Seeing the Girl and Her Earring

Perhaps the hottest item on the traveling art show circuit this year is Jan Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring." It's normally housed in Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands, but the museum is undergoing renovation, so apparently that was considered a good reason to send some of its best paintings on the road. "Earring" is currently on display in San Francisco and then will move on to Atlanta and, finally, New York City. I saw it in San Francisco recently.

The painting is around 350 years old and suffered some wear and tear as well as a restoration that wouldn't pass muster today. It went through another restoration in 1994. I failed to study the painting at really close range (the price one pay's at a popular exhibit that attracts lot of viewers), but my impression was that its surface was in pretty good shape.

As for the most recent restoration, here is some information and here is an interview with the man who directed it.

And it seems that there is more than one way to do a restoration. Nowadays it's possible to do the deed digitally, as this site indicates.

Below are before and after images of "Girl with a Pearl Earring." I'm not sure about the source of the "before" image -- there were dozens of duplicates on Google. The "after" image was taken from the Mautishuis web page, so I assume it is a correct representation. Click on the "Before" image to enlarge; the "After" is at maximum size.

Gallery

Before

After

Restorations are necessary at times. The question is whether or not they represent a "necessary evil," given that the hand of the restorer is not the same hand that painted the original version. I suppose we have no choice but to take the validity of restorations on faith.

Airliner Cockpit Windows

Aircraft designers have comparatively little wiggle room when it comes to applying aesthetic considerations to a plane's design. This is especially true when it comes to airliners, where much of the fuselage is necessarily in the form of a tube for containing passengers, their luggage and some cargo.

Before the Jet Age, when aerodynamic refinement for high speeds was less important, designers could indulge styling whims on parts of aircraft such as in the shape of the vertical stabilizer/rudder element. For example, the de Havilland company favored a shape that for years was a kind of trademark.

One detail that has been comparatively immune to engineering consideration is the arrangement of windows in the cockpit. True, visibility, outside airflow and (since around 1940) pressurization considerations have always been important. But the number of windows, their placement and shape also admit to some aesthetic judgment.

Below is a gallery of airliners with differing cockpit window treatments for your consideration. Wide-body jets are left out to simplify comparisons.

Gallery

Ford Tri-Motor and Boeing 727
The Ford didn't fly very fast, but was comparativly "clean" for its late 1920s time. The windscreen is sharply V'd. The Boeing 727 is from the mid-1960s. Its window treatment is the same as that of Boeing's original jetliner, the 707 and was continued for the Boeing 737 which remains in production today and for the foreseeable future. The windshield is sloped and V'd and there are two main side windows, the leading (transitional) one having a dropped lower rear corner. Two small cockpit roof windows are above both the pilot's and co-pilot's positions for upward visibility.

Curtiss Condor
The Condor dates from around 1930, but is of the obsolescent biplane configuration. It features large cockpit windows that crudely blend with the otherwise fairly streamlined fuselage.

Boeing 247
The Boeing 247 is considered the first modern airliner. But some of them featured an odd windscreen design that was fashionable in the early 1930s that (I suspect) was intended to be relatively free from raindrop obstruction even though it was aerodynamically questionable.

Douglas DC-2
The more successful DC-2 and DC-3 airliners had a simple combination of a sloped, V's windscreen plus a single side window. This was continued in later four-motor Douglas piston engine transports, though with 2-piece panels on each windscreen V section.

De Havilland Albatross
The beautiful but flawed Albatross of the late 1930s used a similar window configuration. Note the characteristic de Havilland tail.

Boeing 307
The 307 was the first airliner with a pressurized cabin. Perhaps the designers were being cautious given the new technology, so the cockpit features many small windows in a wraparound configuration. For Seattle buffs, the background is a circa-1940 view of Beacon Hill, the tip of Sward Park, Mercer Island and beyond to the east. All of this but the extreme background is now built up.

Curtiss Commando
The Commando was intended as an airliner, but appeared at the start of World War 2 and was built as the C-46 transport/cargo plane. It was used post-war by secondary and tertiary airlines. The designers wanted to attain a curved fuselage profile, so avoided the stepped windscreen arrangement. The window design features excellent downward views to the sides.

