DELACROIX AND THE RISE OF MODERN ART-A VERY MIXED BAG

The recent exhibition of the Goya Portraits at the National Gallery resulted in an excellent catalogue which is a serious contribution to the Goya literature. The exhibition Delacroix and Modern Art takes on a much more general theme and perhaps could never hope to be more than an introduction to the subject.The topic is  huge and unwieldy. This show has many enjoyable paintings but is to a considerable extent an example of forced association, based on the collections of the two venues for this exhibition. An exhibition on the (relative) cheap you might say. It is based largely on the National Gallery in London and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The unifying factor is Patrick Noon who is Chair of Paintings at Minneapolis and an expert particularly on Bonington, and obviously by extension the friendship between Bonington and Delacroix which was cut short by the early death of the English artist.

In London about one in six of the exhibits comes from the National Gallery itself. There are many lovely paintings in this show but circumstances and expense most obviously  dictated the selection. One might  almost wish to congratulate the organisers on doing so well.

Delacroix's Baron Schwitter (4) was included because the Gallery owns it and because it fills out the list and because it allows the somewhat farcical comparison with Sargent's Lord Ribblesdale-which shows a similarly elongated figure.It is true that the painting was acquired in dramatic circumstances from the posthumous 1918 Degas sale ("But Monsieur it is for the Louvre!") and had been treasured by that great and mysterious artist. But that association though fascinating scarcely bears any relation to Degas' own work and is surely an episode in the history of collecting. The inclusion of Ovid among the Scythians is perhaps more appropriate. Baudelaire praised it and it must have some relevance for Symbolism.Redon would surely have approved. Again a work from the National Gallery Collection.  

There are copies of Delacroix by interested artists, a  reduced version of one work  (Sardanapalus) and a copy by Renoir of the Jewish Wedding. These help put his life in context. Degas' Young Spartans is included because it shows the artist  almost at the end of his somewhat half-hearted attempt to treat classical subjects and because  Delacroix had thought of a similar subject for one of his mural decorations. A Gauguin demonstrates a similar interest in Delacroix. Does this justify shuttling major works to-and-fro across the Atlantic? Sometimes I wonder.

There is also a mediocre Degas from the NG in Washington present because Delacroix had used a similar theme.

There are a few luminous Cézannes.They include the Lutte d' Amour, The Apotheosis of Delacroix and The Eternal Feminine. Did not Giacometti say that a Cézanne was like a fresco? Giacometti was right!

The exhibition is good when it deals with Delacroix's orientalism.Minneapolis is the owner of the magnificent Convulsionists (21) which is one of the glories of the show.It has other works relating to the North African trip whilst the NG has none.This painting shows Delacroix at his finest and lives as an exemplar which would have fascinated any Impressionist/Post Impressionist. We know that Seurat studied it thoroughly early in his career-before the great masterpieces of the early '80s.His notes survive as a link to Delacroix and, in effect, back before him to one of Delacroix's artistic gods- Veronese. Here the achievement of a coherent, unified painting of a brightly lit religious procession in Tangiers shows the colourist in Delacroix, and demonstrates  what mattered to the impressionists. Delacroix manages a painting which is free from murky shadow and paints the subtle greys associated with partial shadow. Some figures are partly lit-the child running out of the composition at lower left was noted by Seurat.And you can see in the greyish green shadow the pink underskirt a subtle complementary salmonish pink. Seurat also noted the blue-greyed as he said by distance- of the carpet hanging over the wall high up at the centre of the picture.I would say that the illustration shown here is reasonably accurate but makes the lower half of the painting a little too dark.Seurat, as always,interested in complementary colours, found plenty here-starting with the blue-yellowish opposition of sky and rooftops in the the sun.It is a miracle that the artist was able to create this poetic work 6 years after his only visit to N Africa.

Convulsionists of Tanger: Minneapolis.

So here is a painting which can be used to demonstrate colour theory.I leave the complicated question of how much Delacroix knew of Chevreul at the time of the Convulsionists well alone. Some guidance can be found in Lee Johnson's still useful book of 1963. One thinks that Delacroix cannot have known much in 1838.Most artists at that time will have known of the idea of a colour wheel and perhaps by empirical evidence that a colour can be greyed by its opposite. Seurat evidently believed that Delacroix was thinking along these lines in this painting- whether by influence or instinct.This is why art history  shows Delacroix a precursor of the Impressionists and so on towards Neo-Impressionism and into the C20.The link direct, the proof of an actual source or stimulation in Delacroix is shown in one of Van Gogh's dire transcriptions of Delacroix's religious subject-a Pieta from the Van Gogh Museum.Nevertheless it demonstrates VG's use of complementary colours.

