Oil Sketches Research Articles

William Trost Richards: true to nature: drawings, watercolors, and oil sketches at Stanford University

William Trost Richards (1833-1905) began his career as an artist of the Hudson River School. His meticulous studies of plants growing along the Hudson together with his drawings and watercolors of the Adirondacks, the Catskills, and his native Pennsylvania reveal a sensibility devoted to the close observation of nature. In the 1870s, however, when grand-scale landscape painting was going out of fashion, Richards turned to the watercolor medium and marine subjects, such as scenes of surf rolling on the New England coast. The artist is celebrated in this catalogue reproducing 230 works in pencil, watercolor, charcoal, and an essay by Carol Osborne, curator at the time the works were given to the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, places these works in the context of the artist's life.

‘A Martin Luther in Painting’: Sir David Wilkie's Unfinished Christ before Pilate

Immediately before his death in 1841 Sir David Wilkie undertook a journey to the Middle East to make on-the-spot studies of the Holy Land for paintings he hoped would set new standards for religious art. Owing to Wilkie's untimely death no complete paintings resulted from this trip, but his aims were ambitious and worthy of further scrutiny. Wilkie had declared that ‘a Martin Luther in painting’ was needed to replace centuries of Catholic dogma and inaccuracy with a new and more rational school of Protestant Bible painting. By focusing on an unfinished oil sketch of Christ before Pilate I seek to contextualize this significant but neglected area of Wilkie's practice. I place this sketch, and Wilkie's project more generally, in the context of print culture and the emerging discipline of biblical archaeology to consider how his mission brought an imperialist agenda into conjunction with popular religious belief. Wilkie's firsthand observations in the Holy Land challenged his reforming mission, and the breakdown of his project, recorded in his letters and journals, reveals tensions within his broader artistic practice that pre-empt simplistic distinctions of self and other, faith and art, image and text.

Contribución a la iconografía del venerable Juan de Palafox. Una nueva obra firmada de Francisco Bayeu

A new painting about the venerable Juan de Palafox, signed by Francisco Bayeu, is here presented. It was probably an oil sketch for an altarpiece.

Die Identifizierung einer Budapester Maulbertsch-Skizze mit Bemerkungen zum Schaffensprozess bei Maulbertsch. Vorlage, Entwurf, Kopie, Paraphrase

Abstract The study is focused on an oil sketch by Maulbertsch (St. Stephen offering his crown to the Blessed Virgin, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest) and comes to the statement that it was made as a preparatory painting for the High Altar image in the village church in Ecs (near to Győr) between 1772–74 as Maulbertsch and his workshop were working on the frescoes and altars of Győr Cathedral. Its commissioner was one of the Győr canons, Christoph Schogg, as a Provost of Papoc, Patron of the Parish Church in Ecs. He belonged to the same circle as Canon Janos Szily, main organizer of the Baroque decoration of Győr Cathedral (and lifelong patron of Maulbertsch), and Canon Gabriel Schmidt, who commissioned the two lead-relief retables by J.G. Molinarolo. The retable of Ecs and the side altar retables of Győr Cathedral have the same artistic character, and therefore they are treated together from the viewpoint of the circle of the patrons, of iconography and of the practice of Maulbertsch's workshop as we...

Sur le Motif: Painting in Nature around 1800

The years around 1800 mark a specific moment in European art history when landscape painting underwent important ideological and aesthetic changes—changes which up until recently have not been sufficiently investigated.1 With the long-awaited establish ment of a special Prix de Rome for historical landscape came official recognition of the genre by the Academy.2 At the same time, a golden age for outdoor painting began; the practice sur le motz/rapidly caught on among artists all over Europe. Setting themselves up in the Italian countryside, first in the rural surroundings of Rome (the Sabine mountains and the Alban hills) but later also in the south near Naples and Sicily, landscape painters delineated the picturesque views and the atmospheric conditions of the surroundings in oil sketches and drawings.3 Even after returning to their homelands, landscapists contin ued to paint outdoors, exploring their native forests, mountains, and coasts. The school of Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes drew high acclaim in the first half of the nineteenth century; however, with the success of realism first with the Barbizon school and later with the victorious march of impressionism, art historians soon rejected the official neoclassical landscape as a cold imitation of nature, with Charles Blanc criti cizing that these painters only know the classical earth of Minerva.4 However, the paint ing View in the Ile-de-France by Jean-Victor Bertin, recently acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum, and an album of drawings by Antoine-Laurent Castellan, recently acquired by the Getty Research Institute, illustrate the different tendencies that coexisted in land scape painting in the early nineteenth century. These two works reflect the variety of the genre, from highly finished ideal landscapes destined for the Salon to oil sketches painted on the spot for the artist's own private pleasure and use in his studio. View in the Ile-de France illustrates the difficulty of characterizing paintings that fall somewhere in between these two categories, raising the question of whether these works are preparatory stud ies or finished works of art. Although they were called sketches, these paintings were not done entirely in nature; rather they were started en plein air and finished later in the art ist's studio. The change in the status of oil sketches took place slowly and did not come as a sudden artistic revolution. For the generation of neoclassical landscapists around 1800, painting in nature was a consistent part of their work; however, they kept these oil sketches in their studio, showing them to students and colleagues, while presenting fin ished, recomposed landscapes to the public and to critics at the Salon.5 When considered

