During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, few French painters have been as influential and forgotten as Léon Bonnat (1833-1922). He was trained in the Academic tradition and eventually became Director of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, yet he was a champion of controversial painters, such as Gustave Courbet, and a lifelong friend of Edgar Degas, who was closely associated with the anti-academic Impressionist movement. Trained in Madrid and Paris, he was a bridge between two artistic cultures, which he combined in his own work and his mentoring of a generation of painters that included Thomas Eakins and John Singer Sargent. His relationship with Spanish art would have far-reaching implications for nineteenth-century painting by legitimizing Spanish Masters, particularly Velázquez and Ribera, whose work had a great deal in common with French Realism in its depiction of the human figure.

Because he destroyed all his own personal correspondence, what we know about Bonnat is usually gleaned from his students and the public records. In his wonderful book, The Revenge of Thomas Eakins, Sidney Kirkpatrick writes:

Bonnat went to great effort to capture the realism of this model, sometimes requiring his subjects to sit fifty or more times before completing portraits. The essential words to describe Bonnat’s paintings, as well as his reaching style--as more of his students reported--were “truth and logic.” . . .  Bonnat’s personal struggles as an artist also resonated with Eakins. Writing to his father, Eakins related how Bonnat, as a young art student, had been deeply troubled by his teacher’s wanting him to paint the same way he did. Bonnat couldn’t oblige. “He was better than his teacher, although he [Bonnat] was doing such bad work [at the time],” Eakins went on. “His teacher told him he would have to stop painting, and then he went to [another teacher who]  . . . told him to go and be a shoemaker, that was all he was fit for. A few years more and he was as big as the biggest of them."

Bonnat was born to a middle-class family in Bayonne. In the border region near Spain, the city is in traditional Basque territory. Bonnat’s family, in particular, was comfortable enough with Spain to make a move to Madrid in 1847, where his father opened a modest book store.

In 1837, the Prado Museum was opened to the general public and, later, enlarged as part of major redevelopment of the Madrid. Regular visits to the museum were compulsory for students of the nearby Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. There students were required to study Italian, Flemish, and Spanish Old Master works. Above all, and in order of importance, Velázquez, Murillo, Ribera and Zurburán--all well represented in the Prado’s collection--were considered models for nineteenth-century Spanish students.

Sometime between 1847 and 1855, Léon Bonnat was accepted and studied at the Academia. There he worked first under the instruction of José de Madrazo y Agudo (1781-1859), a student of  Jacques Louis David (French, 1748-1825) and, then, his son, Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz (1815-1894), who had a life-long relationship with Jacques Auguste Dominique Ingres (French, 1780-1867). These painters were commanded enormous respect and influence in nineteenth-century Spanish art.

In 1853, Bonnat’s father died, prematurely ending his studies and requiring his family to return to Bayonne. There Bonnat quickly secured a 1,500-franc scholarship from the local Municipality to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Within a year, at at the age of 20 he had moved to Paris and entered the studio of Léon Cogniet (1794-1880).

By 1857 Bonnat had submitted three portraits to the annual Salon, all of which were accepted and initiated a life-long career of portraiture, which ensured a steady paycheck and a stream of important clients that included Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, the Empress Eugene, and the official images of four successive French presidents. Also in 1857, Bonnat competed for and won second place in the coveted Prix de Rome. Despite having lost state patronage to study in Rome, he  was accepted to the French School in Rome and paid his own way. Studying there from 1858-1861, he produced three large-scale history paintings, Le Bon Samaritain (1859), Adam et Eve découvrant le corps d’Abel (1860) and Le martyre de Saint-André (1861), which were each sent to and accepted in the annual Paris Salon.

Almost immediately upon his return from Rome, Bonnat was welcomed into the French Academy and the upper echelon of respectable French art culture. In 1863 and 1864, two of his works are acquired by Princess Mathilde and Empress Eugénie, respectively. He was awarded the Légion d’Honneur (1867), made a member of the Salon jury (1869)--a position he would hold until his death--a member of the Institute de France (1881), a professor of at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1888), awarded the Grand Croix (1900), and made Director of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (1905).

Despite having accrued significant and real recognition from the Academy, Bonnat courted controversy. As a young painter in 1863, he supported new reforms in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts that opened the very conservative school to, among other things, allow students to be instructed in oil painting. Beginning in 1869 as a member of the Salon Jury, Bonnat became a proponent for the controversial work of Eduoard Manet and Gustave Courbet. He was also a lifelong friend of Edgar Degas.