Lockheed Constellation
Like the Boeing 307, the Constellation was pressurized and designers opted for small, multiple windows.

Boeing Stratocruiser
The Stratocruiser was derived from the B-29 bomber that also had a rounded front profile and many windows. Yet again, Boeing provided upward views from the cockpit.

Airspeed Ambassador
The Ambassador follows the DC-3/Albatross pattern, but the cockpit roof is shallow and the windows more slit-like.

Avro Tudor
On the other hand, the Tudor had a generously high roofline, but still had slit-like windows.

Bristol Britannia
The Britannia was a large British airliner that had the misfortune of entering service about the time of the 707. Here we find multiple windows plus Boeing-style overhead panes.

SNCASO Bretagne
Given its early post-war debut and mid-wing configuration, I doubt that the Bretagne was pressurized. Which is perhaps why the cockpit windows are so large.

De Havilland Comet
Another beautiful and ill-fated de Havilland design, the Comet was the first jet airliner to enter service, this in the early 1950s. Multiple windows are again in evidence, though in this case the transition windows on each side are triangular.

Vickers Viscount
The commercially successful Viscount featured odd, bulged cockpit area shaping and less windscreen sloping than was common at the time.

Douglas DC-8
Douglas' first jet airliner did not have a V's windscreen treatment. It actually could not because, in place of the V was a central pane. Douglas also used this arrangement on its DC-9/MD-80 twin-engine airliners. Boeing-style ceiling windows were incorporated.

Airbus A320
Europe's Airbus 320's primary windscreen pattern is similar to Boeing's practice except that the rearmost side window is taller the its neighboring transition window. No overhead windows, however.

Boeing 757
Boeing dropped overhead windows for its 757 series. The window treatment and general shape of the nose area have an awkward appearance. This was because Boeing wanted to have the cockpit interiors match those of its wide-body 767 as closely as possible so that airlines ordering both models could simplify pilot training.

Molti Ritratti: Mrs. Musters

Where I live, the main art museum exhibits run the gamut from ghastly (a recent showing of feminist art from Paris) to mediocre to good. Those are my opinions, anyway.

Happily for me, the Seattle Art Museum is one of four U.S. sites for an exhibit of paintings from London's Kenwood House. Kenwood is undergoing restoration, so the artworks assembled by Edward Cecil Guinness, first Earl of Iveagh (1847-1927), he of the Dublin brewery family, had to be vacated to storage or the road. Guinness was extremely rich and astute enough to beat even more wealthy American art collectors to the punch during the late 1800s rush to acquire masterpieces.

The exhibit's title features the names of Rembrandt, Van Dyck and Gainsborough to attract visitors. But for me, the most interesting works were by British portrait painters active roughly 1750-1830. These included Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Lawrence, George Romney and Henry Raeburn, among others. Also on view was a very nice non-portrait chiaroscuro by Joseph Wright of Derby, a dramatic hawking scene by Edwin Landseer and the excellent Pieter van den Broeke by Frans Hals.

Whether by accident or design, on adjoining walls were hung portraits of the same subject by two different artists. That subject was Sophia Heywood, the Mrs. John Musters (1758-1819), a well-known at the time, socially prominent beauty of the late 1700s. The dirt on Mrs. Musters can be found here, and another piece that strikes me as being less well researched is here.

Here are the paintings I saw:

By Joshua Reynolds - "Mrs. Musters as 'Hebe'" - 1782

By George Romney - 1779-80
Glancing back and forth between the two works, I was struck that two highly competent portrait painters created images that, at a glance, didn't quite seem to be the same woman. Closer comparison reveals many similarities, however; what threw me off briefly were the darker, heavier eyebrows in the Reynolds painting and the darker hair.

By Joshua Reynolds - no dateReynolds painted Mrs. Musters more than once. This is a formal portrait comparable to that by Romney. Again, the artists differ as to hair coloring. But they agree that she had a long nose, a small mouth and chin, and that her eyes had prominent lids.

By George Stubbs - "John and Sophia Musters Riding at Colwick Hall" - 1777Famed painter of horses George Stubbs also painted Mrs. Musters as part of an equestrian scene that included her husband and his estate.

