Square-Brush Painters

Impasto is one of those fancy art terms, and it means slapping on the paint really thick. There are several ways this can be done; using a palette knife will do the job, but I think the results are usually pretty ugly -- messy-looking. Almost any kind of large brush will do the job too, but one with a squared-off end easily signals impasto!, impasto!!. And thanks to this brush effect, you don't have to lay on paint so thickly to get an impasto appearance.

Some artists have built reputations around their use of square brushes (though they seldom make an entire painting using such a tool). Over-use of square brushes can yield results just as off-putting as palette knife painting, so moderation is usually a smart strategy.

Let's look at some works by artists who made use of square brushes. Click on images to enlarge.

Michael Flohr - Martinis and Jazz
Flohr is currently active, and giclées of his paintings can be found in many art galleries around the USA. He uses square brushes much of the time, yielding a signature look that probably assisted his career. I find some of his work interesting, but his technique mostly seems to get in the way of what he's trying to depict. Perhaps he's already evolving from so much reliance on square brushes; I hope so, anyway. As for the painting above, I think that there are too many brush strokes of similar width and length; more variety in strokes (not to mention use of brushes with other-shaped tips) would have improved it.

Wilhelm Trübner - Salome, 1898
If it weren't for John the Baptist's head on that plate, this would be simply an interesting nude-in-the-woods painting. I like the use of warm and cool colors applied in large patches by square brushes; a little extreme, maybe, but it gives the work its unique character.

Leo Putz - Am Ufer (detail), 1909
During the early years of the 20th century Putz made a number of paintings featuring areas painted using square brushes. The result is a faceted look which, while mannered, intrigues me as an artist (of sorts).

Mead Schaeffer - Rialto Bridge scene - 1932 magazine illustration
Up to the early 1940s Mead Schaeffer created illustrations using a strong, "painterly" style where brush strokes were often obvious even when seen on printed pages. The illustration above is one of his best, and used square brushwork in certain places such as the lady's gown, but not all over.

Saul Tepper magazine illustration, circa 1930
Tepper worked in a painterly style around the same time Schaeffer did and also created many fine illustrations. Square brushwork in this example can be seen on parts of the building's wall as well as on some of the rubble.

Greg Manchess - apparently a detail of a larger work
Manchess is currently active as an illustrator of science fiction and fantasy book covers and he also paints murals and does other commercial illustration. He has a strong, painterly style and isn't afraid to use a square brush in places, as the example above indicates.

In the Beginning: Edwin Georgi

This post is part of a sub-series. The main focus of "In the Beginning" is painters whose styles changed dramatically from early in their careers to what they are most famous for. Here, I'm doing the same for illustrators.

The subject is Edwin Georgi (1896-1964) who is probably best known for glamorous ladies painted in a Divisionist manner: much of the surface is comprised of distinct brush strokes. In Georgi's case, these brushstrokes tend to be tiny and his colors intense to the point of being unnatural. The overall effect can be arresting, though from time to time I think he overdid things.

The first image below is an archetypical Georgi that qualifies as overdone in my reckoning. It sets the stage for the other images which I photographed from what was originally titled the Annual of Advertising Art, a collection of awards by the Art Directors Club of New York. (Details have changed, and the current incarnation is noted here.) Dates for the work he was doing in his early 30s are "circa" the year before the publication date of the annual in which his work appeared.

Gallery

For Saturday Evening Post - 30 July 1957

For H.J. Heinz - c.1927

For McCall's - c.1929

For McCall's, original in color - c.1929

For McCall's - c.1931

For Redbook - c.1931

For Crane Paper - c1932

For Chrysler Imperial - c.1932

For Chrysler - c.1933

Howard Gerrard, Military Illustrator

Some illustrators are generalists when it comes to their subject-matter. Others find themselves specializing, either through choice or by force of circumstances. One field that supports some specialists is military-related subjects. Back on 10 August 2009 on the 2Blowhards blog I posted this article on British illustrator Terence Cuneo who focused on railroads and warfare using a painterly style. And on the 3rd of that month I wrote about Frank Wootton who specialized in automobiles and aircraft.

A currently active British illustrator who deals with warfare and related subjects is Howard Gerrard whose style is also painterly, though its appearance differs from the others because they generally painted in oils and Gerrard often seems to work in gouache or a similar medium which produces a flatter effect.

A short session on Google turned up but a tiny amount of information about Gerrard. He has a Web site, but it's "under construction" and we'll just have to wait until the scaffolding has been removed and the Queen cuts the ribbon to inaugurate services.

The Gerrard information that I found is here on the site of Osprey, a publisher that focuses on short, focused, illustrated books about military subjects. Gerrard has illustrated a number of their volumes and is given credit on the covers and title pages.

