CADELL'S PAINTING TECHNIQUE-IN HIS HIS LANDSCAPES

I was fortunate enough to visit the excellent selection from the Fleming-Wyfold Foundation which was shown last year  in Berwick. Naturally enough I was drawn there because of the Cadell landscapes. The Dunara Castle at Iona and the lovely Loch Creran. This gave me the chance to look closely at his painting technique.

Both paintings are on board and measure 15"X18" a landscape format common in Cadell's work.( Most books give the measurements in inches.)

The Dunara Castle at Iona, Fleming-Wyfold Foundation

Firstly it is commonly said that he painted on gesso because it helped give luminosity to his work. Alice Strang in her catalogue for the Cadell  exhibition at the SNGMA speaks of the,"dry, chalky finish that.... enhances luminosity"* and sees this as particularly appropriate to the Iona landscapes. This seems to be received opinion on the subject and as far as it goes it seems reasonable. (She also says that the gesso ground absorbs the paint, this is not strictly correct, what is absorbed is the binder which holds the paint together and the medium-perhaps a traditional oil/turps mix which may be used to dilute the paint.)

But I am not sure if that the "luminosity" explanation is a sufficient or even a strictly realistic explanation. A varnish-which Cadell emphatically rejects-can deepen and enliven the darker colours on a painting and  give a greater dynamic range.A glossy surface usually does this-in painting and photography.But many artists  from Impressonism onwards have avoided a traditional glossy varnish on their paintings.I think that like them Cadell preferred the chalky surface and the unity he could obtain with it. He also may have enjoyed certain aspects of painting onto  absorbent gesso and the way in which it modifies the normal handling experience of painting onto a relatively non-absorbent ground. Having in the past painted onto gesso grounds with oils I can vouch for the difference.The paint does not dry much quicker than  work done on a normal ground; instead it remains greasy.

If FCBC had been a cack-handed incompetent who couldn't compose with colour then his work wouldn't have been luminous at all, gesso or no gesso. He deliberately chose his color range.It is certainly true that from the evidence of Cadell's own instructions on the backs of his gesso paintings that he did not want them varnished. This would have altered the chalky surface to an academic gloss. In those places where the ground shows through the colour would have become yellow as the varnish aged.So might the impasto areas where varnish would likely fill the hollows left by the hog hair brush bristles.

Also of course, it is easier to transport gessoed panels rather than canvases and this might well have been a factor in their frequent appearance as supports for the Iona paintings.
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And you can get a pure strong non-yellowing ground with gesso. And by gesso I don't mean the stuff you can buy in tubs in art shops nowadays. That isn't gesso as Cadell or Mantegna would have understood it.

Detail from Dunara Castle showing typical brushwork on a gesso ground.

If you paint in oils onto a raw, unsized or lightly sized, chalky gesso ground, as Cadell seems to have done, then a fair part of the  binder/medium in your paint will be  sucked immediately into the ground. It becomes difficult to manipulate the paint, to push it around. And Cadell was nothing if not a fluent painter.The painting does not dry that much more quickly for it will still remain greasy. But you can drag some more colour over it to get  a broken effect or work into it because it does set up a little. This can be seen quite noticeably in Cadell's treatment of the hills in the  Loch Creran. It may be that Cadell liked the heavy drag of paint and brush.Your brushwork will be more fluent if you use a medium-perhaps a traditional linseed oil/turps mixture.It seems to be quite clear that Cadell used such a medium in the blue construction marks in the Loch Creran. These construction marks are sometimes reinforced or added to at a later stage in his paintings, perhaps with the brush he used to sign his work.They can appear under or over the patchwork of pastel colours  for which they are the scaffolding.A good example of this work can be seen in the painting which was illustrated in Bourne Fine Arts'  2005 booklet as Sandy Creek, Iona. A detail is used as the frontispiece and you can see construction marks and the thinness of some of the artist's brushwork.