Detail of Stubbs painting
This is a detail of the Stubbs painting that someone was kind enough to leave on the Web. Mrs. Musters' image is probably tiny in the original, so it's hard to realistically compare Stubbs' version of her to those of Reynolds and Romney. Stubbs does give her a more seductive expression, however.

What I find puzzling is why so many men were attracted to Mrs. Musters. By my lights, if the portraits are accurate, she had fairly average looks. I suspect that her coloring, personality and the way she carried herself created her attraction. Sort of like people we've known who are attractive yet don't photograph well.

Up Close: Mead Schaeffer (1)

This is part of an occasional series dealing with detail images of paintings featuring the brushwork of the artist. Previous posts can be found via the "Up close" topic label link on the sidebar.

The present post deals with Mead Schaeffer (1898-1980) when he was following the style that gained him success as an illustrator. Additional information on Schaeffer is here.

Featured here is an illustration for Stephen Meader's book "The Black Buccaneer" of 1929.

The source of the detail images is explained below:

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The Kelly Collection has what is probably the outstanding holding of American illustration art by private individuals (not organizations). I was able to view part of it at The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California towards the end of a January 12 - March 31, 2013 exhibition run. The collection concentrates on illustration art created roughly 1890-1935 and one of its purposes is to further knowledge and appreciation of illustration from that era.

Non-flash photography was allowed, so I took a large number of high-resolution photos of segments of those original works. This was to reference the artists' techniques in a manner not always easy to obtain from printed reproductions. (However, the exhibition catalog does feature a few large-scale detail reproductions.)

I thought that readers of this blog might also be interested in seeing the brushwork of master illustrators up close to increase their understanding of how the artists worked and perhaps to serve as inspiration for their own painting if they too are artists.

Below is an image of the entire illustration coupled with my work. Click on the latter to enlarge.

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This image is from the Kelly Collection website.

From the lower right corner.

This is from near the center.
Early in his career, Schaeffer illustrated adventurous, swashbuckling subjects using brushwork with a boldness to match. The detail image in the middle could easily be a 1950s New York Abstract Expressionist work. Note that Schaeffer used his initials to sign the painting. The lower image features the "square brush" heavy impasto style he favored at the time.

Stape's Practical Painting Blog

For all I know, there must be a mega-gazillion art blogs lurking out there on the Internet. I trip across some when I'm trolling for images to post here. But for better or worse, I usually don't bother following them.

Once in a while I do spot a blog I find really interesting or otherwise useful, and when I do, I add it to the Links list over in the right column. Such is the case for Stapleton Kearns' blog which has been around for about four years in its present form. Kearns is a full-time painter specializing in landscapes that are solidly crafted and worthy of your attention. Here is detailed biographical information on Kearns.

Kearns' blog deals largely with practical information and advice about painting, probably an outgrowth of his experience teaching at workshops. His post tally is now more than one thousand, the bulk appearing 2009-11. I think it's worthwhile to sift through the earlier posts because they deal most thoroughly with issues than matter most to him.

To give you a taste, here is a post from 2009 dealing with art education.

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NOW LISTEN TO ME CAREFULLY, THE PURPOSE OF AN ART SCHOOL IS TO PROVIDE EMPLOYMENT FOR ITS INSTRUCTORS.

I am aware that the situation is improving and there are a few places that do produce better trained young painters. I also know there are some fine teachers out there who do lead their young charges through a fine course of instruction. Now I know that over in the graphics department students learn useful skills. But I feel these fine instructers are still very much the exception, if you take a walk through the studios of most art schools, colleges and Universities the work is appalling. Most of the art schools out there are foisting a deceit on their pupils. By making their students believe that all they need to know is already within them, if they just have the self awareness to find it, the student is taught, its all about them. That, for many young scholars today is an attractive idea, they do like being told how special and individual they are. In many art schools today the teachers will tell a student that there is no way to even teach art, and they will be contaminated by studying works by another artist with the end of improving their own. The contemporary art school changes the educational event from really wicked difficult, to one of self admiring introspection that any student can do. Now they can fill those classrooms! The art schools of America graduate more students in a year than there have been artists in the history of our nation. If the hairdressing schools of America produced as few hairdressers they would be shut down for robbing their students. It can be argued that art is subjective and shouldnt be measured for its results the same way as say, engineering, but isnt hairstyling kind of subjective as well?