As I did research for this post, it occurred to me that, like Bonnat, many contemporary artists are struggling with the combination of the Classical Tradition and Realism in their work. The former emphasizes the ideal and the latter the real, often with particular emphasis on imperfection. I think that so-called "Classical Realists" would do well to look at the work of Bonnat, who combined a love of Ingres with a reverence for Ribera. They would benefit more looking at his paintings than from William-Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825-1905), for example, who was a strict Classicist.

Most of the people who read this blog have a positive opinion of nineteenth-century art culture. They might be surprised to know that, in many cases, the nineteenth century was not kind to Old Master paintings. It was common for collectors to "improve" paintings by hiring painters to update or adjust them. Many paintings didn't survive the century and others were transformed.

That was the case with St. Mark by Frans Hals (Flemish, 1580-1666), which is currently on sale and view at the Barnheimer Fine Old Master Gallery in Munich. (Asking price is $7.7 million.)  In 1972, the painting failed to sale at a Christie's auction were it was atributed to Luca Giorando (a bizarre assumption). In 1973, the painting was sent to a restorer, who removed a small patch of paint and discovered Hals' signature. It was a surprise because Hals, who is best known for his portraits, rarely painted religious scenes.

Sometime in the nineteenth century, a collector thought the painting would be better were it to look more like other Hals' portraits. Thus, a painter was hired to add lace collars and cuffs, which covered the apostolic robes and the lion, a traditional symbol for St. Mark.

After such a long absence, I thought it fitting to make this post's topic reflect both my sincere repentance at not having actively updated the blog and my hopes that I'll be forgiven by those who have been patiently waiting for any sign I was still alive.

I have been in deep-research mode, and have a number of exciting things to share. Next week, I'll begin off-loading a number of the projects I am doing on the blog and, hopefully, reignite a dialogue with many of you.

Tissot's Prodigal Son in Modern Life

James Tissot (French, 1836-1902) is largely remembered for his scenes and portraits of the upper-middle class, but, during the 1880s he had a religious awakening and produced a number of works inspired by the New Testament. In 1885, he had what he referred to as an "epiphany" and "revelation" that lead him on a pilgrimmage to cathedrals in France and to create a series of 35 scenes from the life of Christ.

During this religious decade Tissot did multiple version of the Prodigal Son. This particular series is titled "The Prodigal Son in Modern Times" and consists of three paintings all set in contemporary English life. They were exhibited at a one-man show at the Dudley Gallery (London) in May of 1882 and accompanied by watercolor sketches of the same paintings and etchings that were later reproduced widely in England.

Shortly after the show, Tissot returned to France and took the three original oils with him. They remained in his studio until his death in 1902 and were, then, offered to the Louvre, which would not take them. Instead, the three paintings were taken by Musée de Nantes, located in Tissot's hometown, where they remain today.

Artwork is not often built to last or to move, yet we insist on both. Some time ago, I worked with a collector of eighteenth-century French paintings who regularly shipped works to his home in Utah. Moving paintings from a relatively humid Western Europe to the American desert compounded other problems associated with older works of art.  Paint decays over time, causing colors to lose their original hues. Glazes age,  darken colors and yellowing the overall work. But, perhaps more dangerous that all of these is the lack of--or dramatic increase in--humidity.  Works on panel (i.e. wood), in particular, tend to crack, buckle or completely detiorate. Solving these problems can cause collectors to recruit a CSI-like team of experts to stabalize restore and conserve a work. (Dim your computer screen to emulate CSI filming.)

In trying to explain this to another collector, I was very happy to find this video, published by the Indianapolis Museum of Art on the restoration and conservation of a major work in its collection: Madonna and Child with St. Nicolas of Babi and St. Justina by Sebastiano Mainardi (San Gimignano, 1460-1513). Painted with oil on wood, the altarpiece was moved to the US in the early twentieth century. At the time, in order to stablized the large panel of wood it was painted on, a complex lattice of wood--called a "cradle"--was fastened to the back. Cradles were a typical solution to stabalizing wood panels throughout the nineteenth century. Though well intentioned, they prevent wood from breathing and cause it to buckle and crack, which then leads to problems with the paint on its surface. The solution, as demonstrated by the video, can stretch the capabilities of modern technology.

