Portrait Artist Forum - Paintings by Charles Bargue

Here are two paintings as promised in the last thread for those interested in the Charles Bargue's drawing course.

The first is "The Flute Player" 1880. Oil on Panel 11 x 7.5inches or 28.3 x 19.1 cm .

The second is "Arab Merchant Among His Antiques" 1877. Oil on Panel 13 x 9.5 inches or 33 x 24.4 cm.

Excerpt from the book, Page 20."...the Bargue-Gerome Drawing Course can be seen as an attempt to balance contemporary Realism with the practices of classical Idealism. The authors intended to teach a method of drawing the human figure from nature with good taste, to instill in their students a practice based on careful selection, simplification and a knowledge of the structure of the human figure. "

It goes on to say that because of the steering away from classical studies in the modern art curriculum, many students do not learn how to handle the technical problems that they will come across in their career. This course teaches you some of these important skills, firstly to estimate distances, angles and relationships with your eye with exercises from the simple to the complicated progressing to developing modelling and value skills. The second section of the book offers masters to copy from to teach your developing skills to see their idiosyncractic personal styles, to absorb, organise and record visual information accurately.

I have only just started this course, but already I definitely can see a difference in my work. I am also aware that a few of the academies and art schools have adopted this course into their curriculum. For those students who are wanting to develop proficiency in draughtsmanship skills, I am sure you will see the benefits as I already have.