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Tag: Winslow Homer

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Our Banner in the Sky

Our Banner in the Sky, 1861, Frederic Church, private collection

Normally on Fridays I introduce readers to one of my own paintings, but all day yesterday I was thinking of Frederic Church’s Our Banner in the Sky. It’s tiny compared to much of Church’s work: just 7.5X11 inches and done on paper. This is the same painter whose show-stopping The Heart of the Andes is a whopping 5.5X10 feet. Our Banner in the Sky is from the heart, and The Heart of the Andes was for the pocketbook. Both are wonderful, but they’re very different.

Church painted Our Banner in the Sky just weeks after the fall of Fort Sumter in 1861. The nation was electrified by the story of our flag being removed by rebel forces. At the time, nobody had any idea how the Civil War would play out.

Church was inspired by a sunset that glowed red, white, and blue. He took that as a sign that “the heavens indicated their support for the United States by reflecting the nation’s colors in the setting sun.” Whether or not you share his theology, it certainly points to a faith in the enduring nature of our country. That’s why I think it’s such an important painting for today.

Although I’m a lifelong reader of news, even I feel overwhelmed by politics these days—in Britain, which had a government-changing national election yesterday; in France, where Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has upended the status quo; and of course here, where last Thursday’s presidential debate suddenly shifted everything.

In my travels in England in May, strangers talked to me about their fears for American democracy. These are sentiments I’ve heard here as well.

In two years, we’ll be celebrating our national semiquincentennial. (That amazes me, since I vividly remember our bicentennial in 1976.) In the 248 years since our founding, we’ve suffered small rebellions, a full-blown Civil War, multiple economic depressions, two world wars, and 9/11. None of these were pleasant, but our nation endured. Our social compact is stronger than we credit. As long as we continue to love our fellow citizens, that will continue.

Frederic Church did not know the flag would be returned to Fort Sumter a week after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox; his painting was an act of faith. I pray we continue in that.

The Veteran in a New Field, 1865, Winslow Homer, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Monday Morning Art School: composition is about light, not objects

Fog over Whiteface Mountain, 11×14, $1087 includes shipping in continental US.

“From now on, I’m gonna stop thinking about composition being about things,” my correspondent wrote, “and start thinking about it as shadows.”

I feel like a deficient teacher, because composition is always about light and dark. Hue, chroma, line and objects may feed into that, but it’s value that makes a composition weak or strong.

Beauchamp Point, Autumn Leaves, 12X16, oil on archival canvasboard, $1449 includes shipping in continental United States.

I ask my critique students to analyze their compositions based on Edgar Payne‘s exhaustive list of possible compositions in Composition of Outdoor Painting. (This used book is now so expensive that I can no longer recommend buying it. Check it out of the library.) The idea isn’t to slavishly follow one of his designs; it’s to understand whether you have an underlying design in the first place, and how you might strengthen it.

But these compositional armatures are always about value, even when that value takes the form of an object. There are many times when objects and shadows coincide; for example, a large piñon and some small creosote bushes can combine in a dark triangular mass, because they’re both dark objects usually set against light-colored grasses. On the other hand, sidewalk chalk isn’t going to create any kind of structure against a concrete sidewalk unless the artist thinks about the shadows rather than the chalk.

Quebec Brook, oil on canvasboard, 12X16, $1449 framed includes shipping in continental US.

By now, most of you have gotten the message that a painting needs to compel on a tiny screen (or from thirty feet) as well from three feet or three inches.

You do this with value. It’s not enough, for example, that an object is at a diagonal; you must make a persuasive shift between light and dark along that diagonal. This is the primary lesson a painter can take from Winslow Homer’s incredible seascapes.

This is also why plein air painters dislike murky grey skies; they make it harder to find compelling shadow patterns.

Composition rests on the following principles:

  • The human eye responds first to shifts in value, and following that, in shifts in chroma and hue;
  • We follow hard edges and lines;
  • We filter out passages of soft edges and low contrast, and indeed we need them as interludes of rest;
  • We like divisions of space that aren’t easily solved or regular.
Best Buds, 11X14, oil on canvasboard, $1097 framed includes shipping in continental US.

But I just want to paint what I feel!

