have broken the text into paragraphs for easier reading. You can find the book at Project Gutenberg or quite cheaply in the Dover paperback facsimile.

 It is a favorite dogma among modern writers on color that "warm colours" (reds and yellows) "approach," or express nearness, and "cold colours" (blue and gray) "retire," or express distance. So far is this from being the case, that no expression of distance in the world is so great as that of the gold and orange in twilight sky. Colours, as such, are ABSOLUTELY inexpressive respecting distance. It is their quality (as depth, delicacy, etc.) which expresses distance, not their tint.

 A blue bandbox set on the same shelf with a yellow one will not look an inch farther off, but a red or orange cloud, in the upper sky, will always appear to be beyond a blue cloud close to us, as it is in reality. It is quite true that in certain objects, blue is a sign of distance; but that is not because blue is a retiring colour, but because the mist in the air is blue, and therefore any warm colour which has not strength of light enough to pierce the mist is lost or subdued in its blue: but blue is no more, on this account, a "retiring colour," than brown is a retiring colour, because, when stones are seen through brown water, the deeper they lie the browner they look; or than yellow is a retiring colour, because, when objects are seen through a London fog, the farther off they are the yellower they look. Neither blue, nor yellow, nor red, can have, as such, the smallest power of expressing either nearness or distance: they express them only under the peculiar circumstances which render them at the moment, or in that place, signs of nearness or distance. Thus, vivid orange in an orange is a sign of nearness, for if you put the orange a great way off, its colour will not look so bright; but vivid orange in sky is a sign of distance, because you cannot get the colour of orange in a cloud near you. So purple in a violet or a hyacinth is a sign of nearness, because the closer you look at them the more purple you see. But purple in a mountain is a sign of distance, because a mountain close to you is not purple, but green or gray.

 It may, indeed, be generally assumed that a tender or pale colour will more or less express distance, and a powerful or dark colour nearness; but even this is not always so. Heathery hills will usually give a pale and tender purple near, and an intense and dark purple far away; the rose colour of sunset on snow is pale on the snow at your feet, deep and full on the snow in the distance; and the green of a Swiss lake is pale in the clear waves on the beach, but intense as an emerald in the sunstreak six miles from shore. And in any case, when the foreground is in strong light, with much water about it, or white surface, casting intense reflections, all its colors may be perfectly delicate, pale, and faint; while the distance, when it is in shadow, may relieve the whole foreground with intense darks of purple, blue green, or ultramarine blue. So that, on the whole, it is quite hopeless and absurd to expect any help from laws of "aërial perspective." Look for the natural effects, and set them down as fully as you can, and as faithfully, and never alter a colour because it won't look in its right place. Put the colour strong, if it be strong, though far off; faint, if it be faint, though close to you. Why should you suppose that Nature always means you to know exactly how far one thing is from another? She certainly intends you always to enjoy her colouring, but she does not wish you always to measure her space. You would be hard put to it, every time you painted the sun setting, if you had to express his 95,000,000 miles of distance in "aërial perspective."

FREDERICK VARLEY- A CANADIAN ARTIST'S VIEW OF THE GREAT WAR

In the  various events which will commemorate the centenary of the Great War there will surely be some that will celebrate the work of War Artists. This British government scheme is well known, there was a similar rerun in the Second World War. If you are interested in Paul or John  Nash, Roberts, Bomberg, Orpen, Kennington, or  Nevinson or you will know that they were involved in the scheme. You will likely know as I did of Bomberg's work for the Canadian War Memorials Fund. But a Canadian artist in Europe? There is nothing to do with Frederick Varley in the Imperial War Museum, but Canada has some excellent paintings.

I came upon this artist when searching for an art work by John Varley. I did not find it, but what I did find was a painting by Frederick Varley and this more than compensated for the failure of my search.

Varley was born in Sheffield in 1881 and trained there and in Antwerp. He had just turned 30 when he emigrated to Canada where he was to become a member of the Group of Seven an important group of Canadian landscapists (mostly).

"Gas Chamber, Seaford", F Varley 1918

This striking painting was my first sight of a Varley image. it represents a testing station for gas masks for the military. You can see the soldiers emerging from the space in their protective gear. As a composition it is quite dramatic. The chamber seems to be underground and the figures are emerging into a wider landscape. I feel that the dramatic composition may owe something to the fact that Varley had worked as an illustrator. There is story telling here, more so than-for example- in Paul Nash's more symbolist work.Nevertheless it looks as if there is considerable enjoyment of paintwork .