Pieta after a print after  Delacroix. By Van Gogh   

The exhibition does have some fascinating paintings. When did you last see anything in the UK by Bazille or Chassériau? You will find them in this show. Does the National Gallery own a Bazille or a Chassériau? No of course not.

Some of the Delacroixs are more in the way of space fillers.His relevance for Symbolism is certainly demonstrated-at length with the St George theme. There is a delightful room of flower paintings by various artists..

The Lamentation: Boston MFA

But Delacroix was a very uneven artist and this large and now mediocre Lamentation (37) is a perfectly dire example of him at his most half-hearted. He seems to have been relatively proud of it as showing unity in the work.There is a kind of unity, I'll grant that, but it is a unity of gloom.On the left  there are large areas where the paint appears to have sunk and nothing of any substance is visible. Compared to his finest work this painting-not apparently a commission is a failure on several points.Much of the the painting is only partly differentiated murk. If Delacroix painted it like this then he was having an off day. The figure of St John sitting in the foreground with the Crown of Thorns in his hand shows Delacroix"s love of Poussin and the anatomy of the figure is reasonably done. But there is no bold chiaroscuro such as we see attempted with Christ's body and winding sheet.The painting is inconsistent within its own terms.

Christ's body is the colour of dirty snow.The anatomy is  poor. Christ's feet appear at the right of the composition protruding from the grave cloths-painted crudely and reminding me of those cheap dolls which have china feet and ankles but when you pick them up you find that the body is nothing more than padding. The torso of Christ is very poorly realised and the paintwork is crude and rough.The whole figure is elongated in proportions, It does not contribute anything substantial to the theme of Delacroix and Modern Art. We know that Delacroix was working on major decorative schemes when he produced this work but it us poor in comparison.This is baffling and I have to think that the painting has deteriorated or, what amounts to the same thing, been poorly restored.

There is a lovely early Signac ( of the Boulevard de Clichy) which is a joy to see. What a prodigy that man was, and what an artistic bore he became when he turned to watercolour . Signac must feature in this exhibition as the author of the articles later published as "D'Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionisme". But a more luminous later painting could have been found. But this one of course comes from Minneapolis  and so does not add  substantially to the exhibition costs.

There is a painting by the dedicated follower of fashion Metzinger and it is there because it shows a form of divisionism and belongs to Minneapolis. This crass painting of all the paintings in the world is  used to show developments from Seurat/Signac when no Seurat is exhibited . A Seurat panel would have sufficed but it was not to be.There are one or two early Matisses which show the influence of Signac and we must be thankful for that. The Collioure sketch of Mme Matisse on the rocks attempts to make an equivalent for  intense light and here the form is broken into writhing patches and worms of colour.

 There is nothing in the exhibition to remind us of the existence, let alone the marvel of the Chapelle des Saints-Anges at St Sulpice.This Left Bank church set in a quarter where many artists had their studios, is indeed holy ground for Impressionism, and we can be certain though we may not always be able to prove it that Renoir, Cézanne, Monet, Pissarro and Van Gogh visited these rich decorations-at that time and still, the only major decorative scheme by Delacroix which is easily accesible by the public.
Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art: Patrick Noon and Christopher Riopelle, NG Company,2015.The exhibition is at the National Gallery until 22 May 2016.
Amended14/04/16.

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."

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.

DIARY OF A LANDSCAPE PAINTER 2

Country Lane-oil on canvas

  Here is a small landscape painted from a tiny note on a scrap of paper.

What struck me about this scene was the composition, and that is what I recorded. It represents a scene in Spring, not Summer.

If you are concerned about the problem of green in a landscape then it is something you will have to think about in Summer, at least in the UK. But even in Summer not everything is a heavy, dull green. It is true that the delicacy has gone.But grasses appear in many different colours by the roadside or at the edge of fields. They can be pink, or greyish green, or just a faded,bleached, sandy colour. Also, be sure to try to look at the colour you do see with an unbiased eye. I was out in the country  the other day and the undersides of some sycamore leaves had a slightly blue cast to to them.Exaggerate this if you wish. Remember also that, first of all, you are making a painting. Countless artists have said this before me but it remains true.The picture has it's own laws and  necessities.

