Titian

Venus of Urbino, 1538, Tiziano Vecellio

Everyone dreams of living to what we call a "ripe old age." Artists are no exception, and some, such as Michelangelo, Monet, Rembrandt, and a few others, managed to pass the magical fourscore mark, after which we stop lying about our age and begin proclaiming it with some pride. This was certainly the case with one of the greatest painters who ever lived, Tiziano Vecellio. If his name is not exactly a household word, perhaps you might be more familiar with that under which he signed his paintings--Titian. This name is practically synonymous with Venetian painting and in particular his Venus of Urbino painted in 1538 when he was already around 60 years old.

A good part of Titian's greatness as a painter comes from the fact that oil painting came to Italy just as he was starting his career, and that he had the presence of mind to grab hold of the new medium and explore its technical potential while maintaining the considerable skills he'd developed as a colorist using egg tempera. Unlike the strong draftsmanship that was the basis of Leonardo's or Raphael's painting, Titian's strength rested in his incredible use of subtle, transparent, varnished glazes of color, through which he built up his masses and rendered textures that were a standard for oil painters for the next three hundred years. And because of his amazing longevity, he serves very well as a convenient link between the Renaissance and the Baroque era minus the extravagant, self-conscious contrivances that marked the intervening Mannerist period.

Pieta, 1576, Titian, his last painting,
probably intended for his tomb.

Titian not only lived to the proverbial "ripe old age", he lived several years past it. Actually, given the fact no one is exactly sure when he was born, we can't be exactly sure how old the man was when he was done in by the plague in 1576. The mystery is made no less interesting by the fact that once the Titian reached 80 he started lying about his age, adding a couple years here and a couple more there, until once in a letter to the King of Spain, he claimed to be 95 years old in hopes that the monarch would feel sorry for him and pay him the sizable sum he was owed. Experts guess, in that particular case, he added approximately ten years to his age, which would put his birth around 1478. If that date is anywhere close to accurate, he was still painting at the "ripe old age" of 98.

Tintoretto

In teaching both adults and young people to paint over the years, I've often been amused when, having completed a work, they are amazed that they could have done such an impressive job. Of course they alone, didn't. They had constant help and instruction. Sometimes I've even had student work mistaken for my own. The students are always flattered when I tell them this, and of course, so am I. The point I always try to make under such circumstances is that there is often not that much difference in the quality of work done by amateur as opposed to professional painters. The difference is that the professional can do high-quality work more consistently and in less time. This has been the case ever since the first painting master took on his first apprentice.  Painting is both art and science in varying degrees according to the individual. The more an artist can reduce the art of painting to a science the more productive he becomes and the more consistent he will be in his results. Of course an artist risks in becoming stale and predictable if this search for speed and consistency becomes extreme. The science can crowd out the art. One artist who faced this dilemma was the Venetian painter, Jacopo Robusti.

If you've never heard of him perhaps you know him by his childhood nickname, which he used throughout most of his life--Tintoretto. His father was a dyer. The name means "little dyer." He was born in 1518 which means he came of age during the Mannerist period as the Renaissance was winding down and growing stale for lack of great visionary artists to follow in the footsteps of Michelangelo, Raphael, and the others. It was not for the lack of trying however, and some indeed, had a modest degree of success. One of these was Teziano Vecilli, known as Titian. Tintoretto had the great good fortune to have him as a teacher. There is much to be seen of Titian's color in Tintoretto's work.  In drawing however, Tintoretto took after Michelangelo, who, after all, was still alive during much of Tintoretto's lifetime. A sign in his studio boasted he could draw like Michelangelo and paint like Titian--not a bad combination.

Christ at the Sea of Galilee, 1575, Tintoretto

And in large part, Tintoretto's vanity was not misplaced. And unlike his master, Titian, who had a tendency to belabor his work, endlessly repainting sections and second-guessing his own best judgment, Tintoretto was fast.  He planned his work meticulously then worked his plan expeditiously. He often painted with very large brushes and broad, vigorous strokes that would be the envy of some abstract expressionists today. His Christ at the Sea of Galilee, painted in 1575, is an excellent example of his mature style. Christ walks on water along at the far left, beckoning his apostles to brave the storm as Peter takes a first, dramatic, tentative step out upon the waves. The colors are bold, the strokes sure, the overall effect is riveting. I have often been deprecating of Mannerist painting in the past, and even the work of Tintoretto, but here he excels, pointing the way toward the Baroque, just over the artistic horizon.