Tapestry in the Baroque: threads of splendor

Conceived as a sequel to the critically acclaimed Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence (2002), this lavishly illustrated volume is the first comprehensive survey of 17th-century European tapestry available in English. From the Middle Ages until the late 18th century, European courts expended vast sums on tapestries, which were made with precious materials after designs by the leading artists of the day. Yet, this spectacular medium is still often presented as a decorative art of lesser importance. Tapestry in the Baroque challenges this notion, demonstrating that tapestry remained among the most prestigious figurative mediums throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries, prized by the rich for its artistry and as a propaganda tool. The book features forty-five of the finest surviving examples from collections in more than fifteen countries, as well as a number of related designs and oil sketches. Through these it examines the stylistic developments of tapestry between 1590 and 1720, when such masters as Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, Simon Vouet, Charles Le Brun, Pietro da Cortona, and Giovanni Romanelli responded to the challenges and opportunities of the medium in the context of contemporary artistic developments.

Selective Attention: Julius S. Held's Rembrandt Studies

Five of Julius Heids articles on Rembrandt were collected into a monograph in 1969, Rembrandt's Aristotle and Other Rembrandt Studies , and re-issued with three additional essays in 1991.1 These essays are regarded as canonical in Dutch art history, as authoritative measures of documentation and interpretation of their subjects. Even as recent scholarship reexamines these essays, they remain central to Rembrandt studies, for they serve as touchstones for critiques and further investigations of Heids arguments and those of others as well. Heids profound affection for Rembrandt was formed in his youth, for a sojourn in Holland in 1923 was decisive in shaping his interest in Dutch art: 'The taste for the Dutch masters had come naturally; that for Rubens had to be acquired.'2 Yet in his scholarly pursuits, Held devoted far more attention to Rubens. Indeed, Heids persistent, systematic, and comprehensive examination of Rubens and his circle contrasts markedly with his selective approach to Rembrandt. This contrast in attentiveness is physically manifest in the shelf-space of the publications generated by his varying interests in these artists: Held s principal writings on Rubens fill four hefty volumes: Selected Drawings fills four centimeters of shelf space, and Oil Sketches takes up nine centimeters on the shelf.3 The 1981 volume of fifteen essays on Rubens and his circle, which represents a very select reprinting of his articles on Rubens and his associates add another two-and-a-half centimeters.4 In

GREAT PRIVATE COLLECTIONS OF IMPERIAL RUSSIA

The Art BookVolume 13, Issue 1 p. 24-25 GREAT PRIVATE COLLECTIONS OF IMPERIAL RUSSIA PATRICIA RAILING, PATRICIA RAILING Director, Artists. BookworksSearch for more papers by this author PATRICIA RAILING, PATRICIA RAILING Director, Artists. BookworksSearch for more papers by this author First published: 06 February 2006 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8357.2006.00627_7.x Editor's note: For a chance to see some of these works plus other oil sketches by Tiepolo, visit ‘All Spirit and Fire: Oil Sketches by Tiepolo’, 23 February—29 May 2006 at the Courtauld Institute, London. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume13, Issue1February 2006Pages 24-25 RelatedInformation

Anne-Marie Logan. Review of "Drawn by the Brush: Oil Sketches by Peter Paul Rubens" by Peter C. Sutton, Marjorie Wieseman, and Nico van Hout.

Anne-Marie Logan. Review of "Drawn by the Brush: Oil Sketches by Peter Paul Rubens" by Peter C. Sutton, Marjorie Wieseman, and Nico van Hout.

