Composition - examples of note

[Mike McCarty]

Mike, I have come back to look at that Dicksee painting at least ten times (and like Tom, finally swiped it).

Linda,

It has become one of my favorites as well. It brings to mind the advice about not being concerned with "time spent" on your project. Some aspects of this painting must have taken a goodly while to execute. Well worth whatever time when you consider ...

I am curious if you wouldn't mind what you have learned from your research.

Enzie,

I've never really done much study of art history. Thanks to all the resources on the web you can pretty much create your own study program. I think the more you stare at these really good works of art the more the principles of design sink in. It certainly couldn't hurt.

Also, without a lot of academic training, you tend to stumble upon things over long periods of time which you suspect are good, true and beneficial. The more exposure you are able to get to the really good stuff gives you more opportunities validate your suspicions, or not. You begin to formulate and refine your "template" of what is valuable, not so valuable, and what is down right essential. I am particularly stubborn about accepting what I hear to be "absolutely essential," especially when my path has indicated something different. This stubbornness will sometimes work in my favor, sometimes not.

The study of art has revealed many things to me about myself and the way I take in information. Also, how my ways can differ from others and still be valid. I wish I'd understood some of these principles when I was younger, I'm sure I could have been more effective in many ways, and in many other aspects of my life.

Sir Frank Dicksee - The Mirror
37x46 1896

[Mike McCarty]

Further, regarding Sir Frank Dicksee ... Even below in his obituary do we see some of the prevailing prejudices of the times. The writer gives, then takes back: "All these things which are symbols to conjure with are painted solidly but prosaically; the poetry is in the subject, not the execution. And that is why this kind of art looks old-fashioned now; for only poetry in execution keeps art fresh."

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Sir Frank Dicksee PRA.
Obituary in the Times Thursday October 18th 1928.

Sir Frank Dicksee PRA, whose death is announced on another page, came of an artistic family - his father being Thomas Francis Dicksee [1819-1895], who illustrated Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott [1771-1832], and his uncle John Robert Dicksee [1817-1905], animal painter. His professional career was thus made smooth for him in a way which was reflected in his work.

Born in London on November 27 1853, he was trained at the Royal Academy Schools, where he won gold and silver medals, and exhibited his first picture in 1876. Coming to maturity at a time when the very word 'art' was synonymous with romantic and sentimental illustration, and the thing so understood more popular than ever before or since, he was by nature and temperament born to enjoy the popularity; and he enjoyed it without a trace of affectation or the least violation of his artistic conscience. If ever the words 'born in due season,' were true of any man they were true of him. He succeeded not because he did what people wanted, but because people wanted what he unconsciously did; and how genuine was the relation between what people demanded and what he and his contemporaries, though none more sympathetically than he supplied, there is Melbury Road to show.

We may question if the thing demanded and supplied was the best thing for the welfare of English art, but the evidence - material in the prosperity of artists of the period, and the moral in the conversation of the drawing rooms, faithfully recorded in the pages of Punch of a 'natural' working of the famous law, is not to be ignored. For the first time since the 18th century, and for about 20 years art flourished in England. In personal manner Dicksee may be said to have represented a softening of the pre-Raphaelite movement which initiated the period of prosperity, and there can no doubt he owed his popularity partly to the softening. He was without the queerness of the original group and their eldest disciples, a more comfortable painter for the home. In execution he made an artistic virtue of prettiness.

Dicksee was, in short, the chief representative of the older kind of academic artist, whose aim was to express certain common sentiments in a convincing pictorial form. He early achieved success with the picture Harmony, which was bought for the Tate Gallery. In that picture we can see all his art, which remained the same to the end, and he had a work of the same character in the Academy of 1921, it was skilfully and thoroughly executed, and its aim was to arouse a certain kind of feeling, which no doubt he himself shared, rather than express any interest in the visible world. This he achieved very skilfully by the use of certain symbols. A young woman plays an organ with extreme sensibility in a sunset light, and a young man with still more sensibility listens to her. All these things which are symbols to conjure with are painted solidly but prosaically; the poetry is in the subject, not the execution. And that is why this kind of art looks old-fashioned now; for only poetry in execution keeps art fresh.

