Gainsborough painted with speed, and spent time observing nature, he preferred to paint landscapes and this is why he often merged the figures into the lanscape. He used a light palette and his brushstrokes are distinctive and are sometimes described as economical strokes.[
This portrait is the masterpiece of Gainsborough's early years. It was painted after his return home from London to Suffolk in 1748, soon after the marriage of Robert Andrews of the Auberies and Frances Carter of Ballingdon House, near Sudbury, in November of that year.
The landscape evokes Robert Andrews's estate, to which his marriage added property. He has a gun under his arm, while his wife sits on an elaborate Rococo-style wooden bench. The painting of Mrs Andrews's lap is unfinished. The space may have been reserved for a child for Mrs Andrews to hold.
The painting follows the fashionable convention of the conversation piece, a (usually) small-scale portrait showing two or more people, often out of doors. The emphasis on the landscape here allows Gainsborough to display his skills as a painter of convincingly changing weather and naturalistic scenery, still a novelty at this time.
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/thomas-gainsborough-mr-and-mrs-andrews
I find this painting beautiful, and the irony of fake romance and all about privilage, pride, money and status. The landscape and the idea of extra land by marriage is clearly defined.
The portraiture style of this period compared to portraits of today is completely different, because contemporary portraits seem to be about the person not about their status, but more about the perception of the sitter and how the viewer see's the portrait.
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Margaret Burr (1728–1797), This is a painting by Gainsborough of his wife, the tonal quality and the details which I am interested in the detail is something I would like to consider within my work, the composition of this painting is the normal style, and something I need to explore and and expand and keeping the work centralised is an area I need to change within my work.
Another artist I have been looking at is Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (15th July 1606 - 4th Oct 1669) One of the greatest artists in European art history and very important in Dutch history.
The influence of Caravaggio is evident in Rembrandt's
work from the 1630s. He developed a new way of describing faces with patterns
of light and shadow, rather than simply lighting one side and shading the
other. Shadows around the eyes of his portraits, making it hard to read a
precise expression give his canvases the extraordinary impression of the
living, thinking mind behind the face.
This is clearly shown in the portrait of ' Bearded man wearing a cap' Late 1650's
This is one of a group of studies from life made by Rembrandt in the
late 1650s. The last digit of the date is almost illegible, but may be a '7'.
The painting falls into the category of 'tronies' (literally, heads). Although
the artist most certainly used a model, the identity of the sitter is
irrelevant. These works were intended as character studies, or as
representations of a person in a particular role. In the 17th century,
collectors appreciated them for the portrayal of particular facial aspects.
A Woman bathing in a Stream (Hendrickje Stoffels?)1654, Rembrandt
The model is probably Hendrickje Stoffels (about 1625/6 -
1663). She lived in Rembrandt's household from about 1649 until her death. She
became his common-law wife and bore him a daughter, Cornelia, who was baptised
on 30 October 1654 (the year of this painting).
It has been suggested that the sumptuous red robe on the
river bank indicates that the painting might be a sketch for a religious or
mythological picture; the model might be in the guise of an Old Testament
heroine, such as Susanna or Bathsheba, or the goddess Diana, who were all spied
upon by men while bathing. However, there is no evidence for a completed
painting after this work and, moreover, Rembrandt did not use oil sketches as
preparation for larger-scale paintings.
The handling of the paint is unusually spontaneous. The
picture appears unfinished in some parts, for example, in the shadow at the hem
of the raised chemise, the right arm and the left shoulder, but it was clearly
finished to Rembrandt's satisfaction since he signed and dated it.
Portrait of Margaretha de Geer, Wife of Jacob Trip about 1661, Rembrandt
Margaretha is portrayed
with great honesty. She confronts the viewer directly and her age shows clearly
in her hands and face. Not untypical for a woman of her generation and age she
wears old-fashioned clothes: the large ruff had been fashionable forty years
earlier, in the 1620s.
One notable aspect of Rembrants later paintings is the use of broad brushstrokes, sometimes applied with a palette knife. While the earlier pictures had a smooth finish, the later works are designed to work only from a distance.
Ewan Uglow (1932 - 2000)
Most people who have the opportunity to look for hours at one painting by Uglow find their eyes traveling over the surface, perplexed that marks, shadows and forms so limpid could crystalize conflicted emotions. The painter John McLean wrote, ‘These planes of Uglow stand for colour changes perceived with a keenness on might have said bordered on the hallucinatory, there it not reality that was in focus … His observation is so exquisite each discrete plane, each color rings out, like a note in a finely delivered song. The planes coalesce just like such sounds… This surface of a Uglow painting is beautiful. The frankness with which it reveals its constructions resonates as you read the continuum of form and space’.”