Drawn by the brush: oil sketches by Peter Paul Rubens

Drawn by the brush: oil sketches by Peter Paul Rubens

Exhibitions, Museums and Galleries

Books reviewed in this article:David Davies (ed), El GrecoHuigen Leeflang, Ger Luijten et al., Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617). Drawings, Prints, and PaintingsBrigitte Léal, Maria Teresa Ocaña, Picasso from Caricature to Metamorphosis of StyleBram Dijkstra, American Expressionism: Art and Social Change, 1920–1950Jane Martineau et al., Shakespeare in ArtRosie Broadley et al., Every Look Speaks: Portraits of David GarrickEric Zafran and Paul Paret, Surrealism & Modernism: From the Collection of the Wadsworth Athenium Museum of ArtKenneth Wayne et al., Modigliani and the Artists of MontparnasseAndrea Rich and the staff of LACMA (eds), Los Angeles County Museum of ArtDavid Fraser Jenkins and Frances Spalding, John Piper in the 1930s: Abstraction on the BeachMichael Tucker et al., Jan Jedlička: Maremma 1980–2001Joanna Woodall et al., Peter Paul Rubens. A Touch of Brilliance. Oil Sketches and Related Works from the State Hermitage Museum and the Courtauld Institute GalleryAbby Gray, Judith Trepp: Paintings and Works on Paper

Boston’s Museums Will Enhance Your Educational Excursion

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article APA InstituteFull AccessBoston’s Museums Will Enhance Your Educational ExcursionMark MoranMark MoranSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:3 Oct 2003https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.38.19.0041The city of Boston hosts a couple of gems that art- and museum-loving psychiatrists attending APA’s 2003 Institute on Psychiatric Services will not want to miss—the Fine Arts Museum and the Boston Museum of Science.Opening at the Fine Arts Museum on October 26, just as APA members come to town, is a special exhibit, “Rembrandt’s Journey: Painter, Draftsman, Etcher.”This exhibition examines Rembrandt’s etchings in the context of his paintings and drawings. It offers a glimpse of the work of one of the foremost artists in history—including self-portraits, moving biblical narratives, fresh visions of the native Dutch landscape, earthy scenes of low comedy, and sensuous nudes—along with illuminating insight into the artist’s inventive use of technique.The Rembrandt exhibit consists of 22 paintings and oil sketches, 35 drawings, and 160 etchings and copper-etching plates, extending from the artist’s energetic Baroque works of the 1630s to the more meditative pieces of the 1650s. More than two-thirds of the works are borrowed from collections public and private in Amsterdam, Berlin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Moscow, New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, and Washington, D.C.The museum is located at 465 Huntington Avenue. Because the limited parking fills quickly, especially during special exhibitions, visitors are encouraged to take advantage of Boston’s public transportation system, the MBTA, known by natives as the “T.” The museum is easily accessible by the T, from the Green E Line Museum stop or the Orange Line Ruggles stop.The museum is open seven days a week. Hours on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are 10 a.m. to 9:45 p.m.; on the other days it is open from 10 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.For APA members bringing their children along, the Museum of Science is a must. Recognized as a leader in informal science education, the museum attracts more than 1.7 million children and adults every year—the most-attended cultural attraction in Boston.The museum uses an appealing, hands-on approach to science to spark curiosity and interest by demonstrating the fun, excitement, and relevance of science in daily life. Founded in 1830 as the Boston Society of Natural History, the Museum of Science is located on the Charles River, with spectacular views of the Boston and Cambridge skylines.The museum has embarked on a landmark, long-range exhibits plan called Science as an Activity, which encourages visitors to practice their scientific-thinking skills. This skills-based approach is unique in the museum world. Two activity centers—“Seeing the Unseen and Investigate!” and “ A See-for-Yourself Exhibit”—focus on the first two steps of the scientific method: observation and testing of theories. Four more activity centers are planned.These are some of the other permanent exhibits:• The Thomson Theater of Electricity, home of the world’s largest Van de Graaff generator and indoor lightning demonstrations• The Computer Discovery Space, one of the nation’s largest free computer centers• The Discovery Center for children aged 5 and under• The Human Body Discovery Space • Welcome to the Universe and its accompanying scale-model solar system extending in to the Greater Boston area.The Museum of Science is accessible by the Science Park stop on the MBTA Green Line. The facility is wheelchair accessible, and parking is available in the museum’s garage.Information about the Museum of Fine Arts is posted on the Web at www.mfa.org. Information on the Museum of Science is available by phone at (617) 723-2500 or on its Web site at www.mos.org. ▪ ISSUES NewArchived

A brush with nature: the Gere collection of landscape oil sketches

Beginning in the 1950s, John and Charlotte Gere pioneered the collecting of small-scale landscape oil sketches by 18th- and 19th-century artists working outdoors. The collection numbers some 75 works by artists such as Corot and Valenciennes, and is documented in this volume.