Thomas Sully

Being involved in "the arts" just comes naturally to some families. Sometimes it stretches back several generations, a grain running deep and wide through some family trees to the point that several members of each generation end up with creative splinters embedded deep in their souls. In the late 1700s, in Horncastle, Lincolnshire, England, Matthew and Sarah Chester Sully were the progenitors of one such family. Progenitors indeed, they had nine children. They were actors too...husband, wife, and all the kids as soon as they could walk, talk, and remember lines. In 1792, at the invitation of his father's brother-in-law, Matthew packed up all his belongings, his wife, along with the rest of the family theater troupe, and emigrated to Richmond, Virginia. There they performed in what amounted to the family theater...all except the youngest son, who was being schooled in New York.

Thomas Sully, the youngest of the nine, was born in 1783. His formal education in New York was cut short in 1794 when his mother died. He returned to Richmond and the family trade, then with his father and all the others, they moved to another theater managed by his father's brother-in-law in Charleston, South Carolina. It was here that Thomas decided to follow in his brother, Lawrence's, footsteps and veer off into painting. There, keeping it all in the family so to speak, he apprenticed to his sister's husband, Jean Belzons, a miniaturist who had recently come over from France. During the next ten years Thomas Sully studied under a virtual pantheon of portrait painters ranging from John Trumbull, Gilbert Stuart, and later in London, Benjamin West and Henry Fuseli. With this kind of training, and the family pedigree in the arts, he was bound to be a success.

Andrew Jackson, 1824, Thomas Sully

If the name Thomas Sully doesn't quite ring a bell in your mind, check in your wallet or purse, chances are you own a copy of one of his portraits as seen at left. Sully opened his first studio in 1804, and with the death of Gilbert Stuart in 1826, he became the foremost portrait painter in America. Working mostly out of Philadelphia, but often traveling almost the length of the eastern seaboard in fulfilling hundreds of commissions, Sully specialized in a fancy, English style of portraiture, superficially attractive, but criticized for lacking much in the way of depth. But, it was the style popular at the time.

Queen Victoria, 1838,
Thomas Sully

Following a trip to England where he painted a full-length portrait of Queen Victoria, his popularity soared. He took with him his son, Thomas Wilcocks Sully, whom he trained to follow in his footsteps as he steered the fine arts branch of the family tree toward painting rather than the theater. Unfortunately, his son's career was cut short by his death in 1847 at the age of 36. Since he no longer had a son whose career he could guide, he wrote a short book entitled, Hints to Young Painters and the Process of Portrait Painting. Written in 1851 but not published until just before his death some 20 years later, the book is a common-sense compendium of painterly wisdom not totally out of place, even today.

The Night Watch

Except possibly for religious painting and frescoes, portrait painting has traditionally been one of the highest callings to which an artist can rise. In all forms of painting, there are artists and then there are artists! That is, while not every artist can capture a likeness, by definition, every portrait artist can. Now, while this limits the number of portrait artists considerably, those portrait artists who, down through history, have captured more than just a likeness further reduces this number to a few great artists. Capturing more than just a likeness means the ability to capture nuances of the sitters personality, demeanor, and lifestyle as well. In the history of painting, perhaps a dozen or so portrait artists have learned to accomplish this consistently.   
   
With this in mind, consider the fact that, while it is difficult enough to capture in paint that which makes a single subject a distinctive, living, breathing, imperfect, human being, imagine if you will, the difficulty in painting of a group of individuals and still managing to capture something more than just a likeness. In this exalted category of portrait painters, the masters can very nearly be counted on the fingers of one hand...Frans Hals, Velazquez, Copley, Sargent, and at the head of the table of course, Rembrandt Van Rijn. No man ever did it better or with more style.
   

