Posts Tagged ‘alla prima’
Painting on Sunset Drive
On Monday, my two friends and I met again to do landscape painting. We have a standing agreement that we will paint out of doors if the weather is pleasant, otherwise we paint in my garage/studio. Today, Betty had found a place new to us – the home of one of her friends who lives near the village of Bivalve on the Nanticoke River.
We met at a local restaurant aptly named “Boonies,” and caravanned from there. The owner wasn’t home, but we had permission to paint, so we set up our easels and began. Betty and Suzanne were over by the river because they like to feature the water in their paintings. I found 3 trees I liked a little distance away, but where I also could see the river and included it in my painting. What a wonderful way to spend a day!
Degas: The Ballerinas
Edgar Degas (1934-1917) was classically trained by a student of Ingres and his work shows emphasis on linear drawing and composition. three dimensional depth, and firm contours. “No art is less spontaneous than mine,” he said. The many preparatory sketches he made set him apart from the Impressionists, yet he was counted a member because of friendship with the group, commitment to contemporary subjects and his opposition to official academic painting.
Degas’ specialty was the human form in a moment of arrested motion. He took great care to show his dancers off-guard while yawning or adjusting their slippers. He painted them from oblique angles, typically clustered to one side with a large area of floor space. His nudes were shown doing utilitarian tasks, such as combing their hair, unaware of observation and off balance – as though seen “through a keyhole.”
As his eyesight failed, he turned to pastels which allowed him to draw and color at the same time. Nearly blind, he relied on his sense of touch to model wax figurines of dancers and horses which were cast in bronze after his death.
Manet: The Leader
Edouard Manet (1832-83) is often called the Father of Modern Art. He was classically trained and often borrowed motifs of the great masters and painted something similar using his new approach, his innovations with color and brushwork.
Earlier artists began their paintings with a layer of dark paint then built layers on top of that, waiting for each layer to dry before applying the next. The result would be a gradual refining of color but required weeks or months in the making.
Manet preferred to finish his paintings in one sitting. He painted alla prima. He also painted in patches of color, cutting out in-between values to make sharper contrasts. This technique made his painting look flat and “in your face,” an appearance the public did not appreciate. Whereas in the past, paintings gave the impression of a window to a view, the viewer now had to look at the surface of the painting.
The Impressionists
Most impressionists preferred to paint en plein air and the invention of the paint tube in 1841 made outdoor painting more convenient. To capture fleeting moments and the changing effects of light on landscape, artists must paint quickly and use loose or sketchy brushstrokes. The correct color must be immediately chosen and put on the canvas in one application called alla prima (“at once”) painting. Otherwise, they would not have had time to capture the fleeting effects of light.Manet and Degas often painted people who seemed alienated or depressed. Monet, Renoir and Pissarro were more interested in capturing beautiful moments and the changing effects of light on landscapes. Cassatt and Morisot, the female impressionists, usually painted figures of women and children.