The troops may well be Canadian as the Canadian Engineers Training Depot was based at Seaford, Sussex.

"For What?" F Varley

There is written evidence that Varley was considerably moved by the futility of the war. Here a burial detail is collecting and burying what relics of humanity they can find. Here are the rows of little wooden crosses. In the foreground a cart of corpses awaiting their turn in the earth.And what a background.The vast,sodden wasteland of the battlefield is powerfully evoked.

"German Prisoners" F Varley

The prisoners walk on, wrapped up and despondent through the shattered landscape and the debris of war.The broken trees are shot to matchwood. It is so muddy, so grey.This is, like the others, quite a large painting. The brushwork looks as though it might be somewhat expressionist. 

As far as I can see from these reproductions  the paintings must hold their own with any of the better known work by war artists. I hope you agree.

ALL IMAGES COURTESY WIKIMEDIA

SYLVIA WISHART-AN ARTIST'S LOVE FOR ORKNEY

In 2012 was published, Sylvia Wishart: A Study, with an introduction by Neil Firth and an essay by Mel Gooding.I  have long known about  Wishart  and this  handsomely produced book published by The Pier Arts Centre is just what was required to do justice to this remarkable artist..This is entirely appropriate as Sylvia Wishart was deeply concerned in the foundation of the arts centre.The design and printing are excellent-and I notice that it was in fact printed in Orkney. There's localism for you! But curiously it was not easy to obtain. One might ask if the book has a distributor.

It has an ISBN, but this was no help to my usually excellent local bookshop who could not trace it. Nor is it available from that well known on- line retailer which doesn't like to pay UK taxes...... So, I had to contact the staff at the Pier who could not have been more helpful when I called. The website was misbehaving.( But try this link  now if you want a copy). They took my details over the phone and I had the book in just over 48 hours. Pretty good- and friendly service!

So, how did I know about his artist who lived and worked mostly, no further south than Aberdeen.
Well, she did have an exhibition in Alnwick when I was very young- at the the then relatively new Bondgate Gallery. I still have the  brochure, you can see it with my review of the last Edinburgh show here. The prices now appear extraordinarily modest. But of course  would have represented several weeks  pay for the average worker.

Sylvia Wishart had much encouragement from her art teacher Ian MacInnes who happened to be a fine painter himself ( and it seems a well known local character). She did eventually apply to to study art in Aberdeen and it was at Gray's that she was to work for most of her  teaching career. Her early work includes two relatively academic male nudes-very well observed and unusually succesful for their date. One interior has a kind of slightly French look to it. It is again a highly competent not to stay confident exercise. You can see why her tutors were impressed.

 But then came the illustrations for An Orkney Tapestry by George Mackay Brown which to me were of  equal interest to the  text itself. These show the fastidious and delicate way in which she develops the airy structure of her drawing. Formally, as compositions, these are, like all her work extremely satisfying, and the nicely judged degree of abstraction and the clarity of structure make excellent illustrations for that book.They  entirely lack the common expressionist  side of Scottish art.

  Gooding is right to emphasise the importance of these works. In his words they have
" an uncanny stasis". And again he says that they are "a calendar of love for Orkney. That many resulted from  enlightened sponsorship by a well known local agricultural firm who did indeed want illustrations for their calendar is in some ways neither here nor there. But in another it is charming and appropriate.These subtle constructions show a real poetry of landscape and organisation . They are so quiet that you might think a breath of air could  blow them away. They focus on farm structures and to some degree the setting is only hinted at. They are if I may say so, entirely unique and I sometimes think they are the best of her work before the large late paintings . At times they have a simplicity which the Rembrandt of  the landscape drawings-or many Japanese artists would understand. It is the art of leaving out. She  likes fence posts, barbed wire and stone walls, habour walls also -these she might have said, "are things which made me a painter", these and so much else.

The Double Houses Stromness: from An Orkney Tapestry

I would love to know more about Wishart's prints-two are illustrated in the book. They look good-and are well founded on her already described draughtsmanship.One has some hand colouring and I'm guessing that she was more interested in creative possibilities than the production of editions.Her themes-reflections, interior and exterior, a ship in a bottle can get quite complicated and the colouring helps to clarify the image.