Detail of man in foreground of Dunara Castle showing  different paint qualities- a wetter, more squelchy pink in the

background and  perhaps a drier mix in the back and hat of the figure.

Loch Creran

Detail of the painting above-middle distance on right. Shows Cadell's use of blue to construct a basic composition (under) and then to reinforce it (over) when completing the painting. The area just above the words "rough textured brushmarks-a kind of "stuttering"  texture could, I believe have only been produced by the drag of a brush on a highly absorbent gesso ground.

Here just out of interest are a couple of snaps taken at or close to Cadell's viewpoint on the South side of Loch Creran.
The first was taken at a time near to high tide. Cadell's viewpoint was probably higher and behind my own in one of the fields at Dallachullish.

*F C B Cadell, Alice Strang, Edinburgh 2011, page 79.
An earlier post on the same topic is here.

CADELL'S ABSORBENT GROUNDS

Those of us lucky enough to visit the small but rather lovely exhibition of paintings of Iona by Cadell and Peploe at the Scottish Gallery in 2014 saw several of the works exhibited naked so to speak and not under glass.
The painting below was  sold by Bonhams in2014. They have sold many Cadells in their time.

Iona(The white sands looking East)
by F.C.B Cadell.

There are instructions in Cadell's hand on the back of many paintings, including this one, which say,

"Absorbent ground. NEVER varnish".

Back of the painting with Cadell's inscriptions including the address of the purchaser and specification for the usual white frame with gold fillet

So why would he say this?

It must be that Cadell preferred a chalky, matte appearance in these works. The look of the paint surface matters to him. He does not want the buttery, glossy effect of an oil rich painting medium. He wants the painting to have a more matte and less reflective surface.And he certainly does not want varnish puddling in the crevices of his impasto, or perhaps altering the colour of any of the ground which might show through. Reflections from varnish are another possibility.There is also the possibility that Cadell liked the drag which an absorbent ground gives to ground: the paint stays in place and does not want to be pushed about!

And a final reason could be one of practicality. An absorbent ground will suck the oil out of paint which will then harden a little more quickly.There is no need to squeeze out your paint onto newspaper before working on an absorbent ground-as some have suggested, that would remove too much of the oil and render the paint very fragile after drying.In modern times we particularly associate it with Lautrec's peinture a l'essence technique on cardboard.  OIl removed before painting and painting onto an absorbent ground would also make the paint almost unworkable in any normal way. Cadell and Peploe were professionals who would have known this and acted accordingly.

   The Iona paintings are quite small and probably travelled back in Cadell's luggage-or maybe in that of acquaintances who were, so the stories go, inclined  and encouraged to purchase newly finished work straight from the artist's abode on the island.

Christian and Stiller* give credit for the introduction of gesso grounds among the landscape painters to John Duncan who worked in tempera. This is a very reasonable explanation and tempera paintings are usually made on a gesso ground.

One final speculation. Gesso is a cheap and very permanent form of ground for painting. It is basically glue size and some form of white pigment. Such a paint was well known to our country ancestors. Whiting and glue size were in the past very cheap and easily available in town and village.They would be used by farmers who wanted to paint the interior of a barn or dairy.They do not make the whitest of grounds but it is pretty good and a stronger pigment can be added. Could such a surface have been improvised on location, out in the country? It wouldn't be a gesso sottile but it would work.Gesso has never been  a common ground for oil painters but it has been used and on the right support it is very stable. The so called acrylic gesso is not the same thing.it has its uses but I would raather not use it myself.

We may never know anything more on this topic-but what would the alternative have been? Lead white as  a ground would have been pretty usual in those days.
It too dries quickly.

(see also my later analysis of two paintings in the Fleming-Wyfold Foundation here.)

*Iona Portrayed: The Island through Artists' Eyes 1760-1960.by Jessica Christian and Charles Stiller, New Iona Press,2000.page 56.
Updated June 2019.

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.