Music, sculpture, poetry, painting, and every other fine art form relies on internal, formal structure to be intelligible. This is easiest to see in music, where the beginner starts by learning chords and patterns. These patterns are (in western music, anyway) universal, and they’re learned long before the student starts writing complex musical compositions. In other words, you start at the very beginning.

Music is an abstract art because it’s all about tonal relationships, with very little realism needed to make us understand the theme. A composer doesn’t need little bird sounds to tell us he’s writing about spring. Likewise, the painter doesn’t need to festoon little birdies on his canvas to tell us he’s painting about spring. That should already be apparent in the light, structure and tone of his work.

The strength of the painting is laid down before the artist first applies paint, in the form of a structural idea-a sketch or series of sketches that work out a plan for the painting.

All good painting rests on good abstract design. Take a good look at Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth. Whatever meaning we’re supposed to take from it, it’s a strong triangular composition juxtaposed with a mid-century curving line.

Still, most realist painters don’t spend nearly enough time considering abstract design, even when they understand the critical importance of line and value. Christina’s World doesn’t rely much on hue for its impact. It’s a washed-out pink, a lot of dull greens and golds, and a significant amount of grey. And yet it was the most successful figurative painting of the 20th century. Wyeth was almost obsessive in his drawing habits; that translates into powerful finished paintings, driven by value.

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Putting yourself in the frame

The Fog Warning, 1885, Winslow Homer, 30 Ă— 48.5 in., courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

In our narrative painting class on Monday, Bobbi Heath told us about a man who didn’t want anyone in the dinghy in his painting. “I want to be able to imagine myself in it,” he said.

In addition to portraiture, there are several ways in which one can approach the figure in painting, including:

  • A specific individual serving as an archetype, as in Mary Whyte‘s paintings.
  • Through a vague, implied, incomplete or anodyne figure, as in Andrew Wyeth‘s Trodden Weed or Winslow Homer‘s The Fog Warning, above.
  • Through objects or settings that suggest an imminent arrival, as in that empty dinghy or George Stubbs‘ A Saddled Bay Hunter, below.
A Saddled Bay Hunter, 1786, George Stubbs, 21 3/4 Ă— 27 3/4 in, courtesy Denver Art Museum

It’s one thing to paint a pretty picture. It’s another to blur the line between the audience and the scene, to paint something where the viewer can step into the frame and build a relationship with the work.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is important to art history because of its use of landscape, its sfumato and its anatomical accuracy. That doesn’t explain its enduring popularity. Mona Lisa resonates because we engage with her.

The subject makes eye contact with us, with a rather penetrating gaze. She’s not demure, she’s not dreamy, and she’s not dressed to advertise her femininity, wealth or power. (As an aside, I’m sure this is why we get the periodic daft theory that it is a concealed self-portrait of the artist; after all, what mere woman could be that self-assured?)

Mona Lisa invites you to have a parasocial relationship with the subject. That’s a modern term for a one-sided relationship with a person we don’t know, usually an influencer, celebrity, or fictional character. We project attitudes, values, and beliefs onto them, just as we project them onto Mona Lisa.

The Allegory of Painting, c. 1666-1668, 47.2 Ă— 39.3 in, Johannes Vermeer, courtesy Kunsthistorisches Museum

The word ‘voyeur’ wasn’t created until a few centuries after Johannes Vermeer was painting. His intent wasn’t to titillate in that modern sense, but to create the kind of genre paintings that were so popular in his time. However, his perfect drafting and the subtle interactions of his figures make us feel like we’re looking through a peephole. That drags us almost violently into his paintings.

Edward Hopper picked up where Vermeer left off. Works like Hotel Room or Room in New York leave us feeling almost as if we’re peeping toms. It’s unlikely that in the early 1930s, that was Hopper’s intention. Incandescent lighting was just becoming widespread in New York . Hopper was fascinated by it, and by the jewel-like, illuminated scenes it created through city windows. But art has overtones that shift and change over time, regardless of the artist’s intentions.

Hotel Room, 1931, Edward Hopper, 152.4 Ă— 165.7 cm, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, included under fair use exemption of the US Copyright Law and restricted from further use.

In Hopper’s paintings we come full circle to the same incomplete or anodyne figures of Winslow Homer or Andrew Wyeth. If the woman on the bed in Hotel Room was detailed and realistic, she’d be almost unbearably vulnerable. Stylizing her preserves her, and our, dignity.

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