Often enough in the fine arts department the students are coddled for four or more years, and then released into the real world where the are served a harsh awakening that it's not just about them out there. I have often seen young would be artists confronted with this reality go back for a masters degree, to get more of the training that didn't make artists out of them in the first place. If you really unpack this with them, you find out they intend to teach. The best of them will, and the best of their students will be teachers as well . There are plenty of teachers out there who have never made a living as artists and their teachers and their teachers' teachers didn't either. They have in fact only contempt for those of us out here who actually do it as a vocation. The sudden rise of popularity of the new ateliers across the country and in Italy is a response to a small but growing number of students who would like to make a living painting and have figured out they will need to know a lot about painting in order to do it. I believe that small but growing atelier movement probably holds the promise of a new American art.

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I notice that Kearns has cut back on posting frequency, but you might consider checking for new material from time to time once you've digested those first 400 or so posts that contain the most meat.

In the Beginning: Claude Monet

The early paintings of Claude Monet (1840-1926) are no deep, dark secret hidden by protectors to preserve his reputation as an early modernist. They can be found in important museums in France and America and not stashed away in storage areas. When in Paris, all you have to do is suffer standing in line for entry to the Musée d'Orsay before rambling around to spot one or two examples. And if the d'Orsay waiting line is too daunting, you can wander into the 16th Arrondissement and over by the Bois du Boulogne and visit the Musée Marmottan, which has a nice collection of Monet's work. In fact, years ago I was at the Marmottan and struck by the fact that Monet wasn't always haystacks and water lilies, even though his paintings were seldom entirely conventional for the times.

Here is a sampling of pre-Impressioninst (in style) paintings.

Gallery

Camille Doncieux (his future wife) - 1866

Garden at Sainte-Adresse - 1867

Women in a Garden - 1866-67

Mme. Gaudibert - 1868

Self-Portrait - 1886
Although he was well into Impressionism by this time, Monet chose to portray himself fairly conventionally.

Up Close: Harvey Dunn

Harvey Dunn (1884-1952) was an influential illustrator and teacher perhaps best known for illustrations of action stories, scenes from the Great War and paintings of rural life on the upper plains. His Wikipedia entry is here and further biographical information along with images is here.

Dunn is known for his vigorous brushwork and focus on the emotional content of his subject matter. That's why I decided to introduce this "Up Close" occasional series with his work.

The Kelly Collection has what is probably the outstanding holding of American illustration art by private individuals (not organizations). I was able to view part of it at The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California towards the end of a January 12 - March 31, 2013 exhibition run. The collection concentrates on illustration art created roughly 1890-1935 and one of its purposes is to further knowledge and appreciation of illustration from that era.

Non-flash photography was allowed, so I took a large number of high-resolution photos of segments of those original works. This was to reference the artists' techniques in a manner not always easy to obtain from printed reproductions. (However, the exhibition catalog does feature a few large-scale detail reproductions.)

I thought that readers of this blog might also be interested in seeing the brushwork of master illustrators up close to increase their understanding of how the artists worked and perhaps to serve as inspiration for their own painting if they too are artists.

Below is an image of the entire illustration coupled with my work. Click on the latter to enlarge.

Night Raid - c.1927
Cover illustration for American Legion Monthly, January 1928 issue. This mage is from the Kelly Collection web site. It is copyrighted, as are all such images from that site appearing in this series.

This image segment is of the doughboy seen at the lower left. Note the variation in color between the two images; the latter seems closer to the original as seen at the exhibition, where lighting was warm rather than the cool of the Kelly site image. These difference will be apparent in many other posts of this series.

Dunn used plenty of oil paint and relied to a large degree on discrete brush strokes rather than smoothed color transitions. I find it interesting that he chose to paint the face of the doughboy using green. Other artists might well have mixed blue into skin color to create a nighttime effect. But Frederic Remington also found green useful for nigh scenes, and perhaps Dunn picked up the concept from him.