While not forgotten in Spain,  Carlos de Haes' work has been little recognized elsewhere. As a teacher and award-winning artists, Haes is perhaps Spain's greatest  landscape painter.

Carlos de Haes (Brussels, 1826-Madrid, 1898) was born in Belguim to Spanish parents. Due to financial troubles, the family was forced to return to Spain in 1835. There, Haes studied with Luis de la Cruz, a Court Painter to King Ferndinand VII and a member of the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.

In 1850, at the age of 24, Haes traveled back to Brussels to study Flemish landscapes. There he competed and regularly placed in Belgium's annual Salons. Six years later, Haes returned to Spain.

His international experience carried a great deal of currency in Spanish painting circles, and immediately set him apart from his peers who rarely studied beyond Spain and Italy. His dedication to landscape also changed the Spanish Academy's attitude towards landscape painting.

Despite having been accepted as a major genre in other European countries, during the first half of the nineteenth century, Spain had not widely  participated in Romantic and Sublime landscape painting. Instead, landscapes were considered a second-rate genre, a necessary part of an artist's education insofar as it related to the composition of history painting.

Haes' work Cercanías del moasterio de Piedra (1858) was the first landscape painting to win a First Place medal at the Exposicion Nacional, Spain's equivalent of the Paris Salon. The award represented a giant leap forward in the estimation of landscape painting as a stand-alone discipline. Shortly afterwards, Haes was made a member of the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, the nation's most prestigious art school. His appointment in 1860 to the Academia de San Fernandoand and subsequent teaching there effectively caught Spain up with other schools of landscape painting in Europe. As a teacher, Haes fathered a dynasty of Spanish landscape artists that continues today. Among Haes's more prominent students are Martín Rico y Ortega (1833-1908), Jaime Morera (1854-1927).

It could be argued that Haes' one of most important contributions to Spanish painting was with non-landscape painters. Through him, history painters, whose work enjoyed the widest attention at the Exposiciones Nacionales, developed a new appreciation and approach to landscapes, arguably bringing it on par with their figural work. Artists like Francisco Pradilla, José Casado del Alisal, Placenscia Maestro, were required to take Haes' course at the Academia de San Fernando considered a serious part of their large history paintings, sometimes producing numerous studies devoid of figures.

In particular, Haes brought to Spain an increased emphasis on three aspects of landscape painting: luminosity, porportion and direct observation from nature.

Traditionally, Spanish artists favored the use of sandy-colored grounds for use in painting. This created a unifying effect in their works, but resulted in the overall dampening of light. While Haes continued to use sand-colored and reddish grounds in his works, he would incorporate large patches of lead white and subdue the quantity of sandy grounds.

Very few of Haes' works exceed 150 by 200 centimeters. This was at a time when history paintings, often exceeding 6 by 10 meters, were competing for top prizes at Exposiciones Nacionales. Haes' landscapes, though bold in composition and epic in subject matter, maintained comparatively modest proportions. This set a precedent in landscape painting throughout Spain, which more or less continued throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, even when history paintings became more ambitious in size.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, Haes was a proponent of direct observation from nature and led several expeditions. This resulted to an almost nationalistic fervor for Spanish landscape painting, that featured Iberian natural wonders.

Today, Carlos de Haes' work can be found in nearly every major Spanish museum. However, the largest body and greatest works from his ouvre are held in the Prado Museum and not currently on display. A new wing of the Prado, dedicated to Spanish nineteenth-century art, is planned to open in 2012.

(Click here for a list of works and biography of Carlos de Haes by the Prado Museum.)

Bibliography:

• Carlos de Haes (1826-1898) en el Museo del Prado, cat. exp., Madrid, Museo del Prado, 2002.
• Cid Priego, Carlos, Aportaciones para una monografía del pintor Carlos de Haes, Lérida, Instituto de Estudios Ilerdenses, 1956.

Occasionally, I come across a book that was made with me in mind. Figures du Corps: Une Leçon d'Anatomie à l'École des Beaux-Arts is the catalogue of the exhibition by the same name held from October 21, 2008 to January 4, 2009 at the l'École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. (Painfully, I first learned about the exhibition after seeing this book in a bookshop window in London, which is either a testament to my own ignorance of events like this or a sign that marketing efforts had limited reach.)

