On 24 Jul, 2015 With
The Rembrandt Palette Rembrandt created his portraits with a small palette of colours dominated by dark earth tones and golden highlights. Remember the number of pigments available to the 17th century artist were miniscule when compared to those available to the modern artist. Rembrandt was unusual in that he used around hundred, but less than 20 pigments have been detected in Vermeer’s oeuvre. Portraits by Rembrandt have a special quality- the brilliant use of light to illumine faces, jewels and rich fabrics; the effective use of a limited palette, and the rich, dark, transparent backgrounds all set off the subjects of his portraiture in a way never seen before and often imitated afterwards. It has been said that a painter has…
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On 30 Jun, 2015 With
Rossetti did not have the natural technical talent that is seen in the small detail and brilliant color of a typical Pre-Raphaelite painting, and his early oil paintings, the Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849) and the Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850), were produced only at the expense of great technical effort. In the less demanding technique of watercolor, however, Rossetti clearly revealed his imaginative power. The series of small watercolors of the 1850s produced such masterpieces as Dante’s Dream (1856) and the Wedding of St. George and the Princess Sabra (1857). In almost all of Rossetti’s paintings of the 1850s he used Elizabeth Siddal as his model. Discovered in a hat shop in 1850, she was adopted by the Brotherhood as their ideal of feminine beauty. In 1852 she…
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On 30 Jun, 2015 With
Newly-discovered Velazquez portrait A Trinity College Dublin lecturer has discovered a previously unknown painting by the artist Diego Velazquez. The 300-year-old portrait of a man was thought to belong to a minor 19th century British artist until Dr Peter Cherry identified it as the work of the Spanish master. Velazquez is regarded as one of the greatest painters of all time. There are only 100 known paintings by him worldwide. The painting was offered for sale among other more ordinary works at an auction in Oxford. But the auction house contacted Dr Cherry of Trinity’s Department of Art and Architecture after some details in the painting aroused interest. A former student of Dr Cherry’s worked at the auction house, Bonhams….
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On 29 Jun, 2015 With
The Restoration of Adam and Eve by Dürer Documentation exists on the restorations undertaken on the paintings since the 18th century when they were in the Spanish royal collection. Having entered the Prado in 1827, they were restored in the mid-19th century and it is recorded that further work was undertaken on the Adam in the 20th century, when a cradle was attached to the back. The accumulation of these interventions ultimately resulted in a harsh, flat image that lacked the original enamelled effect achieved by the artist. Thick layers of dirt, oxidised varnishes and areas of repainting that had darkened over time covered the paint surfaces, concealing Dürer’s brushstrokes and original colouring. These old restorations also affected the panels…
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On 25 Jun, 2015 With
PETER PAUL RUBENS (1577-1640) With Rubens, we come to the last major transformation of the Oil Painting medium. The changes he brought about in the medium of the later Italians converted it into the most facile and versatile vehicle that any painter has ever had at his disposal. Technically, there seems to have been no limit to its possibilities and Rubens himself. No painter has ever enjoyed a greater or more lasting renown. During his life his atelier had a tremendous reputation, and from the time of his death until our own time, painters of all schools have tried to rediscover his lost secrets; they have copied him – from Antoine Watteau to Paul Cézanne in their efforts to learn…
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On 19 Jun, 2015 With
The Oil Painting Technique of Van Eyck With Van Eyck, painting entered a new era. His new technical methods and discovery of a more a pliable medium his colors immediately freed the artist of his time from many of the restraints imposed by the rigidity of the earlier mediums. Transparent glazes of Van Eyck’s oil painting technique allowed all the subtleties of the underlying layers of the painting to show through. This glazing produces the same phenomena as colored glass. A red glass, for instance, does not show the full intensity of its color except by the luminosity of the ground which shows through it. Placed on the earth it will appear dark. Similarly, the quality of the color of…
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On 13 Apr, 2015 With
Venetian Painting Technique The Venetian painting technique was developed from many prior classical painting techniques, and is in effect a culmination of the methods that came before it. The approach to Venetian painting outlined below is a modified version that builds on the Renaissance method, incorporating modern chemicals and a contemporary palette. Venetian painting methods rose to prominence in the 17th century, and were used by painters like Titian, Caravaggio, and Velazquez. The most widespread use of these techniques was witnessed during the Baroque period, and they are ideal for still life painting, portraiture, and compositions that use strong, single-source lighting. The Technique– 1. The first step to creating this type of painting is a basic underdrawing which records the…
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On 24 Feb, 2015 With
Ever since the knowledge of the great oil painting techniques of the Renaissance was so mysteriously lost, about the end of seventeenth century, artists have been trying vainly to rediscover the methods of such masters as Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt and Velasquez, as well as of their predecessors–Jan Van Eyck, Memling, Giovanni Bellini and others, though not allowing for the same facility of execution on a large scale, were nevertheless were nevertheless equally as brilliant and durable. It has been evident to every artist who has worked in the medium of oil paint for the last two centuries or more, that certain qualities of color and modelling and brilliance of surface which seem to have been the common Possession of earlier…
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On 16 Jan, 2015 With
Tempera techniques possessed the great advantage of brilliance and permanence, but they were, at the same time, subject to serious difficulties of management which in many ways limited their possibilities. The so-called early primitive paintings executed in these various tempera mediums possessed a charm of their own, undoubtedly due in some measure to these very limitations of technique. The impossibility of achieving realistic effects and of producing the illusion of the third dimension preserved in them the flat decorative quality for which many are much admired. This decorative effect owes much of its power to the juxtaposition of large masses of color and form, similar to the effects obtained in some of the minor arts. One of the tempera artists’…
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On 9 Sep, 2014 With
It is the problem of the draughtsman to represent on a plane – his Paper, the multiple three dimensional appearances of nature, conveying the impression of light, depth and movement, as well as the texture of materials, by the sole means of the gradations and modelling in the greys as they go from the white of his paper to the darkest value of his drawing instrument. In studying the old masters from this point of view we see that it is possible to establish a hierarchy among them. Mediocre draughtsmen simply do the best they can with nature as they see it. Their eye works like a mirror that contains many imperfections. Portraiture is their largest field of activity because,…
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