Death by Hogarth (review)

Reviewed by: Death by Hogarth Andrea Immel Death by Hogarth, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University (8 May–18 July 1999). That Hogarth abandoned the counterpart to Marriage A-la-Mode, a progress about a virtuous country squire’s life known as “The Happy Marriage,” is not surprising, even though the surviving oil sketches are brilliant. The unfinished canvas for “The Staymaker” may hold its own with the best of his conversation pieces for its depiction of an intimate moment within a family, but surely Ronald Paulson was right to suggest that Hogarth sensed that this modern moral subject with its positive exemplars lacked the necessary drama to engage his imagination fully. Hogarth relished portraying types interesting at a safe distance—the debauchee, the wastrel, the girl who is no better than she should be, the boy born to be hanged—doing those things which they ought not and letting them suffer the consequences. From the first plates Hogarth’s protagonists betray the traits that will ruin them, and there is nothing that the miserable wretches, their relations or friends can do in the subsequent scenes to arrest—much less reverse—the downward spiral from degradation to crime and death. Even if he had given Tom Rakewell a good heart and a handsome face, it is hard to imagine that Hogarth would have let him off, much less rewarded him, in the end: his progresses have no Tom Joneses whom the audience might come to like in spite of their faults. And when Hogarth depicted his antiheroes’ disadvantaged circumstances, he probably did not regard poverty or displacement by new technology as factors that helped explain the sociopathic behavior of an Idle or a Nero. Society still had the right to execute them for their crimes. So images of death in Hogarth made an excellent subject for the Fogg’s small exhibition of nearly fifty prints, which were rounded out with related books and objects from Harvard’s Law and Houghton libraries (the engraved silver tankards and cutlery that Tom Nero would have lifted from a prosperous household were nice additions). The Hogarth prints on display were loaned by Gerald and Suzanne Labiner and their superb collection was also the backbone of “Hogarth and the Theater of Life,” an exhibition installed at the Hammer Museum in conjunction with the 1997 UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies symposium honoring the tercentenary of the artist’s birth at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Like the Hammer’s curators, Frédéric Ogée and Hans-Peter Wagner, the Fogg’s exhibition organizer, Elizabeth Mitchell, also relied on the concept of theatricality to open up Hogarth’s visual narratives. However, she chose to focus on the public spectacle of hanging at Tyburn’s three-sided platform instead of the stage crowded with actors playing their roles, as did Ogée and Wagner. Mitchell did not entirely succeed in solving the perpetual curatorial dilemma of engaging and holding the viewer’s attention, as well as reflecting current scholarship on the subject, when she decided to organize the material according to the three different meanings of the word “execution”—to perform, to put to death according to the forms of justice, and to do what [End Page 128] is planned or determined—in order to show how all three definitions are tangled up in Hogarth’s representations of the theater, the scaffold, or any other space where characters act out scenes in their lives. The concept helped elucidate the ways in which imagery from popular entertainment and the rituals of public execution overlap in the progresses and satirical prints. It was harder to see its relevance to the representations of women who came to bad ends, because the labels did not make it clear why the definition “to do what is planned or determined” was an appropriate description for the actions of such a disparate group of individuals. In fact, the definition implies a rather unflattering view of the female character: either women fall in with their seducers’ plans because they are too weak to resist, like the foolish virgin in Before and After, the whore Moll Hackabout, or the pregnant girl in Woman...

Petra ten-Doesschate. Review of "French Oil Sketches and the Academic Tradition: Selections from a Private Collection on Loan to the University Art Museum of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque" by Joanna R. Barnes and J. Patrice Marandel.

Petra ten-Doesschate. Review of "French Oil Sketches and the Academic Tradition: Selections from a Private Collection on Loan to the University Art Museum of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque" by Joanna R. Barnes and J. Patrice Marandel.

The American Artist's Tools and Materials for On-Site Oil Sketching

During the 19th century, a plethora of inventions and new artists' materials, such as millboards, academy boards, canvas boards, and related paraphernalia, including paint tubes, brushes, and Japanned boxes, were designed for portability and ease of assembly. These new tools of the artist's craft provided American artists with the means and capability to do on-site oil sketches.