In my opinion, Gerrard is the best of Osprey's team of illustrators, producing informative and visually satisfying images that both complement and supplement the text, diagrams and photographs found in a typical Osprey publication. The Osprey illustrations are based on the requirement that various parts of the images be indexed and explained on a following page. This meant that Garrard probably had to keep more elements in sharp focus than he might have were he able to focus on aesthetic considerations.

Here are some examples of Gerrard's work.

Gallery

Assault on Red October steel plant, Stalingrad

El Alamein battle scene

Sherman tank attacking German artillery

The three images above appear to be from Osprey books dealing with specific operations or campaigns in World War 2. As noted above, much of each illustration is in sharp focus though Gerrard was able to get painterly in a few places.

Clipped-wing Spitfires
This does not appear to be from an Osprey book and seems to be painted in oils or acrylics. It reminds me of Frank Wootton's paintings, but with a higher degree of accuracy -- Wootton tended to freehand his subjects rather than construct them using formal, architectural perspective methods.

Doolittle raider approaching Yokohama - 1

Doolittle raider approaching Yokohama - 2

These two images are details from an illustration in this Osprey book dealing with the famous 18 April 1942 raid led by Jimmy Doolittle against Tokyo and other Japanese cities. As you might recall, B-25 Army medium bombers were launched from the aircraft carrier Hornet in a daring effort that had a great deal of psychological impact for both Americans and Japanese. Historians have argued that the raid spurred the Japanese to attack the island of Midway, a turning-point battle that resulted in the loss of four of their aircraft carriers and many of their best pilots.

These images are scans from the book and don't show the subtleties you would notice when viewing the printed page. There is a good deal of painterly gouache here because the focus is on the B-25 and very little on other elements. I encourage you to examine a copy or even purchase one.

Update: Reader Richard Sullivan commented to inform me that the Stalingrad image is actually by Peter Dennis.

Sex and Sanctity: The Temptation of St. Anthony - 2

In my previous post I featured a sampling of paintings about the temptation of St. Anthony made from the early 1500s to the mid 1900s. I stressed that most of the artists probably had a fine time dealing with the subject because they could include images of pretty (and usually naked) women packaged with a pious theme of self-denial for the sake of living as Jesus suggested.

It turns out that the subject was so juicy than some artists tackled it more than once. The present post features cases where artists painted two versions of the Temptation.

Gallery

By Paul Cézanne - c.1870

By Paul Cézanne - 1875-77
Poor Cézanne could barely draw, and in my contrarian judgment, didn't paint very well either. In the days before settling in on creating pre-Cubist landscapes he dealt with a variety of themes including St. Anthony.

By John Charles Dollman

By John Charles Dollman - c.1925
Dollman (1851-1934) was a British painter and illustrator (Wikipedia link here) I hadn't been aware of until researching for this post. The upper painting's nude woman strikes me as odd; I can't tell if Dollman left her not quite finished or whether the unfinished appearance was purposeful. The 1925-vintage painting has a crisply-rendered nude, but unlike so many other depictions of St. Anthony's temptresses, she is shown as passive rather than sexually aggressive.

By Lovis Corinth - 1897

By Lovis Corinth - 1908
Ah, Corinth! I wrote about him here in the early days of this blog. During the first part of his career he tossed a lot of what might as well be called pinups into his paintings. And he certainly did so when it came to St. Anthony.

Sex and Sanctity: The Temptation of St. Anthony - 1

St. Anthony was a hermit who lived around the year 300, abandoning his money and possessions to take up a life of self-denial for the sake of living as Jesus suggested.

While in the desert he was supposedly afflicted with torments and temptations to abandon his self-imposed lifestyle. Among those temptations were women because, apparently, Anthony had denied himself the pleasures of the flesh along with other features of normal life.

This subject proved to be catnip for many artists because they had the theme of extreme piety with which to wrap images of lovely, usually naked women.

There are lots of paintings dealing with St. Anthony's temptation, so here is but a sampling.

Gallery

By Joachim Patinir (figures) and Quentin Massys (landscape) - 1515-22
This is a pretty early depiction of St. Anthony being tempted. Note that the temptresses are clothed.

By Giovanni Batista Tiepolo - before 1750
By the time of the great Tiepolo, showing nudity was okay.

By Paul Delaroche - c.1832
Delaroche has the the gals really ganging up on the poor saint.

By Félicien Rops - 1878
Rops took the risk of having a lively cross-bound woman as the key temptation with the crucified Christ and the devil on either side of her.

By Jules Pascin - c.1911-12
Pascin, on the other hand, made do with a Cecil B. DeMille sort of crowd scene.

By Dorothea Tanning - 1945
Tanning, who died a few weeks ago at age 101, was a borderline surrealist and gave the scene a surrealistic cast.

By Salvador Dalí - 1946
Dalí, being Dalí, threw in a bunch of personal symbolism. And yes, there's a nude woman someplace.

