Discover Top Posts Tagged with #art thots

The Russian Bride's Attire (1889) | Konstantin Makovsky

*My last full piece I wanted to share - I have been in love with the Russian Bride's Attire since I was very young. It is a massive, massive painting, and the level of detail simply cannot be appreciated in a print or a poster. I have a poster - it's the largest piece I own. The details look painstaking, microscopic.

But when you look at the whole 110 in x 147 in piece towering above, you see the choices that went into what is detailed, and what is merely hashed in. What's really fascinating to me is the way this "focus" works - you look at the faces of the people here, and the glamorous jewelry and hair coverings they have, focus like the way a camera focuses. Then, subtly in some places and more apparent in others, the things that are out of of focus are blurred. Splotchy almost artifacted to keep using digital terms. But truly the faces and jewelry are INTRICATELY DETAILED, which makes these fabrics in the lower half, especially the rugs, so distinct.

One of my favorite pieces of all time and I always get something new from staring at it. Basking in its presence, really.

*again if there are any artifacts in the full size image it's because I painstakingly pieced together the high res scans of different sections of the painting.

#art thots

Cafe scene (c. 1887) | Giovanni Boldini

Another Boldini, washed out by Wikimedia and without any other good copies online. My phone did little better, but it's better:

Like the last Boldini piece, I was really struck by the lovely messiness of the ground, of the smoke, of the tables and chairs - it gives a bustling, Sunday brunch kind of manic energy to me. The background somehow evokes just enough architecture for my eye to recognize it, something I feel very clumsy about in my own art.

#art thots

Mavourneen or Potrait of Kathleen Newton (c. 1877) | James Tissot

Another Tissot, another couple of potato phone pictures - I was just delighted to sink into the detailing of this coat, the stuttering brushstrokes, and the finges. It feels like it must have been beading. And in the darkness that's so hard to see by the naked eye, but even in layers upon layers of black, there are so many subtle details in shades of slightly slightly slightly lighter gray.

Side note: many fun articles about how the model of this portrait was Tissot's one true muse and love of his life. It's a very sad story, but she did appear in so many of his paintings.

#art thots

Portrait of Madame X (1907) | Giovanni Boldini

The Impressario (c. 1878) | James Tissot

It was very fun to stumble across Madame X by surprise, far from any Sargents. And it was very interesting to have Boldini and Tissot paired together. To the naked eye and my potato of a phone, their palettes blend into each other, and the brushwork feels like it comes from the same place:

Even in the much more opaque Portrait of Madame X, there's a motion and flow to the brushwork that's imparted by the grain of the wood it's layered over. Same with the Impressario. I really loved the way the artists seemingly carved their pieces out of the wood, carving with light and color to draw the eye to the left shoulder, closer to us, of the Impressario and his tucked hand - using light and color to have Madame X leaning, supported by an elegant glove and so many scraps of fine fabric.

With Madame X in particular is in contrast to the perhaps more famous, airbrush-smooth Sargent piece, and as seemed to be the theme of my visit to the Legion, it just serves as an inspiration and reminder that loose and less "refined" is still masterful.

But Tissot is also a very accomplished painter with more "worked" paintings of models:

The Impressario is catalogued as a "study" or a "sketch," exploring oil on the wood as a medium. But Boldini's Portrait of Madame X is not a "sketch" or a "study" necessarily. Both pieces are apparently recognizable for their likeness to the models. To me that's really inspiring.

#art thots

Girl in the Window (c. 1880) | Giacomo Favretto

Once again, there are no good digital copies of this painting - this one above is a tiny version blown up large, but it's closer than the only other one I could find. My phone, again, is a potato, and I was taking pictures just so I'd remember what I wanted to look up later. But it does capture a little more of the warmth than is apparent in the official photo:

The whole painting is very loose, with suggested messy shapes where light slopes across a plane. But there's a difference in the messy looseness of the window, and that of the figure - and then different still is the more firm shapes of the house itself. I was really interested in the choices that might have gone into those distinctions. Different brushes, the palette changes, the vertical or horizontal motion of the strokes... Really fascinating to me, and a beautiful piece.

#art thots

Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene (Noli Me Tangere) (c. 1631) | Jan Brueghel the Younger + workshop of Peter Paul Rubens

This is a funny record image provided by the Legion's archive, but it's also the only one I could find online that really fit the colors nearly to the eye. There's a version of this piece on the Wikimedia Commons but it's clearly a different version entirely. My phone is a potato and washes out the colors a ton, but it also highlights some things I wanted to focus on, too.

Walking around the museum I really zoned in on specific pigments and the contrasts between them. Here there's this beautiful gold, which appeared in several paintings around the same time, and it feels characteristic: that fluorescent yellow for the highlight, the deep red orange of the shadows. I really love it.

One thing I was focusing on was the brush strokes to designate highlights on different materials. Big broad strokes on feathers, the zigzags on the ridges of fabrics and spiderwebbing into triangular nothingness as that light slides off the ridge and into the body of the fabric. It looks like velvet, or shot silk. I feel like it's even more visible in my phone photo:

Then the hair, fine yellow with almost "petting" brush strokes of highlight to give it body and direction - horizontal across the temples above the ear, and upwards behind that with the swooping curls, and then some ringlets loose along her back.

Another thing I was staring at was the very transparent tulle or whatever wrapped around her shoulders. it's barely even a wash of color, but the brushstrokes to show that dispersed light across the fibers of this translucent fabric was done seemingly with more of a dry texture.

#art thots

Still Life with Peacock, Rabbit, and Spaniel (c. 1665-69) | Melchior de Hondecoeter*

One of the first things I saw yesterday at the Legion of Honor! It's huge - nearly 46 in x 53 in, and that's not including the frame. It was a great chance for my friend and I to stand nearly nose-to-canvas and admired the choices the artist made with composition and brushwork.

I really love the striking light on the wingfeathers in the far left of the painting--bold, flat brush strokes of that yellowwhite, in contrast to the painstaking hair-thin brushwork of the rabbit's fur.

My friend pointed out the composition choices and how this still life differs from the many other hunting tableaux around us. The tail of the peacock and the legs of the rabbit are very akimbo compared to the others, but also, the dog surely did not pose with the items shown. The artist studied spaniels very well, then posed it with this inquisitive or mischievous placement: coming up from beneath the tablecloth as if it's sneaking around trying to get a lucky snack.

The exhibits this season were incredibly inspiring, so I'll be posting some more with my #art thots

*if there appears to be some digital artifacting with the large painting that's because I had to splice it together from a bunch of different high res crops from FAMSF, I couldn't find one large image available anywhere.

#art thots #<- my tag for museum visits #sales is a great museum buddy mwah