Gooding compares Wishart's work with that of several other women artists-all of an older generation and none to my knowledge Scottish.He is quite clear that Wishart knew their work and her sense of design is  quite justifiably compared with that of Prunella Clough-which is a high compliment.
He isn't suggesting that there is a special feminine sensibility- but illustrates their work for the good reason that they have  relevance for Wishart's art. Morandi and Robert Medley after all have made paintings in which the range of coloured greys is narrow.Mary Potter is mentioned as an artist working with closely related tones in a high key. She, incidentally, had a word of advice for  exhibition hangers-don't put a light toned work next to another.

At Rackwick, in a desolate valley, her home  at the most intense time of her relationship with George Mackay Brown, she found inspiration in the collapsing walls of broken crofts. Notice that the crofts are named- memory is strong here.

Crawnest and the Craig Gate: Rackwick

Rackwick as photographed by Meyer of Stromness

In her later work from Heatherybraes it is quite clear that  creatively she was going on from strength to strength.These large mixed media works play so creatively with the idea of the outer and inner worlds, reflection and transparency. Her colour becomes richer.

" Starting in the central area...I will let the picture "grow" in all directions until a decision is made where to stop the image."

This is where Gooding brings in Bachelard with reference to the interior/ exterior  views which combine in these last works.The artist obviously lived in the most wonderful landscape and the view from her cottage  makes one envious. Everything a landscape artist  could want just outside your window!  Cliffs and sky: lots of dramatic weather no doubt. And these which came from that home are some of her finest work.She achieves a fluid, dream like painting. The work is full of incident as the screens meld, interlock, dissolve. Its a bit like a double exposure in photography.

Reflection 1

I would have been curious to know where  went on her travelling scholarship? And what did her students think of her? The Marwick interview is quoted but I would have liked the chance to read it all.I cannot find it on the web.This is a fine study of an artist too reluctant to push herself forward. You can have a look around the Pier Arts Centre here. A selection of Wishart's paintings is available from the BBC here. My review of the show of her work at the RSA is here 

Sylvia Wishart: A Study:Pier Arts Centre, 2012. ISBN 978-0-95311131-0-1

JOHN PIPER-LANDSCAPE PAINTER?

Not long ago I picked up the catalogue for an exhibition of John Piper's Welsh art. Just a couple of days later I saw on the BBC the announcement that much of it has been acquired by the National Museum of Wales. They have surely obtained some of Piper's best work.

Reading through the catalogue I came upon David Fraser Jenkin's remark that Piper is perhaps our best landscape painter. This gave me pause for reflection alright, for, I thought to myself, is Piper really a landscape artist at all, and if he is then how should we rate him? Perhaps he was the best landscape painter of his time-after all,the C20 was not  a great age of British landscape painting.

I don't agree with Jenkins. Buildings are what really interest Piper. Not people and very rarely the landscape. He is at his best with the relatively monochromatic paintings of the Welsh mountains and Cardiff is now the possessor of the largest group of his finest work.But colour is not his forte.In the Seaton Delaval and Renishaw paintings the connections with stage sets are very strong.That is what Piper is like.I never feel that Piper loves nature, though he does love picture making.

The Rise of the Dovey: John Piper

Does Piper paint the sky with any confidence, interest or competence? The answer must be in the negative. Depictions of the sky-"the chief organ of sentiment in a landscape", as Constable proclaimed, are more or less perfunctory with Piper. He can do only one mode with  any confidence. It was easy for him to obtain unity in his paintings by adopting the methods he chose, by avoiding the drama of the sky and concentrating on the building which is what really interests him. The use of strong flat colour  also helps in this quest. You may object that landscapes do not have to show the sky.Most European landscape painters do, most Chinese artists do not. It is also true that most landscape painters are not good with skies.But that is another point, we cannot all be Cotmans.The only similarity between Cotman and Piper is the antiquarianism. The one suffering artistic struggle because of his workload and the other willingly scouring the country for  curiosities.

It may be objected that there are many fine landscape artists who take little interest in the sky-better ones than Piper such as Bonington have treated skies in a very formulaic manner.Piper really cannot be bothered.If he had produced less and better rather than more and worse he would have  a higher reputation. Can you imagine a Piper retrospective at the Musée d'Orsay? No, I didn't think so? 