The catalogue is an ode to the bewildering and wonderful arsenal of contraptions, tools, plaster casts, photographs, and any other useful aid created to assist artists in the study of human and animal figures.

Resembling part medical research facility and part life-science museum, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts gathered human and animal anatomical examples--ideal, real and atypical--for use in training. 

For artists at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, academic training meant mastering the human figure. As described in a previous post, this training took place over a series of graduated steps, beginning with isolating parts of the human figure, to studying idealized forms in Greco-Roman statues, and, finally, working with live models.

The catalogue includes several examples of classical forms that have been worked over to reveal underlying skeletal and muscular structure. It is evidence of a startling lack of superficiality in their approach to their craft and art. There are numerous accounts of dissections of both humans and animals, and visits from surgeons to discuss recent medical discoveries.

Looking at examples of plaster casts from the book, I was surprised at how many of them were obviously taken from human subjects and not from statues. The catalogue is unclear as to when many of these casts were made and used. Regardless, it is fascinating to see that they went to great lengths to articulate hands and feet in a wide range of challenging positions that were not always quoted from classical forms.

One of the greatest costs in training was the hiring of live models. As a result, contraptions of all kinds--mannequins, photographs, stereoscope images--were made to substitute, or perhaps more accurately, supplement, models. 

One man at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paul Richer (Chartes, 1849-Paris, 1933) was particularly skilled both as a creator of artist aides and as a sculptor himself. 

His work Tres in Una, above, is a terrific example of the late-nineteenth, early-twentieth century combinations realist and classical approaches to art. There is disappointingly little written about Richer in the catalogue, yet he is clearly one of a rare breed, simultaneaously gifted at educational innovation and a talented artist in his own right. For one, I would love to learn more about him, and hope to.

A great deal of the catalogue is dedicated to the anatomical models of animals, especially horses Just as in England, where George Stubbs (British , 1724-1806) led a generation of artists at the Royal Academy to explore and correctly understand the anatomy of horses, the French Academy invested a great deal in equine models.

One stunning example of an artist using the models is a study of horse legs, below, by  Théodore Géricault (Rouen, 1971-Paris, 1824). 

This catalogue makes it possible to comprehend the lengths to which artists would go to learn their craft. For me, it is both an inspiration and a reminder of how much we can learn from them.

When Anthony Van Dyck (Flemish, 1599-1641) made these three paintings, he was between 19 and 20 years old. All three were owned by Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577-1640), and were bought from his collection by the Spanish royal family after Rubens' death. That Rubens had them in his private collection says a great deal about his admiration for Van Dyck. Rubens was 12 years older than Van Dyck and had hired him to work as his chief assistant in his studio. "Assistant" doesn't do enough justice to Van Dyck, who was young but extremely competent. Even today, scholars have a difficult time distinguishing between the two artists' work during the period they worked together.

In this first work, Christ is betrayed by Judas, who leads a crowd of Suducees and Pharisees (i.e. member of the ruling Jewish priesthood) to take Christ into custody. Christ had just offered his interceding prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, while three faithful apostles (Peter, James and John) had fallen asleep keeping watch.

Van Dyck brilliantly creates a torrent of action swooping in towards Christ, the only figure with two feet on the ground, effectively stopping the large crowd by himself. The contrasting patches of dark and light, red and black  create an emotional upheaval. It's an unsettling painting, and, with figures at almost real-life proportions, imposing.

Looking at this painting, its hard to know whether you are in the prison, and therefore an accomplice, or, like the figures in the top left of the painting, looking through a window. In either case, you have a front-and-center view of the scene. Christ is being crowned with thorns by Roman soldiers.

Van Dyck uses an astounding arsenal--especially given his young age--for his cast of characters. Armor, dog fur, the weakened, pale skin of Christ, the young, healthy skin of the Roman soldiers, wood, sky, rope . . . up close (click on the image for a much larger version) and in person, the brushwork is incredibely varied and the pallet rich.