Captain Frans Banning Cocq Mustering His Company,
1642, Rembrandt van Rijn

Of all his great group portraits, Rembrandt is probably best remembered for his massive, 11 by 14 foot group portrait of a band of civic guards parading through the streets of Amsterdam. The painting is entitled Captain Frans Banning Cocq Mustering His Company. If that sounds unfamiliar, the painting is better known as The Night Watch, though this moniker has proven to be something of a historical misnomer. Because of a severe buildup of dirt and varnish, it was traditionally thought of as a night scene. A recent cleaning however has dispelled this idea. It is a riot of color--blues, greens, reds, oranges, browns, and most importantly lemon yellow in the uniform of the Captain. This is no staid group of interior decorators (as in his Dutch Masters group portrait). This is a rambunctious militia group intermingled with street urchins, a pretty young girl (bathed in a yellow glow balancing coloristically the captain's uniform), as well as numerous, seemingly unnecessary figures melding into a dynamic composition as lively as the 20 or so amazingly distinctive portraits of the individual guards. More than just a likeness, or even twenty likenesses, Rembrandt has captured the group's spirit with incredible fidelity.

Thomas Hart Benton

Self-portrait, Thomas Hart Benton,
1939, Thomas Hart Benton

What do you do when you're the name bearing grandson of a well-know US senator, expected by your parents to follow the family tradition, and enter politics? The answer is, you become an artist, disappoint the entire family, and go on to become more famous than your grandfather. An unlikely scenario? Yes, probably, but that's exactly what Missouri artist Thomas Hart Benton did. Born in 1889, Benton first studied art for a brief time at the Art Institute in Chicago, but his real heart lay in Europe. In 1908, he set sail to seek his fortune, so to speak, in the art capitals of France, England, and Italy where he studied for three years.   
   

The Arts of the West, 1932,
Thomas Hart Benton

Although influence by Cubism and something called Synchromism (which is a sort of abstraction with primary emphasis on color planes and organization), what Benton brought back from Europe had little to do with these French Avant-Gard movements. His greatest influences were Italian--Michelangelo, Tintoretto, and El Grecco (not Italian, but himself influence strongly by Michelangelo). Upon returning to this country, Benton settled in New York and did some nationally acclaimed work there His growing popularity soon brought him back to his midwestern roots as he began receiving commissions for public works involving murals with historic themes in states such as Indiana, Illinois, and his home state of Missouri.   
   

Thoma Hart Benton mural,
Springfield, Missouri

The mural was an ideal outlet for the style and grand influences Benton brought back from Europe.  Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and Jose Orozco had found popularity in this country by bringing with them from south of the border the nationalistic themes that struck a responsive chord in depression-ravaged hearts of their northern neighbors. Governments were also in the mood to support public works of art in everything from state capitols to local post offices. But Benton brought to mural painting something different, a new style, new color, new compositional elements, and evolved it into what basically amounted to a new art form, no longer static and stately, but writhing with energy, packed with narrative elements, vibrant colors, and flowing, undulating compositions which guided the eye through complex streams of visual consciousness never before seen on the walls of the Midwest or anywhere else. He died in 1975 at the age of 86, his kinship to his famous grandfather little noted outside his home state. 

Thomas Gainsborough

As Americans we tend to worship British culture as something highly refined, tasteful, and perhaps just a little bit snobbish.  We tend to think of England and Shakespeare, Shelly, Spencer, Keats, and dozens of other literary masters in the same breath so to speak. While it's true that England and its marvelous language was quite precocious insofar as literature was concerned, well into the 18th century, we would have been hard put to come up with a single outstanding English artist. In the dominant art of painting, England didn't even come close to matching what the French, the Dutch, even the Spanish were doing. In a country were wars and political turmoil came close to matching their French counterparts across the channel, and kings and queens were almost routinely beheaded, the economic conditions for the blossoming of the visual arts were not right until the early 1700s.

Bumper, 1745, Thomas Gainsborough

It was into this world that John Gainsbourgh and his wife took delivery of their fifth of nine children and named him Thomas. The year was 1727. John was a clothier. the Gainsborough house still stands in Sudbury, Suffolk, England, now a museum dedicated to the work of the town's most famous citizen. It is across Gainsborough Street from the Gainsborough Book Store, and not far from a Gainsborough pharmacy,  a dry cleaner, a movie theater, a hotel, a guest house, a petroleum company, a silk weaving company and a social club which also bear his name. In school, young Tom was a shrewd but lackluster student. He began his art career drawing pictures of his classmates in return for their doing his homework. At the age of 13 he was sent off to London to apprentice under a silver engraver. But it was painting that came naturally to him, and soon he was being hired to repair old paintings. He hired himself a painting instructor by the name of Francis Hayman who was his only influence as an artist. Hayman also influenced him in the art of drinking and "petticoat reading." His earliest existing painting is one of his dog, Bumper, painted when Tom was 18.

