Ingres' optical device discovered!

[Jeff Fuchs]

It turns out Hockney was right. Ingres did use optical devices in creating his artwork. I'm attaching a picture of one, from Ingre's own self portrait. In this portrait, he is pictured at his easel, painting a portrait with the aid of this device. He was rumored to have at least two of these, that he hid away at night for safekeeping. They featured flexible lenses, which lost some of their elasticity over time. It is rumored that he had them buried with him when he died.

Hockney expects to find evidence that many realist artists have relied on these same optical devices over history.

[Michele Rushworth]

You are hilarious!

[Lynn T. McCallum]

Jeff,

I heard he also had one of these optical devices. So that makes a total of three. You have to have the one to make the other two work correctly. Good job fella. Historical research is so much fun.

[Kirk Richards]

Jeff,

A vital point you have made. If Ingres had drawn this beautiful self portrait using a camera lucida, it would have been a painting of a guy looking through a camera lucida, not a man gazing into a mirror.

I've wondered how Hockney explains self portraits, and sculpture! Did Bernini and other incredible sculptors project the optical image onto the marble and chip away while looking through a lens?

Or did they just know what they were doing?

Kirk

[Jeff Fuchs]

Actually, I'm not totally opposed to the idea that SOME artists used devices SOMETIMES, but to imply that they couldn't create realism without them is crazy.

Centuries ago, craftsmen had trade secrets that they guarded fiercely. That's where the term "trade secret" comes from. You couldn't just go out and learn certain trades. The guilds trained a select few, who agreed not to divulge the techniques to anyone but their apprentices.

But artists were different. The artist had to draw and paint in the presence of the sitter. If optical devices were used by so many artists, there would have been ample documentation in the letters and papers of these people.

I'll even grant that Hockney may be right about 15th century art taking a leap forward due to optical devices. It is possible that optically aided drawing demonstrated the accuracy that was possible in art, and therefore raised the bar for all aritsts, who then learned to more carefully duplicate subjects from life, even without aids.

As someone here already pointed out, if classical realism was only possible with optical aids, why are there artists today who can paint high realism by eye?

I guess this will be debated for some time to come.

[Peter Jochems]

http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...hlight=hockney

It has been debated before on the forum.

[ReNae Stueve]

I suppose I could buy a slide projector, and invite my non artist friends over and set them up with all of my tools and project an image on the canvas and ask them to produce the image as it is seen on the canvas. What do you suppose the results would be?

I don't use any such device because, well..... I don't have one. But if I did, and I needed to use it to block in my composed work quickly, I would use it. This would not determine the desired outcome of depth, richness of color and edges lost and found. The outcome is determined in my heart and vision.

I do not think any less of any artist who uses all of the tools available to produce that which is in their heart to produce.

Just my 2 cents.

[Elizabeth Schott]

Gosh Jeff, talent and a personality too!

Great post!

[Leslie Bohoss]

Thank you Jeff,

Your posting enlighted my mind: now I know why Leonardo dissected dead bodies: he looked for younger, better, sharper lens...

But I'm 100% sure, if they (masters) had had modern technical, optical equipment they would have used it, only because time sparing. Imagine the huge output!

Cheers!

P.S. Jeff, long time ago I wrote some stuff about Leonardo.http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...&threadid=2612