Though not overtly Christian to us today, this painting would have been an obvious reference to Christ's saving role. It depicts a story from Number chapter 21 in the Bible. Jehovah sent poisonous sepents among the Israelites, and many were bitten. He then commanded Moses to create a brass serpent and put it on a pole. Any person who would look at the brass serpent would be instantly healed. Many did not look, and died. According to the book of John chapter 3 verse 14: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up."

Van Dyck painted this for a very Bible-literate audience that would have understood the reference to Christ. All three of these paintings hang in the same room, but separately, at the Prado Museum, but I don't know if there were meant to hang together. Sometimes I wish The Brass Serpents were hung to the right of the The Capture of Christ. The symmetry and dates of the three makes me wonder if they were meant to be together, perhaps with the Crowning of Christ with Thorns in between.

In any case, have a wonderful Christmas.

In several of my posts, I have pressed the importance of drawing. But it is important to know that not all the greats drew. One artist, in particular, who did not was Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Spanish, 1599-1660). Simply known as "Velázquez," he was the greatest painter in the history of Spain and admired everywhere by academic and non-academic painters alike.

As mentioned in a previous post, Leon Bonnat, who became Director of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, regularly sent his students to Mardrid to study Velázquez's works. Thomas Eakins said he was the "greatest painter who ever lived." Painters as diverse as Millet, Manet, Sargent, Degas, Courbet, and Whistler admired and studied Velázquez's paintings. They alll may have been surprised to learn what modern technology has taught us about Velázquez's working method.

We know of only about 100 paintings by Veláquez, 45 of which are kept in the Prado Museum in Madrid. There, they have undergone chemical analysis of his pigments and a barrage of tests to show what lies under the paint. In the book Velázquez: The Technique of a Genius, Jonathan Brown and Carmen Garrido publish some of these findings.

Velázquez does not seem to have started with a fixed idea for a composition, but rather preferred to see what happened as he worked, making adjustments as he painted . . . The contours of figures overlap as their position in the composition changes or as elements are added or subtracted. Even within the forms of individual figures changes can be observed. The positions of hands and sleeves are adjusted, collars and lace are shifted, as are other parts of costume.

Landscape and neutral interior backgrounds were added, generally speaking, after the contours of the figures had been established.

(Jonathan Broan and Carmen Garrido, Velazquez: Technique of a Genius. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 18.)

One of my favorite paintings by Velázquez, The Forge of Vulcan, is a good example of this improvisational approach. Originally, the head of Vulcan, the older man in the left-hand side of the painting, was turned away from Apollo.

To the left of Vulcan's head, we can see a dark patch of brown paint where the back of his head used to be. In addition to this change, Velázquez enlarged the canvas. Over time, the pieces that were glued on became separated from the original piece and lines on the left and right of the canvas have become visible (See the first image.)

Not having drawn out the composition before hand, Velázquez created more work for himself. At the same time, it allowed him to go where his creativity led.

The results are stunning.

Obviously, drawing isn't everything.

(All of the drawings in this post are by eighteenth and nineteenth-century students of the Academia de San Fernando. I am extemely grateful for the help of the brilliant Angeles Vian Herrero, Director of the Library of the Facultad de Bellas Artes of the Universidad Cumplutense in Madrid. These and many more drawings are available at a new website she has created for them. For larger versions of each image in this post, please click each work.)

Nineteenth-century art academies all over Europe used drawing as the foundation for art education. As I have noted before on this blog, Jean-Dominique Auguste Ingres (French, 1780-1867), once said "Over three quarters of what constitutes painting is comprised of drawing. If I had to put a sign above my door I would write: 'School of drawing,' and I’m sure that I would produce painters." (It was not until the mid-1860s that oil painting was taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where Ingres had been the director from 1825-1841. His approach to artist training was adopted in Spain's most important school for artists, the Academia de San Fernando de Bellas Artes in Madrid.

The Academia de San Fernando de Bellas Artes was founded in 1752. Based in Madrid, it was one of several art academies in Spain (other cities with academies included Barcelona, Valencia, Zaragosa, and Seville). By the mid-nineteenth century, the Academia de San Fernando had become the dominant art academy in Spain and the model for art education throughout the country.