Cadell the Colourist

F C B Cadell was born in 1883 the year of Manet's death. It somehow seems appropriate. All the Scottish colourists were Francophile in their outlook and Manet and then Impressionism and Fauvism in general were so important for them all. They took something from France and yet they kept their own individuality. Cadell was certainly concerned with style.Some may say that there is too much style and too little content but give the man credit for what he does and within that narrow field his work is extraordinary. Everything is calculated and the ability to organise strong colour is extraordinary. Compare him with Matisse if you like-neither has anything profound to say about the human condition-and Matisse next to Cadell seems something of an incompetent.Within his limits Cadell is the more perfect artist.

This organisation of extraordinary colour combinations in paintings with strong designs is a difficult feat for anyone. Cadell's success is quite unusual.He went to Paris to study independently at age 16. No doubrt his family friend Arthur Melville encouraged him on his way. There was also a short time spent in Munich when the Cadell family were there-but there is nothing Teutonic about his work.It is interesting that he has mentioned Raeburn as an early interest. You can see that Cadell would admire his freshness and suavity.

On Iona he and Peploe painted gorgeous landscapes on their numerous visits. Cadell seems to have felt the need to put in small human figures-at just the right point in the composition to enliven the work. A figure or a yacht, they are always in just the right place.

TECHNICAL NOTE

I have never seen so many paintings under glass as those I saw in Edinburgh on my recent visit. I had thought that this was perhaps just an old-fashioned Scottish habit. But I learn from the Cadell catalogue that he and Peploe got into the habit of painting on a gesso ground. It seems to be this which makes the later paintings have this matte chalky surface.In effect the binder is sucked out of the paint and into the ground.There should be a a barrier between the ground or the paint or the paint becomes unworkable and cannot be pushed about.This can be attractive in its way. On the back of one of his Iona paintings Cadell has written,"Absorbent ground, never varnish".If you do not varnish a painting and yet want to preserve this chalky, impressionist ideal, what can you do? You put the picture under glass.This will help to keep the surface clean.It would otherwise be difficult to remove surface marks, there being no glossy,hard surface from which marks can easily be removed.Vuillard had similar concerns with his distemper paintings-which again should not be varnished.They tell me that the varnishing problem has been solved for acrylics. Perhaps it has.

Seurat

I have been interested in Seurat since my schooldays. I cannot recall if my art teacher , Mr Hunter, mentioned his quasi scientific attitude, most probably he did. This interest was greatly helped when the Northumberland Library Service bought two books on the artist which I  requested and wanted to consult. They were Herbert's book on the drawings which was a very attractive book design for its time and Homer's book on Seurat's use of colour. I'm not sure how much of the latter I understood. I have been re-reading Homer and can see why it occupies an important but much criticised place in Seurat studies. It is too dogmatic  but it is also a useful collection of material for anyone interested in colour in C19 art. 

Discussing colour is extraordinarily difficult and optical mixture/fusion is as tricky as they come. One problem is that Homer, and most writers on Seurat do not seem to understand the importance of the size of the dot and the fact that this is crucial to the greying effects said to be observed in The Models and other  late works. We have problems in perceiving the colour of dots: they can only appear to be greyish at the distance where  fusion may be expected to occur. In other words the colour of dots seen at a distance cannot be clearly perceived by the human eye, at increasing distances their true colour cannot be observed and they will tend to look grey. Juxtaposed dots of differing colours will  function in a similar way and it seems to me that there will be a fusion of coloured greys. The importance of dot size has been known for almost 40 years though it is not mentioned in any of the standard works which I have to hand.Webster, in his well known article on Impressionism has nothing to say on this matter.

Homer is obsessed with the ideal viewing distance for paintings and may have derived this preoccupation from Webster. On that score I can only say that we experience paintings as we can. A wall-painting may force a distant viewpoint, a large canvas allows one to move about and to experience it in different ways. It would have been useful if he had avoided sentences like this.

"As a result of the growing  uniformity of Seurat's pointillist technique,  optical mixture could take place much more easily, and thus  his paintings tended increasingly to operate as luminous screens that emit colored light". (page 165)

 

"Seurat and the Science of Painting",William Innes Homer, The M.I.T Press, 1964