Review: Art of the Gold Rush, by Janice T. Driesbach, Harvey L. Jones, and Katherine Church Holland; Direct from Nature: The Oil Sketches of Thomas Hill, by Janice T. Driesbach and William H. Gerdts; and Paintings of California, by Arnold Skolnick

Review: <i>Art of the Gold Rush</i>, by Janice T. Driesbach, Harvey L. Jones, and Katherine Church Holland; <i>Direct from Nature: The Oil Sketches of Thomas Hill</i>, by Janice T. Driesbach and William H. Gerdts; and <i>Paintings of California</i>, by Arnold Skolnick

Thomas Eakins rediscovered: Charles Bregler's Thomas Eakins collection at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

During the 1940s, a treasury of studio material - including oil sketches, sculptures, drawings, and manuscripts - was discovered in the empty house of Thomas Eakins. This book is both a catalogue of this discovery and a reassessment of Eakin's career as read through the newly discovered materials.

Corot in Italy: Open-Air Painting and the Classical-Landscape Tradition

Galassi, P. (1991). Corot in Italy: Open-Air Painting and the ClassicalLandscape Tradition. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 258 pages. ISBN 0-300-04957-9 (Cloth), 0-300-06710-0 (Paper). Reviewed by Greg M. Thomas Purdue University This book is about much more than Camille Corot's work in Italy. In demonstrating his central thesis-that Corot's great innovations in landscape painting grew out of the conventions of his academic art education-Peter Galassi writes two other histories. First, his book is a sweeping survey of an entire tradition of landscape painting in oils around 1800, a tradition that laid the groundwork for many subsequent innovations of Modernism. Second, and of particular relevance for art educators, it is by far the most in-depth study to date of how men trained to become artists in the early 19th century. In re-creating the early history of outdoor oil painting, Galassi first explains, in chapter 1, the centrality of outdoor nature drawings in the theory and practice of the classical landscape tradition-the tradition established by the French painters Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain working in Italy in the 17th century. Galassi then describes how, in the 1780s, Neoclassical painters from northern Europe made the outdoor oil study an essential component of academic training, particularly in Italy. The aim of such studies was established by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, the most influential teacher and theorist of Neoclassical landscape. In his treatise of 1800, Valenciennes explained in great detail how to capture the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere through rapid outdoor oil sketches of the kind for which his own superbly subtle and spontaneous studies could serve as examples. But Valenciennes saw such empirical analysis only as a tool for the elaboration of synthetic, artificial compositions that could carry noble classical meanings. Based on this theoretical interdependence of study and invention, Galassi argues in chapter 2 against the received idea of an opposition between progressive naturalism and conservative classicism in French art. He shows that around 1800, virtually all French landscapists imitated either 17th-century Franco-Italian models or 17th-century Dutch models, and he characterizes naturalistic outdoor painting as an inherent part of trying to revive these classical traditions. This Neoclassical impulse was further reinforced by a pervasive tourist culture in Italy, which is reconstructed in chapter 3. Empirical study became mixed up with view-making, and Galassi goes to great lengths to demonstrate that artists followed set itineraries and depicted canonical sites in an effort to realize the tourist desire to imbue every aspect of the Italian countryside with ancient associations. While thus reconstituting the artistic goals underlying early outdoor painting, the book also builds up a rich appreciation of how men learned to make art. Oil studies were part of student training, and the Neoclassical context of chapter one clarifies how students were inculcated with Neoclassical values and vision. Chapter 2 becomes more specific, rigorously documenting the surprising extent to which students alternated between copying prints of standardized views and copying actual sites. And chapter 3, focusing on Italy's tourist culture, emphasizes that the coherence and mutual reinforcement of the artist community in Rome was essential in advancing landscape skills. These first three chapters serve, as Galassi asserts at the outset, as a background to the fourth and final chapter. Here he draws on the contexts of the outdoor painting tradition and Neoclassical training to illuminate the book's ostensible main subject-Corot's oil studies from his first visit to Italy in 1825-28. …

French oil sketches and the academic tradition

The Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, founded in Paris in 1648 as an alternative to the old guild system, was the center for art instruction through the end of the nineteenth century, and the most skilled practitioners of oil painting - and the majority of artists included in the catalogue - belonged to the Academie. Membership in the Academie provided artists with the only opportunity to exhibit their work and was, therefore, crucial for professional success. Because the oil sketch played an important role in the planning and execution of finished works, these artists were well-versed in the practice of oil sketching. This catalogue explores the diversity and evolution of the oil sketch within the French academic tradition, with detailed discussions of 127 works, all of which are drawn from a private collection currently on loan to the University Art Museum of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Among the artists whose works are included are Francois Boucher, Henri Fantin-Latour, Jean-Baptiste Hilaire, Adelaide Labille-Guiard, Jean-Baptiste Leprince, Jacques Sablet, and Simon Vouet.