The Academia de San Fernando, founded in 1751, was heavily influenced by French-trained artists. One family in particular, the Madrazos, dominated the Academia de San Fernando for most of the nineteenth century. José de Madrazo (Spanish, 1781-1859), court painter for Ferdinand VII, was sent to Paris to study with Jacques-Louis David (French, 1748-1825). José’s son, Francisco de Madrazo y Kuntz (Sapnish, 1815-1894) was trained by Jean-August Dominique Ingres (French, 1780-1867) in Rome, and would serve as the Academia de San Fernando’s director from 1866 to 1894. José’s other son, Pedro (Spanish, 1816-1898), was the director of the Prado Museum, as well as a prominent art critic. All three were influential in setting standards and tastes for the Academia.

As in Paris, students in Madrid's arts academy studied, on average, for four years. Some went on to receive scholarships and study at the Spanish School in Rome. (Established in 1873, the Spanish sent winners of an annual competition on the equivalent of the French Prix de Rome.) Students at the Academia began by drawing from castes of isolated portions of statues. Then, they were allowed to study from full statues of classical origins, either from castes made of the Spanish Royal collection or from collections in Rome or Paris. Advanced students, were allowed to study from live models, who were often placed in the poses of classical statuary or from scenes in Old Master paintings. As the century progressed, classical poses increasingly gave way to more natural poses and depictions of the human figure.

The majority of the works featured here are of nude men. This is because, in nineteenth-century Spain, there were strong cultural taboos against female nudity, even classical nudes. As a result, Spanish artists privately hired female models for their studio work as opposed to using them in official schools.

Some of the works perserved in archives are anatomy studies. Many of theses seem to be copied from books while other appear to be made from looking at live models and perceiving underlying muscle and bone structure. This is interesting because models were expensive. Using them for anatomical studies shows how important the Academia considered these studies.

Today, I was looking through a collection of nineteenth-century Spanish Academic drawings--which I will explore at greater length in my next post--when I decided to take a break and read today's Financial Times. In its "Collecting" section, the newspaper features the work of two "prodigious young British artists who capture the fractured experience of comtemporary life." The contrast between the two sets of artists, nineteenth-century Spanish students and young contemporary British artists, could not be greater.

In her article "The P-Word," critic Jackie Wullschlager writes about the painting Strange Solutions by Katy Moran (British, 1975), saying: "Vestiges of landscape or portrait forms persist alluringly. I detected a thick, snowy avenue . . . which briefly reminded me of Monet, and a human figure is suggested in deft gestural outline at the heart of the rococo brushwork . . ."

If art is a medium of communication and the artist is the communicator, then we are either playing a very poor game of telephone with Moran or the artist hopes that, like Navajo codebreakers, critics will interpret what they mean. For her part, Wullschlager will not commit to any ideas or feelings inspired by the work; not even being sure as to whether or not the works are portraits or landscapes. Instead she says it "reminds" or "suggests" something. I could go on, but my point, unlike the artists' intent, is clear: this does not communicate, it confuses.

By comparison, the skills being taught to the Spanish student who created the "Study of an Adult Male," are steeped in a tradition of clear communication. The artist is learning the vocabulary of the human figure, its structure and its range of motion. As a result, this artist will be able to place the figure in a wide array of narratives.

Much has been written about nineteenth-century academic training. For the most part, Modern to Contemporary artists and art historians dismissed the Academy and its strict teaching as oppressive to creative abilities and limited in its ability to communicate. As a result, they regularly discuss the Academy as if it were Goliath and the Impressionsists were David. All who followed David's example of opposing the Academy were numbered among the Chosen People and all others were, by comparison, Philistines. But, I ask, is this evident in the fruits of either philosophy? Which generation of young artist seems more limited in its ability to communicate?

As my father often says, "Art is personal." Personally, I am more stimulated and provoked to deeper thought and feeling by clear communication than by vague suggestions.

According to Victor Bardia, Feriarte is Europe's largest annual Fine & Decorative Art fair. Bardia is one of the event's principal organizers. I met him and his son, David Bardia, at their gallery, Victor I Fills, during my last trip to Madrid. At that time, Bardia extended an invitation for me to return for the Fair. I'm grateful he did.