Would that Piper had stuck to the topography and the guide books.Perhaps also the theatre.He doesn't seem to have much of a sense of colour and he certainly produced too much work. If you don't agree then take a look at those slim catalogues from Marlborough Fine Art. So much is dreadful. I shouldn't really comment on the stained glass, but, judging from the illustrations in Spalding it cannot be good. Some of the smaller designs verge on the crude or the silly, it seems to me.

The auction record for his work, set in 2008 was for a painting from his abstract period in the thirties, a tolerable but sterile period, not for his later work.Late Bomberg  is much to be preferred for landscape. Or Sheila Fell- a relatively conservative artist who had so much more feeling for paint-and nature.

For the BBC item on the recent acquisition by the National Museum of Wales see here.

John Piper in Wales,intro by David Fraser Jenkins, 1990.
John and Myfanwy Piper, Frances Spalding,2009

ALAN SORRELL- AN ENGLISH NEO-ROMANTIC ARTIST

A last there is a modern book on the English Neo-Romantic artist Alan Sorrell. It was published to coincide with the exhibition of Sorrell's work at the Soane Museum. Another  book Alan Sorrell: Early Wales Re-created,which I have discussed elsewhere was  an excellent production and that is where I discuss his archaeological work.This one  is in a larger format with several contributors from  various disciplines.There is a useful chronology. So when I refer to "the writer" I am speaking about the author of a particular section of the work.

 They don't make artists like this any more. If you wanted to find someone to do  similar tasks in archaeological reconstruction nowadays you might be looking at an animation studio. Perspectives and fly throughs in a trice! But Sorrell could do perspective and lettering, anything you wanted really. He is a designer/ illustrator most definitely.And a complete professional in his field.

His  Rome scholarship did not really lead too far artistically but meeting archaeologists at the school certainly did. Some simplification of the figure-coming from an enthusiasm for Piero was long lasting. His early subject paintings  do not merit much enthusiasm to my mind. But they are a young man's work. The monochrome illustration of the Annunciation looks heavy and despondent. There is no joy in it. The painting  Summer Scene Triptych with it's disturbing reds and greens is rather repellent. But then recent English artists have struggled with colour and I find no evidence in this book of  an admiration for French work.

The book cover shows his watercolour The Artist in the Campagna. It is a curious item. It certainly doesn't  resemble the work of those artists who a 100 years earlier flocked to portray the transcendental emptiness of this region strewn with ruins. My first thought was that the artist was portraying an English scene; not Italy.The Appian Way of 1932 is more striking and here we have Italy through a full blown, slightly incoherent, theatrical and very English Neo-Romanticism. Ruins and statues abound, a courting couple strolls into the painting.

I do think that Sorrell will be remembered most for his archaeological reconstruction work and for his book and guide book illustrations.As an archaeological illustrator his work is bold,dramatic, rich and generous. The writer does not state this  and I think she should have done so.The aerial views which are such a consistent feature of his archaeological reconstructions seem to have developed from his war work with the RAF. The section on his war service has has some excellent work-again very dark-of camp life, parades etc.

Harrow's Scar Milecastle:Hadrian's Wall

His "sombre colour" was evident early on and noted by the Director of the British School.
Nevertheless his project Working Boats from Around the British Coast for the Festival of Britain certainly succeeds in a slightly jaunty and elaborate manner.It was the background to the bar on the ship which brought the Festival to  ports in the UK.

Take for example The Seasons a school mural for Warwick. No one could do anything of such competence nowadays but the colour is very low key. The writer is surely correct in seeing some inspiration from Brueghel here but everything is really rather grey. This gives coherence, unity, and a kind of impact. But to eschew the riotous colours of an English Spring, the richness of Autumn and so on...... Well, unity and impact were obviously important.

Sorrell made a visit  to Iceland in the thirties. The chronology in the book says it was in 1934, with his exhibition of resulting work occurring in 1935. The text says that the visit was in 1935 but an apparently signed drawing, illustration 118 is said to bear the date 1934. (He also met the writer Haldor Laxness). The works were on show in October of 1935*  and so just might  have  influenced   the  Auden/Isherwood visit of 1936-though Sorrell was not the only artist showing Icelandic subjects in London at this time. Was there some interest in the Sagas on Sorrell's part?  William Morris had also visited and Auden and perhaps Sorrell would have known about that trip. Or was it something specific to the Thirties? The products of this trip were-strong and bold designs with something of the clarity and hardness of contemporary wood engravings .