From Catherine Lampert Uglow in his earthly observatory. pixxi
Euan Uglow: The Complete Paintings, Catalogue raisonne by Catherine Lampert.
Curled nude on a stool 1982-3 Oil on canvas 30 x 39 in - Ewan Uglow
The majority of Uglow’s rare statements on his art have been extracted from interviews. With their aid, one can visualize the artist sitting in front of the organic subject, light reflected off the back wall, the wires and a plumb line defining the plane that demarcates their separate territory. ‘I take measurements so that the subject has a real link to the rectangle; it also gives me freedom to make a whole surface… I’m painting an idea not an ideal. Basically I’m trying to paint a structured painting full of controlled, and therefore potent, emotion. His attitude to mark-making and surface owed to the Old Masters but also much to Mondrian and William Coldstream, as well as to American abstract painter, particular Rothko and Newman.: ‘I don’t do wristy paintings because I want the brain to intervene between the observation and the mark;’ ‘Sometimes I like a painting to be like [the keys off] a typewriter going across the whole surface. A close friend, Georgia Georgallas, recalled a familiar expression; ‘The words he always used to say: “it’s got to have magic”. And the only way he could think of creating this “magic” was to be true to himself. He was ruthless with himself.’”
From Catherine Lampert Uglow in his earthly observatory. piiii — Euan Uglow The Complete Paintings.http://paintingperceptions.com/figure-painting/euan-uglow
The measured marks of Uglow's work are what defines his work not only his practice but what drove him, his planes of almost blocked colours feel like a reminder of Picasso, but are softened not only in colour but texture. his work is stunning but the precison of his work scares me abit! I can't really explain why, but maybe its to do with the fact that I could not paint that way I wouldn't feel comforted by that.
The website in which I have gathered quotes from which is shown above has to be one of the most interesting and useful research websites I have found so far, its abit like the work of Uglow it holds the viewer's interest!
I am reading and I am inspired by Francis Bacon(28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) he is an artist that has always been an inspiration to me and a the quote below really sums up what I am trying to achieve in my work at the moment from the book The Brutality of of Fact- Interviews with Francis Bacon.
"What has never been analysed is why this particular way of painting is more poignant than illustration. I suppose because it has a life completely of its own. It lives on its own, like the image oe's trying to trap: it lives on its own, and therefore transfers the essence of the image more poignantly. So the artist maybe able to open up or rather, should I say, unlock the valves of feeling and therefore return the onlooker to life more violently".(17:1987).
“Haunted and obsessed by the image … by its perfection, 112 Bacon sought to reinvent Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X in the papal portraits that form the focus of this book. In the great painting from the Des Moines Art Center, the Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, Bacon updates the seventeenth‑century image by transforming the Spanish artist’s confident client and relaxed leader into a screaming victim. Trapped as if manacled to an electric chair, the ludicrously drag‑attired subject is jolted into involuntary motion by external forces or internal psychoses. The eternal quiet of Velázquez’s Innocent is replaced by the involuntary cry of Bacon’s anonymous, unwitting, tortured occupant of the hot seat. One could hardly conceive of a more devastating depiction of postwar, existential angst or a more convincing denial of faith in the era that exemplified Nietzsche’s declaration that God is dead.
In Bacon’s words: “Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence‑a reconcentration… tearing away the veils that fact acquires through time. Ideas always acquire appearance veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils.”’
http://www.francis-bacon.com/exhibitions/?c=The-Papal-Portraits-of-1953
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (June 6th 1599 - August 6th 1660) The Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist
Time and criticism have now fully established his reputation as one of the most
consummate of painters, and accordingly John
Ruskin says of him that "everything Velazquez does may be taken as
absolutely right by the student." At the present day his marvellous technique
and strong individuality have given him a power in European art such as is
exercised by no other of the old masters. Although acquainted with all the
Italian schools, and the friend of the foremost painters of his day, he was
strong enough to withstand every external influence and to work out for himself
the development of his own nature and his own principles of art. A realist of
the realists, he painted only what he saw; consequently his imagination seems
limited. His religious conceptions are of the earth earthy, although some of his
works, such as the "Crucifixion" and the "Christ at the Column", are
characterized by an intensity of pathos in which he ranks second to no painter.
His men and women seem to breathe, his horses are full of action and his dogs of
life, so quick and close is his grasp of his subject.
Crucifixion 1632 by Diego Velazquez
Through his weak posture and expression of hopelessness, this weakened Christ is showing
the fatal signs of exhaustion and excruciating pain. Does he regret his position? But there does not seem to be pity for himself for he knows that his actions are
leading to the benefit of his people.
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