I've been to a number of fairs over the years and was skeptical Spain's fair could be larger than others. If it was, I assumed, it must be of lesser quality. Having walked at a casual pace for three hours, I thought I had seen all there was only to pass through a door that revealed another space, filled with more exhibitors and larger than the last. In total, I spent nearly eight hours on my feet, talking with dealers and collectors. For the most part, I was impressed by the quality of pieces, which were at least comparable, and often superior, to those of other fairs like Olympia or BADA in London.

Each dealer I met, with the exception of one--a German gallery that specialized in Russian and German turn-of-the-century art--was based in Spain. The majority of exhibitors had galleries in Madrid, Barcelona or both. Works at the fair, which ran from November 15 to 23, were overwhelmingly Spanish, or from former Spanish territories (e.g. The Netherlands, Naples) with small but impressive selection of works by Italian artists. There was a surprising dearth of Latin American and other foreign works of art, perhaps reflecting a lack of foreign buyers at this year's fair.

More than one dealer told me that compared to previous years, visitors were down by one half or two thirds. These are difficult times for art fairs and dealers. In other words, it was a buyers market. I was often surprised by low prices for objects and paintings that, less than a year ago, I had seen at much higher prices in the same galleries. For the occasion, dealers were bringing out their best pieces. The quantity of works was astounding--an art historian's dream.

Two Laughing Girls by Borrell is a wonderful example of the kind of academic painting taught and practiced in late-nineteenth century Rome. Though Paris was undeniably the center of the art world a number of painters work and studied in the Eternal City.

Borrell brilliantly draws the girls into our space by incorporating ornamentation from the neoclassical frame into the painting. The last two centimeters of the canvas are a combination of gesso and gold leaf over which he has painted one the two girls leaning her elbow on a Greek key patterned frieze. Seeing the piece, I wondered if Borrell had seen works by Dutch painters like Gerrit Dou, a contemporary of Rembrandt, who played similar visual tricks with his canvases.

With so many religious works, at times the fair seemed like a destination for pilgrims. God, the Virgin, and Saints were everywhere, covered in gesso, gold and pastel-colored oil paints. A number of the exhibitor's stall were set up as small houses of worship, with some even burning incense.

Spanish pieces like Christ crowned with thorns reflect skills brought the country by workmen from the Netherlands. Through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, The Netherlands were Spanish territory. A number of Netherlandish artists moved to Spain, infusing a northern realism--as opposed to classical idealism--into Spanish sculpture and painting.

Having made his name in abstract painting and Cubism, some people are surprised to learn that Picasso was trained as an Academic painter. He studeid at the academy in Barcelona, where he produced a number of figure studies in charcoal and a few oil paintings. Some can be seen as the Picasso Museum, installed in his former home in Barcelona. His ability to accurately render the human figure, especially in chalk, is impressive.

I was surprised to see one of his academic oils available at the fair. The work is evidence of his early propensity towards breaking down objects into basic forms. The shadows in Torso of a Young Man are sharp, clearly delineating muscles and separating the figure from its background. To me, the head and the body appear to belong to different figures, which is, perhaps, a choice or, more likely, a reflection of his inexperience. (He was only sixteen when it was painted.)

Once overseen by Julius Caesar and the birthplace of the Emperor Hadrian, Spain was one of of Rome's most important provinces. Besides the obvious inheritance of a Latin language, Spain retained a number of Roman works of art and architecture. A few Feriarte stalls were dedicated exclusively to ancient sculpture and architectural pieces (e.g. fountains, doorways).

It's not every day that a Ribera could be yours. Considered one of Spain's greatest painters, Ribera's oeuvre is represented in nearly every major European museum. Ribera was born in Valencia but moved to Naples, which was a Spanish territory at the time. Naples was home to a number of influence painters, such as Giordano and Caravaggio, who established a taste for religious paintings with earthy, realistic people.

Many of Ribera's works are contemplative with figures deep in thought or asleep. In this, he has captured a fleeting moment, when the Saint receives his assurance of a place in heaven. Saint Jerome, a fifth-century compiler of the Bible, was a favorite subject of Ribera. (Maybe it would be more accurate to say Ribera's patrons loved the way he painted Jerome, making it a regular request.) I've seen perhaps eight versions of Saint Jerome by the painter. I was particularly taken by the brilliant light in this one. The arrival of the angel above Jerome's head brings light on the elderly man's torso. Up close, his chest and belly are a soup of oily paint that, despite their fluidity, are convincincly skin like.