Blue Boy, 1770,
Thomas Gainsborough

The Villers Brothers, 1635,
Anthony van Dyck

At the age of 19, Thomas Gainsborough met and married a Miss Margaret Burr, a strikingly beautiful young girl believed to have been the illegitimate daughter of the wealthy Duke of Beaufort. With his wife came a dowry in the form of a yearly annuity of two hundred pounds at a time when a skilled artisan usually earned less then fifty pounds a year. As a result, Gainsborough gained an enviable degree of independence that was to have a marked effect on the work of the amiable, lighthearted, young artist. He could afford to experiment, to improvise, and if the portrait client was too demanding, to turn down the commission. Unlike his artistic rival, Sir Joshua Reynolds, he painted for the love of art, rather than for political or economic purposes. His most famous painting, his Blue Boy, painted in 1770, is loosely based upon a Van Dyck portrait of the Villers brothers, foster sons of Charles II.  Preliminary drawings indicate he combined the pose of the two boys into the one in depicting the sensitive, elegantly dressed teenager in his painting. For years the identity of the setter was unknown.  It is now believed to be Jonathan Buttal, the son of a rich hardware dealer. They remained friends for life. The young man was one of the few named on a short list of those Gainsborough wished to attend his funeral when he died in 1788.

Mannerism

One of the difficulties of a colossal success is the aftermath, once all the glory and honor have passed.  What does one do for an encore? David O. Selznick encountered that quandary after Gone With the Wind, and James Cameron no doubt pondered the same Titanic dilemma. In art, Michelangelo probably had such thoughts once he climbed down from his ceiling, and the Renaissance in general left the artists that followed so in awe that they all faced the daunting question, where do we go from here? Their period during the late sixteenth century has come to be known as Mannerism and like Michelangelo, Selznick, and Cameron, once they climbed the peak there was no place else to go but down the other side. Michelangelo found other peaks to climb, but it's the exceptional artist who does so, and even he found some pretty deep valleys in the interim.

Francois I, 1535, Jean Clouet

The Italian Mannerists, such as Agnolo Bronzino, Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo, and a number of others just as well forgotten, tried to continue the climb, but history has judged that they were rather climbing into thin air. In their efforts to surpass their Renaissance masters, their work became contrived, distorted, ponderous, tedious, and pompous at every turn. Perhaps worst of all, young artists from the North, leaving behind them a pretty respectable Renaissance of their own, journeyed south in an attempt to study the works of Michelangelo, Raphael, and others. And, like their Italian peers, they fell victim to the same overindulgent tendencies, carrying them back to their homelands like a contagious disease. 

In France, the results can be seen in Jean Clouet's 1525 portrait of his king, Francis I. Seldom has an uglier portrait ever been painted, though the king's overblown tunic, which threatens to break down the picture frame, is a fascinating study of richly textured fabrics.

The Judgment of Paris, 1615,
Joachim Wtewael

In the Netherlands, Joachim Wtewael chose to ignore the best efforts of Durer and Cranach as he brewed his The Judgment of Paris, painted in 1615. In it, the Trojan shepherd, Paris, for some unknown reason, bestows a golden apple upon the most beautiful of three nude, presumably divine, ladies in an absolute horror of overwhelming compositional complexity and perfunctory detail.

Vulcan and Maia, 1590 
Bartolomeus Spranger

And Bartholomeus Spranger, also of Flemish descent (with the emphasis on descent), first spread Mannerism to the Haarlem Academy in his homeland, before going on to inflicted his semi-erotic Vulcan and Maia (1590) upon the Austrians. Later he moved on to Prague and sponsored an infestation of Mannerism upon the hapless young art students he encountered there. Fortunately, in later years, the area recovered and became the seat for some of the best art and especially architecture the Baroque period had to offer.