What if we made art according to surveys? What if artists, like many politicians, relied on polls? This week, the public radio show This American Life features an interview with two digital artists, Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, who received a grant from Chase Manhattan Bank to determine the attributes of the most and least wanted painting. To do this, Komar and Melamid conducted a number of online surveys allowing participants to choose their favorite elements from  famous works. The result has been called the "most wanted" painting.

Having read through study, it is difficult to determine the level of professionalism in its methods.  The results were only published online and were never peer reviewed.  Regardless of its integrity, it is an interesting exercise.

Of the dozen countries represented in the study, all of them, with the exception of Holland, preferred realistic landscapes. The Dutch, for reasons unexplained in the study, value abstract art, which, for most other countries, is the "least preferred" type of painting. The contents of the "most wanted" are surprisingly uniform:

• landscape
• mountain on the left
• tree on the right
• wild animals
• gathering of people
• famous political figure
• strong blues

The elements read like a description of any number of sixteenth-century Flemish paintings.

Several years ago, I had a conversation with one of London's foremost dealers of Old Masters paintings. He told me that, of all paintings, landscapes were the most popular in his gallery. When asked "Why?" he responded: "I suppose it is because they are the least controversial. They can be enjoyed without taxing the viewer. And, they do not make any overt political or value statements that need to be defended."

No doubt there are many reasons to love these paintings that have little to do with political correctness. Personally, I love works by Patinir and Jan Breughel. They were often small and, rather than hung on a wall, meant to be looked at while holding them on a lap with with a magnifying glass. The paintings are full of rich detail, distant views, and multiple paths. These are works that can be looked at again and again, each time with a new discovery.

The idea that painting could be put together by committee flies in the face of our belief in the lone genius painter. However, in their public radio interview the authors of "The Most Wanted Painting" study are quick to point out that the notion that our ideas about a creative genius are just as clichéed and inaccurate as our judgment that painting by polls are somehow unable to create good art. Though I am not suggesting art should be created by polling, I would suggest an adjustment to anyone attempting to repeat and improve upon the "most wanted" painting.

Several years ago, Malcolm Gladwell, author of many books and a writer for the New Yorker, gave a lecture on "What we can learn from spaghetti sauce." In it, he profiles a food scientist that found that instead of trying to satisfy the American palette with one perfect spaghetti sauce--the unreachable Holy Grail for food production industry-we should be looking for the perfect sauces. According to taste testings, Americans fell into one of three categories of spaghetti sauce. The same proved true for coffee and a number of other foods. As a result, most companies produce a limited variety of each category of food to meet the needs of each general group's taste.

If I were a gambling man, I would  bet that the same would be true for the "most wanted" painting. Perhaps someone reading this would be able to convince Chase Manhattan Bank for a second grant.

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.

Lately, I have been looking at my collection of images by theme, grouping Biblical and mythological subjects in categories. (It becomes helpful to have these groupings, which would normally not be seen in museums, when giving lectures or teaching children.) It was while piecing together my images of Eve that I found several photos I had taken of Eugène Delaplanche's (French, 1831-1892) work Eve After the Fall (1869).

I will never forget the first time I saw it, years ago, at the Musée d'Orsay. Although I was familiar with Eve's eating of the forbidden fruit and her subsequent expulsion from Eden, I had never considered her feelings and, especially, the moment of realization she must have had after eating the Forbidden Fruit. The sculpture filled me with sympathy for Eve and remorse for my own bad decisions in life. Only great art can do that.

Delaplanche studied under the neoclassical sculptor Francisque Joseph Duret (French, 1804-1865) . In 1864, Delaplanche was awarded the Prix de Rome and, subsequently, went to Italy where he studied Greco-Roman works and the sculptures of Michaelangelo and Bernini. He returned to Paris with an approach his work that combined classical idealism with natural forms. The result in Eve After the Fall (1869), done shortly after returning from Rome, is almost Hellenistic, but much larger in scale than most Greek statues.

Eve is beautiful, yet forceful. Her features are idealized, yet her figure, almost drawn into a fetal position from horror, is sinuous, organic.

All of the elements of the story are here: the discarded, bitten fruit from the Tree o Life, the serpent coiled around the tree, and Eve, full of horror and realization of her transgression.

Delaplanche went on to do a number of works and recieved a number of prizes. Unfortunately, like many of his contemporary sculptors and unlike many contemporary painters, little has been written about his work and life.

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.