Both this and the image from the previous post of a tree trunk in front of a rug were on display in the stall of Rica Basagoiti from Madrid. Once rugs were considered the most luxurious items in a collection. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Spanish and Dutch put rugs like these on their tables, rather than on the ground. Walking on them would have been considered the height of conspicuous consumption.

The display of these rugs by Rica Basagoiti seemed to return these rugs to a level of prestige that was appropriate to their era. In the above image, a large magnifying glass is placed several feet from the rug, making the richly-preserved colors jump out at anyone passing by.

Jiménez was a Spanish painter who had moved to Paris, where he regularly participated in the annual Salons--one of the few Spanish painters to do so. His work careful attention to detail and tendency to paint figures in period costume are reminiscent of the French painter Meissonier, who was popular in Paris at the time.

Though this is a small work, it shows off Jiménez's arsenal of skils and powers of observation. The figure seems to be well relaxed and effortlessly painted, but close inpection reveals countless tiny strokes. The light coming through the window casts a series of complicated shadows. I found myself wondering how much easier it would have been to have the light coming from a different direction or having the window at his front rather than his back.

By far, my favorite piece from the Fair was this German tankard, which stands nearly 25 centimeters in height. Made of several ivory sections seemlessly pieced together, it is a wonder of craftsmanship and artistry. Rather than discuss it at length, I believe a lengthy look at it provides a kind of refinement and appreciation beyond words. (Each image can be clicked for a much higher resolution image.)

For more pictures of the tankard, and a number of other pieces that I saw at Feriarte, visit my Flickr page.

Donato Barcaglia (Italian, 1849-1930) La Giovanezza che Tenta di Arrestare il Tempo, or Beauty Holding Back Time. White marble. 89 BY 59IN.

Yesterday, I visited Sotheby's in London to preview its nineteenth-century painting auction. Before I could get to the paintings, I was stopped and dumbstruck by La Giovanezza che Tenta di Arrestare il Tempo, or Beauty Holding Back Time, by Donato Barcaglia (Italian 1849-1930).

Barcaglia created the work when he was only 27. It was his "coming out" or graduate work, made at the end of his studies and, therefore, meant to showcase the accumulated skills of his years in the Roman Academy. An instant popular and critical success, Beauty Holding Back Time travelled to Florence, Philadelphia, and Milan before being collected by Michael Alexander Wilsone Swinfen Broun (1858-1948), a Colonel in the British Army, and taken to England.

The breadth and depth of Barcaglia's artistic arsenal, especially at such a young age, is impressive. He exhibits command the material by conveying a large variety of textures (e.g. young skin, old skin, clothing, feathers, hair, wood, metal) and making it appear to defy gravity. As was common for Academic painters and sculptors from the period, Barcaglia mixes his understanding of the ideal, or antique, human form in his depiction of Youth, with Naturalism, as seen in the wings of Father Time.

According to a sculpture dealer in London I know, Beauty Holding Back Time is the most important nineteenth-century statue to reach the market in nearly 25 years. It is estimated at only £150,000 to £200,000. I write "only" because, if it were a painting of similar importance by Gerome or Bouguereau from the same period, it would be estimated at well over £1 million.

Ilya Repin (Russian, 1844-1930) Portrait of Vasily Polenov, Detail (c. 1880) Oil on canvas. 80 BY 65CM. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Vasily Polenov (Russian, 1844-1927) was 17 years old when Alexander II freed the serfs of Russia. The Tsar's Emancipation Manifesto of 1861 was an acknowledgement of democratic changes in Western governments. The decree changed the political and economic landscape of Russia, forcing landowning aristocrats to pay for labor and contributing to a rising middle class.

Art academies in St. Petersburg and Moscow catered to the classical tastes of old Russia, represented by the aristrocracy. Shortly after the emancipation of the serfs, a group of artists, named Peredvizhniki, or The Wanderers, believed it was time "take art to the people." With their first exhibition in 1870, The Wanderers rejected the classical ideals taught in official school in favor of Realism. They painted earthy, everyday peasants and took their exhibitions to rural areas of the country where a wider public could appreciate it.