Sorrell's own autobiographical writings sound interesting.They are apparently pseudonomous. To me this suggests reticence rather than vanity. In this  present  book we don't get much sense of his personal character. That he was extremely hardworking and professional comes across clearly.His refusal to work on projects which might lead to the bombing of artistic centres is highly commendable.

But he had written of one of his early works ,"I always find it necessary to have information about every detail and incident in a work, and it is not by any means a source of pride but often of keen regret that I cannot improvise. Thus every individual leaf and all the curious bends of the tree trunks required as much study as the figures themselves." In his archaeological work this was something of an advantage and curiously enough he could let himself go once the structure was established and produce reconstruction work which has not been equalled.


*Oct 1935 per Times Digital Archive.

Alan Sorrell:The Life and Works of an English Neo-Romantic Artist, Edited by Sacha Llewellyn and Richard Sorell, Sansom & Co,2013

A WATERCOLOUR DEVELOPS

If you have looked at other posts on my blog you will know that I am interested in watercolour painting and in the problems painters have in depicting clouds.There follows a discussion of a tiny watercolour sketch-on rough watercolour paper. How did it get from the first  image to the final one?

start

finish

Firstly let me say what I was trying to create. It was my intention to show something of a chain of clouds as they appear in perspective ranging backwards from almost overhead towards a hill on the horizon. I am not sure that I have succeeded, but, at any rate, if you look at the following you will get some idea of how I manipulate watercolour.

POINT 1
I have said it before, but when thinking about cloud contours you might want to define them by painting in the negative-that is the blue of the sky-when beginning to establish which areas are to represent clouds.

POINT 2
The way I do clouds means that I find the shapes as I work. It also means that I remove paint or use tools to blur or soften contours. That is certainly not an C18 watercolour technique. I use various things to remove paint.A moist hog or watercolour  brush can stroke away a hard edge and a rag or kitchen towel can blot up the paint. The forms of clouds vary considerably and sometimes there is a relatively hard edge whilst on another side the values of cloud and sky are very close and the transition should be delicate. You can achieve this with the technique I'm discussing.

POINT 3
These techniques will not work on poor quality paper, nor in many commercial sketchbooks. Good paper is important and expensive. There is no avoiding this but with quality paper you can make corrections and if need be work on the other side of the sheet. Rough textured paper is important for helping with textures.

Now that I look back on the exercise I think that some of the earlier stages have  more interesting qualities than the finished version. That's life!

GIACOMETTI AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM

In 1964 Giacometti came to London in preparation for the great Arts Council show of his work which was held in the following year. He was shown the sights by Robin Campbell who later wrote a charming  text  published in Giacometti's Paris, a booklet to accompany the exhibition of his lithographs Paris sans fin.

We spent several hours in the British Museum where we looked at early Egyptian paintings; he found them  extraordinarily 'real and lifelike'. Giacometti brooded silently over a tall T'ang figure of a woman. After walking up to the figure and back again repeatedly he finally reflected that more and more he preferred to anything else the impersonal, objective quality of early art. "Modern artists.' he said 'are frantic egomaniacs-myself included, of course.' Afterwards at lunch he persuaded me, since he spoke no English himself, to tell the girl who brought our order how pretty he thought her. "One living girl like her  is worth more than anything in a museum."

Tomb figure,Tang dynasty, BM, height, 44.5"

This striking figure was on display in the Chinese galleries of the BM in the mid 1960s and I suggest that it is the one referred to by Campbell. Giacometti's interest in early art is well attested by his drawings (recall his sketchbook of interpretive drawings) and by remarks noted by many others. Arikha has him frequently remarking that, "The arm which most resembles an arm is the Egyptian arm."Also his abhorrence of High renaissance art.(Arikha,pp 214/15)

Giacometti's Paris, by Robin Campbell, ACGB,undated, 1978 or later.

On Depiction: selected writings on art" by Avigdor Arikha,London,1995.

ARTHUR MELVILLE-A BRILLIANT WATERCOLOURIST

If you should ask me for the name of the cleverest, most cunning watercolourist of all I would unhesitatingly propose the name of Arthur Melville. This Scotsman who lived only for 46 years and died in 1904, evolved a complex and extraordinarily rich method of working. This can be described but it is difficult to comprehend without examination of the work itself.

