I’m hoping the skill and sensitivity of my work will expand as I spend time on each NGA masterwork, but to get this blog started I thought I’d post a couple master studies I did before the copyist program as a baseline.
The painting pictured above is my study of Cecilia Beaux’s Twilight Confidences (Georgia Museum of Art). When Beaux decided to expand her portrait-painting career in 1888, she traveled to the seaside in Brittany. Peasant women there wore large, winged hats that French nuns took for their habit in the nineteenth century. Years earlier in Philadelphia, Beaux saw a copy of Jean Francois Millet’s Angelus that inspired her to paint peasant life with a similar romantic dignity. Beaux’s original painting took several days to complete with the same models outdoors every time. I had to use all the knowledge I had at the time for my copy, from colorful whites to mixing bold strokes and scumbling/glazing in the same picture.
Sargent’s Le Verre de Porto
Sargent’s Le Verre de Porto (1884) was an easier painting for me only because I had recently taken a “painting nocturnes” workshop with Glen Kessler at Compass Atilier. Once I had the drawing right, it was a simple matter to mix the darkest darks and blend them with the warm tones to create lamplight. I learned a lot from Sargent’s placement of highlights on the crystal tableware. I also learned how different images of a painting look on different electronic devices. So much visual information is lost when you are not studying a painting in person, and my study looks flat as a result.
The original painting is in the Met in New York City.