Polenov was an adopted as a member of The Wanderers, yet maintained his ties with the Russian Academy. He studied in the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg from 1863-1871. Polenov was perhaps the most traveled Russian artist of his generation. During his studies, he was pensioned in Italy and France, where he experienced first hand the contemporary movements of Realism and Impressionism. He returned with a love of plein air, and was one of the first to introduce the approach to other Russian painters. Using the technique he created numerous landscapes of his native countryside.

From 1877-1878, Polenov served as a military artist in the Russo-Turkish war. Shortly thereafter, he dedicated his work to religious scenes, especially from the New Testament.

His painting, Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (a. 1886) is considered by many to be his masterpiece. It is drawn from the Gospel of John, Chapter 8, verses 1-11, where a woman caught in the act of adultery is taken to Christ. Hoping trick Christ, a group of his enemies brought the woman to him:

4 They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. 5 Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? 6 This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. 7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. 8 And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. 9 And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. 10 When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? 11 She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

In preparation for the painting, Polenov had made sketches of people, architecture, and landscape in the Middle East and Greece, where he travelled from 1881-1882.

During his lifetime, Polenov was widely acclaimed for his work by both the Russian Academy and those that had broken from it. In 1893, he was made a fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, and taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture until his death in 1893.

Today, Polenov's home in Borok, near Moscow, has been made a museum and placed in the national trust.

Since I am now here in Madrid I do not regret at all my coming. I have seen big painting here. When I had looked at all the paintings by all the masters I had known I could not help saying to myself all the time, its very pretty but its not all yet. It ought to be better, but now I have seen what I always thought ought to have been done & what did not seem to me impossible. O what a satisfaction it gave me to see the good Spanish work so good so strong so reasonable so free from every affectation. It stands out like nature itself. [sic.]-Thomas Eakins, in a letter to his father, Benjamin, dated December 2, 1869.

Saying that everything he had seen before "was pretty" but "not enough" is surprising. Eakins had just left the studio of one of the greatest painters of his day, Jean-Leon Gerome (French, 1824-1904), and lived in Paris, then capitol of the art world.

Eakins' trip to Spain was a watershed for his personal development, and an indication of the draw Spain had for many painters working in Paris.

At the time Eakins visited Spain--during of the Winter of Spring of 1869 and 1870--it was considered a backwater, years behind civilized Europe in the arts and economics.

Yet, Eakins and a number of other important artists (e.g.. Eduoard Manet, Mary Cassat, John Singer Sargent) traveled to Spain works by Spanish masters in the Prado Museum. In 2003, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, featured an exhibition on French artists in Spain. Titled Manet and Velázquez and with 200 works, the exhibition discussed a newfound love of Spain that grew out of the French invasion by Napoleon's armies in 1808 and the Mariage of Napoleon III to, Eugénie de Montijo, a Countess of Spanish Royal blood.

Eakins travelled to Spain shortly after the country's government was overthrown. Despite the chaos, he was able to visit the Prado Museum and a number of galleries throughout the country.

He was especially impressed by the work of Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Spanish, 1599-1660). Eakins claimed Velázquez's painting, The Weavers, was "the most beautiful piece of painting I have seen in all my life."

"Here is how I think the woman tapestry-weaver was painted . . . [Velázquez] drew her withouth giving attention to the details. He put her head and arme well in place. Then he painted her very solidly without seeking or even marking the fold of the draperies, and perhaps he sought his color harmonies by repeated painting over, for the color is excessively thick on the neck and all the delicate parts . . ."

This kind of careful attention to technique was absorbed into Eakins' own work.

According to M. Elizabeth Boone, author of Visitas de España: American Views of Art and Life in Spain, 1860-1914, it was shortly after seeing these that Eakins made his first original painting: Carmelita Requeña . In it, Eakins mimics Velázquez's subtle use color and shadow, using very closely-related tones and small gradations of light to dark.

Besides, The Weavers, Eakins was inspired by Velázquez's Crucifixion, painting a version of his own.

In the past decade, a great deal has been done to re-assert the influence of Thomas Eakins and France on American painting. With that in mind, it would seem necessary to explore the role of Spanish painting on these painters.