Melville is at the  extreme of the nineteenth century  trend to elaborate and more complex effects which earlier masters such as J R Cozens would scarcely have recognised. It isn't difficult to describe the mehanics of Melville's technique. The more important aspects of how he visualised and developed his work is another matter. The certainties and ambiguities which he allows are what matters here. Not everything is painted with overall Pre-Raphaelite evenness-far from it. Blots and pools of watercolour are all part of the process.And so is the lifting or wiping out of colour. Melville is  master of the lost and found contour.

His  watercolour subjects are typically either Scottish landscapes, scenes from southern English  landscape or  Spanish andOrientalist subjects. His brilliant technique is particularly suitable for the painting of intense contrasts of light and shade.

HIS TECHNIQUE

Take a sheet of watercolour paper and flood it with an even coating of white. Let  this dry and repeat the process if you wish.

If you have already painted in watercolour you may be thinking, "What, do you really mean that I should paint on such a surface? Won't the wash become immediately corrupted by the underlying white?" My answer is that will surely happen if you are indecisive and push the paint about too much. But if you are certain and unhesitating in placing your colour, you should not have a problem.This should give you some idea of the deliberateness of Melville's method. Some considerable previsualisation  must be happening here. And  you would be right.You can hardly establish an architectural setting without considerable forethought. The painting of figures and groups of figures and animals is another matter.

A Moorish Procession-National Gallery of Scotland

The human element, often a crowd or group of figures is  treated as a group and not as an assembly of individuals. Once you start to look for individuals you will see the economy with which Melville works. Some parts are vague and appear almost as ghost images do on a photographic negative.In the original of the work shown above the  animal at left appears as a wraith like figure. So too the persons next to it.

The Little Bullfight "Bravo Toro!" Victoria & Albert Museum

This technique  allows the artist to remove or sponge out paint so that a figure may appear as partly solid ad partly wraith like through the trace left behind. Melville exploits this in Bravo Toro where the dust and smoke of a bullring are evoked. He does not paint a dust cloud over figures but rather sponges out something which is already there.Sponging out is a venerable watercolour technique but here Melville is wiping into the original white ground beneath-hence the peculiar subtlety of the blurring effect. Certainty and ambiguity once more.

When the white ground is dry you may work on it.Very liquid washes may be appropriate, so too puddles of very wet paint, also blots and abstract dabs which may meld together in the eye to produce an image.If you want to make a correction you may use a sponge or rag and remove the paint with it. You will be left with a white ground as a blurred, unfocused patch.The white ground gives added luminosity to the
work-all the more essential for these orientalist paintings.

There are accounts of him placing a sheet of glass over a painting so that he could try out the effects  he was working with. I am a little sceptical about that idea because  glass is not receptive to watercolour. But even if untrue it does say something about the artist's attitude to his craft.

There is little literature on Melville and most is rare and extremely expensive to purchase.The clearest short account is in  volume three of Martin Hardie's history of British Watercolour Painters.

Excellent news: The National Gallery of Scotland is planning an exhibition on Arthur Melville from Oct 10 2015 to 17 Jan 2016.This will be the first substantial grouping of his work in a generation and will hopefully result in a good catalogue with excellent illustrations.

Water-Colour Painting in Britain, Vol 3, The Victorian Period,by  Martin Hardie, London 1968.

FLOUR PASTE FOR WATERCOLOURS

Flour paste is a  a useful medium for a watercolour artist. I don't think it is used much-or known about , but it seems reasonably certain that it was used late in life by John Sell Cotman, one of the finest of British watercolourists. Painting with paste means that you have a medium which gives your watercolour a slight  density or body. Your paint will still be more or less transparent like a normal wash.The paint does not run  like a wash and it can be painted into as soon as you like without noticeable spreading. In this example here the orange paint was put down first and the brush cleaned preparatory to making the purple line. There is no significant spreading of the colour.

paste medium-wet into wet-as dried 

Also the paste medium allows you to remove paint or scratch it away almost from the moment you put it down until some considerable time afterwards.The paste dries more slowly than the normal wash.This allows the making of textures with paste which will keep their shape. This wouldn't happen if you dragged an implement through a watercolour wash.

paste medium-scratching into wet watercolour-as dried

You can paint over one layer with another so that further textures may be obtained.If you have too many layers the under layer will likely be disturbed and pick up when you try to apply one layer too many. Remember to use a decent quality watercolour paper for your experiments.

Here is a little watercolour doodle which shows how scratching into paste can  be used in a landscape.