But Dicksee having found his way continued in it; he was not, like so many artists of the same kind, content to presume on the success, and to paint carelessly where once he had painted carefully. He always did his best to the end; and thus he was able once or twice to do skilful nudes, such as Girls Bathing, which because of its skill, and without sentiment, is less old-fashioned than his more popular pictures. He was a most conscientious portrait painter. In later years he became less popular than worse painters who parodied a more fashionable kind of art, who deserve sharp criticism and much more, for the kind of art he practices he did at least need skill and could not pretend that mere incompetence was dashing.

Sir Frank Dicksee:

Harmony 1877
The Offering
Portrait of Elsa 22x17

[Allan Rahbek]

Originally Posted by Mike McCarty

Further, regarding Sir Frank Dicksee ... ; the poetry is in the subject, not the execution.

This sentence, from the article in the Times, is so true and something we should draw learning from.
Dicksee was, no doubt, a skilled painter, but his paintings lacked energy and painterly drama, compared to Sargent ( who don,t? ).

Everything is neat and correct but has no energy, or the energy has no direction, the persons just sit there and express nothing but boredom. There is more painterly drama in the patterns on the wall than in the persons.

Only trying to draw some learning

[Enzie Shahmiri]

Thanks to all the resources on the web you can pretty much create your own study program. I think the more you stare at these really good works of art the more the principles of design sink in. It certainly couldn't hurt.

I have done the same and just spend just about every evening reading through art books and making notations, instead of watching TV. Book collectors must hate my desecration of these beautiful volumes!

Allan, I agree with your comments as well. Giving the figures that extra "umph" or "energy" takes skill by itself. I am always fascinated to see how some artists can take ordinary looking people and create stunning portraits.

All I have saved this under is Baro, I don't remember if this is the artist or the title.
The 2nd painting is by Carlos Abascal "Profile of Arab"

[Enzie Shahmiri]

Anatomy of a Masterpiece (excerpt out of "The Orientalists"by Kristian Davies- available through Amazon.com )

Pilgrims going to Mecca by L

[Enzie Shahmiri]

This makes this a secular image of spirit rather than in which both painter and the audience are required to be part of any specific belief and its required dogma. It is not about Islam as much as it is about man and spirit. The caravan is transporting the Holy Carpet destined for the Ka'ba in the Great Mosque of Mecca. But we do not see it. In fact, but for the matchlock rifle in the hands of the walking figure to the far right, the picture is thoroughly timeless; it could easily be a pre Islamic scene from the ancient Near East. Free of religious chauvinism, Belly believed in a universal god for all of man. Pilgrims is a reflection of the desire to represent the perennial experience of belief and devotion. It is his success in capturing a universal spiritual feeling that makes Pilgrims look like the dawn of man, an allegory of man moving through time itself.

This image is so powerful because of its genius of lighting. The group is back lit, casting shadows towards the viewer. From this perspective most of the caravan is actually in darkness.

The visual result of this back lighting in the picture is that, as in nature, it highlights the outlines of physical forms in the scene while simultaneously obscuring their details and features. It is a phenomenon referred to as the "solar look" (french- contre-jour).

The author points out to recall the sensation you get when staring at something with the sun in your eyes. Your vision becomes disorienting and yet entrancing, hiding what you are looking at and illuminating it at the same time. The genius of this painting makes use of this principal. Belly understood what Vermeer understood: that light is everything-light direction, light diffusion, the hour of the day, the condition of the sky. It is how light treats and manipulates, deceives and confuses, focuses on or disorients, attracts and flatters whatever it shines on that determines what color the eye believes it sees.

[Enzie Shahmiri]

From a letter of artist Eug

[Mike McCarty]

Enzie,

Those are beautiful paintings. I

[Allan Rahbek]

[QUOTE=Mike McCarty]
Wouldn

[Mike McCarty]

Mike wrote:
[QUOTE]Wouldn