Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas - Remarks to Three Artists

To Berthe Morisot:

The study of nature is unimportant because painting is a conventional art and it would be infinitely better to learn drawing from Holbein.

To Max Liebermann:

I would like to be rich enough to buy back all my pictures and destroy them by pushing my foot through the canvas.

To Bartholome (Naples, January 17, 1886):

How pretty the photographed drawing is that you gave me! But it is essential to do the same subject over again, ten times a hundred times. Nothing in art must seem to be chance, not even movement.

From the Degas manuscripts

Famous Painter - Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas

Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas

(1834-1917)

Degas's naturalism loas only a temporary concession to the new ideology; basically a classicist, he preferred elegant subjects — especially racing and the world of ballet. Despite his involvement with the Impressionist movement, with its fights and its experiments, he retained a certain upper-class, noncommittal aloofness. He always remained a spectator rather than a participant, victimized by his prejudices, shy, afraid of displays of emotion, an outsider. Keenly analytical, he was the only one among his contemporaries who knew how to capture an instantaneous vision without sacrificing truth.

Rembrandt van Rijn - Letter to Huygens

January 12, 1639 My Lord:

Because of the great zeal and devotion which I experienced in executing well the two pictures which His Highness commissioned me to make—the one being Christ's dead body being laid in the tomb and the other Christ arising from the dead to the great consternation of the guardsf—these same two pictures are now finished through studious application, so that I am now also disposed to deliver the same and so to afford pleasure to His Highness. For, in these two paintings the greatest and most natural movement (or most innate emotion);}: has been expressed, which is also the main reason why they have taken so long to execute.

Until now, these words have been interpreted as "the greatest and most natural movement." H. E. van Gelder, however, pointed out that many 17th-century authors used the word beweeglijkheid to express emotion rather than physical movement. Hence Rembrandt's words should be interpreted as "with the greatest and most innate emotion." Rembrandt wished to convey that he had done his uttermost to express the emotions of the figures in accordance with their character. However, J. Rosenberg (Rembrandt, 1, Cambridge, 1948, pp. 116, 226 note 29) and W. Stechow (Art Bulletin, 32, 1950, 253) do not accept this interpretation. They assert that "the interpretation as an inward emotion seems to be contradicted by the pictures themselves, in which the outer movement in the Baroque sense still dominates, and by the aesthetics of the period."

An unbiased observer will have to admit that the Resurrection is a "turbulent composition with frenzied Baroque movement," but that the Entombment is a composition fraught with inward feeling. Van Gelder has correctly drawn attention to the fact that the spectators—and also in the Resurrection —are moved by an inward emotion. New linguistic research supports van Gelder's theory (L. de Paauw-de Veer, Oud Holland, 74, 1959, 202).

Therefore, I request my Lord to be so kind as to inform His Highness of this, and whether it would please my Lord that the two pictures should first be delivered at your house as was done on the previous occasion. I shall first await a note in answer to this.

And as my Lord has been troubled in these matters for the second

time, a piece lo feet long and 8 feet high shall also be added as

a token of my appreciation, which will be worthy of my Lord's house.

And wishing you all the happiness and heavenly blessings, Amen.

My lord, your humble and obedient servant,

Rembrandt

Painters on Painting - Paolo Veronese

Those painters who have best understood the art of producing a good effect, have adopted one principle that seems perfectly conformable to reason; that a part may be sacrificed for the good of the whole. Thus, whether the masses consist of light or shadow, it is necessary that they should be compact and of a pleasing shape; to this end, some parts may be made darker and some lighter, and reflections stronger than nature would warrant. Paul Veronese took great liberties of this kind. It is said, that being once asked, why certain figures were painted in the shade, as no cause was seen in the picture itself, he turned off the enquiry by answering, "una nuevola che passa," a cloud is passing which has overshadowed them.

Hieronymus Bosch - on His Method of Painting

Hieronymus Bosch

He is not content to paint familiar legends and themes of a common heritage. As he paints, Bosch holds intimate conversation with himself, and gradually he sinks into the depths of his own unconscious. For him, to paint is to liberate his own demon.

ON HIS METHOD OF PAINTING

He had a firm, rapid, and very agreeable execution, often finishing his works at the first painting; yet those works have stood perfectly well, and without changing. Like other old masters, he had a mode of drawing and tracing his subjects on the white panel; he then passed a transparent flesh-colored priming over the design, often using the ground to contribute to the effect of his work.

Painters on Painting - Leonardo da Vinci

If one goes back to the time luhen The Last Supper was executed, one can do no less than wonder at the immense progress that Leonardo caused his art to make. . . . He freed himself with one bloiu from the traditional painting of the fifteenth century; without errors, without weakening, without exaggerations, and as if with a single bound, he arrives at that judicious and learned naturalism, equally separated from servile imitation and from an empty chimerical ideal. How singular it is that the most methodical of men, the one among the masters of this time who was most occupied with the processes of execution and who taught them with such precision that the works of his best pupils are confused luith his own every day — this man, whose manner is so strongly characterized, is without rhetoric.

WHAT PAINTING IS CONCERNED WITH

Painting is concerned with all the ten attributes of sight: darkness and light, solidity and color, form and position, distance and nearness, motion and rest.

Modern American Painter - Robert W. Salmon

VERY LITTLE IS KNOWN of the life of this English-bom marine painter who came to America in 1829. He was artive in Boston as late as 1840, painting such scenes as The Wharves oj Boston, which now hangs in the old Boston State House, and Rocks at Nahant. owned by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Boston Harbor—Long and Central Wharves, painted in 1832, belongs to Henry R. Dalton. It shows Boston when it was the shipping center of the new United States empire of commerce and when its jungle of masts teemed with emigrants, merchants and sailors unloading cargoes.