In the foreground you can see where I have scratched into the paste to give a suggestion of texture to a rough moorland scene.In some areas there is wash over the scratchings. I would presume that a traditional watercolourist will use this medium carefully and not make it too obtrusive. There is some scratching out in the distance also-parallel lines upper left.

RECIPE FOR FLOUR PASTE
INGREDIENTS

14gms plain flour (two heaped teaspoonsful) =0.5 ounces (US & UK)

345 mils water (large mug) =11.66 ounces (US )

(THIS MIXTURE GIVES A FAIRLY THICK MIXTURE WHICH CAN BE GOOD FOR SCRIBING AND SCRAPING INTO. IF YOU WANT A FLUID PASTE THEN HALVE THE QUANTITY OF FLOUR.IF IN DOUBT GO FOR A LIQUID MIXTURE WHICH IS VERY RUNNY. IT DOESNT TAKE MUCH IF YOU ARE A TRADITIONAL WATERCOLOUR PAINTER.)



Measure out the water need into a suitable container. Put about 2/3 of the water into a pan and bring to the boil. Mix the flour thoroughly with the remaining water . You can strain this if you wish but I never do. When the water in the pan is boiling add the flour and water mixture  and bring the temperature  of the mixture up to a gentle simmer for 4 minutes.

When the paste is cooked it will appear quit runny but after some time the paste will thicken-this can take up to 30 minutes.You are aiming for something which is less runny than water.The paste will keep best if covered and in a cool place. You will be able to tell if it starts to ferment when it will probably not be usable. You will likely need to experiment a bit but even-or especially quite runny "paste" can be used.
You may wish to keep the paste in a cool place-it will eventually begin to ferment. It is up to you to decide when it is no longer useable. Experiment!

You can make a thicker paste for gluing paper by making a mixture with three  heaped teaspoons of flour to the same volume of water.To this paste you can add approx 20 to 25% of white glue. This will produce an excellent paste for book arts and collage.It is clean and pleasant to work with. The white glue seems to help preserve the flour paste.But it will eventually ferment.In the UK I use something called PVA Bond which is used to glue wood.

My post on Cotman's use of paste is here

COTMAN AND PASTE MEDIUM

Here are some examples of late Cotman watercolours in the British Museum. His use of paste is mostly to give body rather than the opportunity for scratching out. But  scratching out can be seen in this first example at lower right foreground and in the tree trunk on the right.

At Whitlingham

It is commonly said-on the web-that Cotman used rice paste rather than flour paste but older authorities such as Kitson says that it was the liquid from rotting flour paste-or possibly something involving egg. Stainton has said that it may be flour paste or size. Rice flour would surely work-it is used inJapanese printmaking-but from practical experience I find that flour paste works well. Why use rice flour when every household had plain flour to hand? Everyone at that time would have known how to make flour paste. As I have never seen a chemical analysis of the medium used by Cotman-and doubt if I ever shall, I am sticking to my idea of flour paste as the most likely. I have not yet seen a reputable source suggesting that Cotman used rice flour.

Cader Idris

The Cader Idris above is surely painted with flour paste.There is a grainy look to the paint quality which is found in paste work.

A Mountain Tarn

This one also seems to have the characteristics of paste medium. I think that there are traces of scratching in the highest blue mountain and that it is possible that the posts in the water were made by removing paint-by scoring into the medium when wet.They would then be reinforced.

I have just done a post on how to make flour paste and use it in watercolours.The post is here.

ART VERSUS STYLE

The Month of May in Paris-1968 by Raymond Mason

In my limited thinking about the nature of art I often find that I believe that artists are too concerned about style and not enough about content. It seems to me that the instant aesthetic of the poster and graphic art has commonly triumphed over any possible content. You can see this in amateur or semi-professional work. You can surely see it in the productions of many who exhibit at the Royal Academy. Here is a quote from Raymond Mason which just about sums up my view of the situation,

"Most artists do not seek truth,which being independent of their own person would gradually transform their art, but the perfecting of a style which will glorify their name."

This comes from a passage concerned with Bacon's late work and Mason's misgivings about it.
Whether or not there is a truth independent of the artist is a moot point but I hope that you will get my drift.There is not enough seeing, looking or loving in most landscape artists' work.

At Work in Paris, Raymond Mason on Art and Artiststs, Thames & Hudson ,2003.page 176.

For further remarks about this artist see another post here .