Photo of Dalí at work on the painting
This obviously staged photo shows Dalí supposedly working on the painting shown above. True, here is a nude blonde model, but her pose is not what's in the painting. In any case, Dalí has already painted the nude, so why is the model still standing around?

By Domenico Morelli - 1878
The other images are in approximately chronological order, but I saved Morelli's for last because (1) I like it best and (2) I saw it a few years ago in Rome's Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna.

In the following post I'll deal with some painters who liked the subject so much that they did two versions of St. Anthony's temptations.

UPDATE: Please note the discussion in Comments regarding the Morelli image which seems to a photographic imitation of the actual painting.

Howard Pyle Exhibit Catalog Gripes

The Delaware Art Museum has an exhibit (November 12, 2011 – March 4, 2012) dealing with famed illustrator Howard Pyle (1853-1911). It opened three days after the 100th anniversary of Pyle's death.

The cover of the exhibit's catalog is shown above. If you can't visit the museum store, you can order the catalog here.

I have issues with the catalog. That's because it drifts a small way into the cesspool of academic political correctness which, in my possibly warped judgment, is unfair to both the subject and readers interested enough in the subject to fork over the $45 cost of the book.

First, the positive elements. I thought the chapter by illustrator James Gurney was especially informative, probably because he is knowledgeable about the history of illustration and understands the trade's practical aspects. As for the authors of the other chapters, I didn't at first know who they are because nowhere in the book is there any background information. Gurney is not identified either; I'm aware of him because I follow his blog (linked above).

Although there is some subject matter overlap, most of the chapters are informative, even the one dealing with Pyle and the Swedenborgian Faith that was related to some of his works.

One place that ruffled my feathers was a chapter titled "The Gender of Illustration: Howard Pyle, Masculinity, and the Fate of American Art" by Eric J. Segal. Some Googling suggests that this Segal is on the faculty of the University of Florida and has written about masculinity with respect to Norman Rockwell and the matter of race as related to the Saturday Evening Post magazine. "Gender" and race are two politically motivated academic obsessions of the last few decades, so I suppose Segal is doing a nice job of building his career dealing with those and related subjects. I regard this business of applying currently fashionable views as a yardstick for evaluating a past that was essentially unaware of them as both intellectually silly and potentially dangerous to the reputations of worthy historical figures. This chapter should never have been included in the catalog.

I also had a problem with part of the chapter "The Persistence of Pirates: Pyle, Piracy, and the Silver Screen" by David M. Lubin. Lubin's chapter isn't all that bad except where he takes several detours attempting to link piracy to late 19th century capitalists, a gratuitous gesture unnecessary to the chapter's subject. Lubin is on the faculty of Wake Forest University.

As for my overall reaction to the catalog, I would have preferred more larger reproductions of Pyle's art and a lot less "scholarly" analysis.

John Berkey Featured in Illustration

It's pile-on time. Illustration magazine just came out with its 36th issue which features ace illustrator John Berkey (1932-2008) and illustration-oriented blogs are already posting about the great event. So why not join in? After all, I too am a Berkey fan and wrote about him here just about a year ago.

The author of the illustration piece is Jim Pinkowsi who maintains a blog that has images of much of Berkey's work; the link is here. A Website by the Berkey estate is here.

Pinkowski's article has details on Berkey's use of casein paints, a medium I was never fond of. It seems that Berkey didn't use the paints out of tubes (though he might have early in his career), instead he mixed his own batches using raw pigments. Later he seems to have added acrylic binder to some of his mixes.

Let me propose two classes of classical illustrator (ignoring those using digital media for most of a given piece): There are those who paint using easels (Norman Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker, Dan dos Santos, Greg Manchess) and there are others who work on a drawing board. Drawing board based artists tend to be commercial artists who use gouache, airbrush and other water-based media on materials such as illustration board, though a small (less than 0.5 meter, say) illustration can be done on a drawing board using almost any kind of medium and support.

Berkey was a drawing-board guy. And he was shrewd enough to realize that working close to the image could degrade the result; it had to be viewed from farther away because the final version usually would be reproduced at a smaller size than the original -- in effect increasing the viewing distance. Berkey's eventual cure for this problem was a mirror setup. His drawing board was reflected using a mirror placed above it to another mirror placed at a distance. This double-reversal allowed him to view the work-in-progress at a distance of about eight feet (2.5 meters) without having to budge from his chair.

Here is how the setup looked from the perspective of the drawing board. This image was scanned from the book whose cover is shown below.

Pinkowski's blog includes other images of this setup.

The Illustration article is of interest because it contains more than just a bunch of Berkey's space ship images, great though they are. A nice selection of other subjects can be found, demonstrating Berkey's overall ability and versatility.

If you don't see the new issue of Illustration in your local Barnes & Noble's magazine rack, go the the Illustration site linked above and order before it is sold out.