American Painter - Samuel Colman

COLMAN WAS BORN IN PORTLAND. MAINE, and came to New York to study with Asher B. Durand. Later he studied in France and Spain, and became a member of the National Academy in 1862. With the painting. Emigrant Train, Colman paid tribute to the pioneer spirit that dared push westward "the course of empire." The artist painted this picture in 1870, one year after the transcontinental railroad put an end to covered-wagon travel. Following the hazardous route of the Pony Express from Missouri to California, the Emigrant Train is fording Medicine Bow Creek in the Rocky Mountains near Laramie, Wyo.

American Painter - Henry Billings

A PAINTER BORN IN A WELL-TO-DO FAMILY often has a harder time of it than his poorer brethren. If father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were physicians, lawyers, or JL business men and properly educated in the best of universities, then of course the son must not break that family tradition. And if there happens never to have been a painter in the family, so much the worse for the unfortunate son who happens to be bom with the creative urge. This creative urge becomes an unheard-of thing, and there is a great clan horrified at the strange carryings on of a beloved son.

There was something of all this in the early life of Henry Billings, son of Dr. John Sedgwick Billings and grandson of John Shaw Billings, famous bibliographer of medicine, designer of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and first direaor of the New York Public Library. After only a few years of formal education that terminated when he was seventeen, in what he describes as "general confusion," the artist served a short apprenticeship in various architectural offices. But he soon left to study at the Art Students' League, a decision which he says was "an appalling choice from the family's point of view, inasmuch as I obviously had no ulent."

At the League he studied with Boardman Robinson and Kermeth Hayes Miller on and off for about three years. Then, in 1921, he went to Woodstock. There at first he had a hard time of it, spending one winter alone in a small studio shack, living on $25 a month, and refusing to ask his family for more. There, for ten years as an art student, he absorbed and watched the influence of what is genetically called modem French art. While learning the discipline of abstract painting he became deeply interested in the possibility of using machine forms as a basis for mural decorations, in keeping with the new developments in modem architecture.

At the same time he felt the need, he says, "of breaking our academic bondage to the still-life, the iminhabited landscape and the studio nude. This interest in subject matter, whether it results in studies of the American Scene or Surrealism, or what have you, is indicative of the feeling on the part of most painters that the easel picture must be recharged with vital content."

Billings gave his first one-man show in 1928, and three years later held another exhibition of decorative panels, the designs of which were based on machinery. Five of these panels were acquired by New York's Museum of Science and Industry. Later he was commissioned to paint murals for the Music Hall in Radio City, and these were followed by two mural commissions from the Treasury Department for post offices in Lake Placid, N.Y., and Medford, Mass.

For the Ford Building at the New York World's Fair he designed a 40-foot mobile mural, probably the only mural in the world in which actual parts of machinery revolve and move. Although his mural projects have taken a great part of his time, Billings is continuing easel painting. One of his earlier canvases is owned by the Whimey Museum of American Art. His Arrest No. z is witness to his keen interest in the social problems of his fellow men, and his awareness of the life about him.

Water Color Painting - SUPPLEMENTARY EQUIPMENT

Sponge: A small soft sponge of the finest quality is a necessary part of the water colorist's equipment. It is especially useful for washing out areas of color.

Absorbent Tissue: (Kleenex, etc.) I find this invaluable. It serves many of the purposes of the sponge and is particularly valuable in making skies.

Erasers: Get some art gum to erase pencil lines; also get regular pencil erasers and ink erasers for lightening areas which are too dark.

Razor Blades: Get the kind with only one sharp edge, like, for instance, a Gem razor blade. You will find it valuable for textures as I have explained in my technical notes.

Palette: Two large white plates are my favorites. Put the colors around the outer edge. When the bottom of the plate gets too dirty from mixed colors, wipe it clean with a damp tissue. I put my yellows, browns and reds on one plate; the greens, blues, Payne's grey and black on the other.

Pencils: For sketching your first composition almost any pencil (or charcoal) is all right. By trying different leads you will find the hard or soft ones you like to use.

Gum Tape: This comes in rolls, 1 or 2 inches in width and is used for mounting water colors.

Two Large Jars: These are for holding water. I recommend jars with large openings for convenience.

Other Materials: Other equipment you will need include: drawing board, sandpaper, thumb tacks, crayons and a few rags for cleaning brushes and palette (unless you use tissues).

Painting Mountain Ash

Mountain Ash—(Water Color Painting)

In water color painting you may use the VERMILION mixed with a trifle of BURNT SIENNA for the general tint of this fruit. For the dark shadows you may add more BURNT SIENNA and leave the high lights plain WHITE.

Mountain Ash—(Oil Painting)

In oil painting you may use also the VERMILION for the general shade of the fruit, perhaps mixed with a small quantity of CARMINE LAKE. For the shadows you may mix with this color VAN DYKE BROWN and for the high lights you may use plain WHITE.

Mountain Ash—(China Painting)

In china painting you may use either CARNATION RED or YELLOW RED No. 2 for the painting of mountain ash. In the dark shadows you may add a trifle of DEEP RED BROWN or VIOLET of IRON. If that color is a trifle too light for your decoration you may use the LIGHT POMPADOUR for the general color and DEEP RED BROWN for the shadows.

This fruit has a small high light, which you should keep plain white. Be careful in keeping the round shape of the fruit, as if you make some oval and some round, they will not appear natural.