by M. Stephen Doherty

Frank Wright pointed to Botticelli’s painting Adoration of the Magi on the wall at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC.

What are some of the ways in which artists can learn to design the figure in space? What is the difference between realism that aims to present an ideal beauty and realism that captures life as it really exists? How do artists balance direct observations with imagery conveyed in photographs? What techniques help unify the shapes, colors, and forms of a plein air landscape painting?

These are the kinds of problems that have confronted artists for centuries, and there are no better teachers able to help address these challenges than the great masters as we look at their work. Workshop magazine arranged to spend a day at the National Gallery of Art (NGA), in Washington, DC, with Frank Wright, an artist and professor at George Washington University. He took us through the National Gallery and discussed those works he has found to be most helpful to his students.

By a conservative estimate, Wright has taught well over 3,000 students. Some, such as Rob Liberace, Danni Dawson, Clarice Smith, and John Patrick Campbell, have established enviable careers in the fine arts. With the help of Deborah Ziska, the chief press officer, and Anabeth Guthrie, the publicist of the NGA’s press office, we assembled some of Wright’s favorite paintings and prints and recorded his explanations of how these pictures can be instructive for aspiring artists.

David & Ingres: The Real and the Ideal
The first stop on our tour of the NGA was in front of portraits created by two great 19th-century academic French artists Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) and his pupil (and eventual rival) Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867).

Madame David by Jacques-Louis David, 1813, oil, 28¾ x 23⅜. All artwork this article collection National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. (Specific collection information noted.) Samuel H. Kress Collection.

Frank Wright: I can’t help thinking of the famous line of John Keats in Ode on a Grecian Urn: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.”  Art critics and the general public often bandy about the term  ‘realism’ as if it designates one particular approach to drawing and painting, when, in fact, the term can be applied to a wide variety of paintings created with completely different artistic objectives. We see here, adjacent to each other, David’s portrait of his wife and Ingres’ portrait of Madame Moitessier, the wife of a rich Parisian banker.  David’s painting is an unembellished, naturalistic interpretation of someone he loved. On the other hand, Ingres’ commissioned portrait is an idealized image of a lady of society. David’s portrait was intended to be a factual interpretation while Ingres was applying strict rules of geometric design to present a woman’s beauty. David’s wife appears to be far from beautiful. She is truthfully portrayed with a cherry-red nose and receding upper lip, and she is dressed in a favorite dress of white satin and wears a feathered cap.

Ingres has painted his fashionable sitter with skin that looks like it is made of porcelain and clothed in rich black taffeta and a headdress of roses. Clearly she is a woman of fashion draped in the latest styles and representing the height of fashion—all of which she would have expected from her rich commission.   
The two portraits are separated by four decades, but both artists painted in the same manner with smooth surfaces of rich color that achieve an enamellike, pristine surface. I am glad that these two portraits are hung near each other because they offer a marvelous opportunity for students to compare the “real” and the “ideal” as depicted by two supreme artists with totally different intentions but both with a dazzling display of virtuosity. No one paints like this today because no one can paint like this. Nevertheless, we can study and emulate two artists of such great technical ability and power.

Madame Moitessier by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1851, oil, 57¾ x 39⅜. Samuel H. Kress Collection.

From time to time I accept commissions to paint portraits, and I come back to the National Gallery in hopes of getting advice from the Great Masters. For example, when I painted Tom Foley, the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, I came back to this Ingres portrait to learn how he painted blacks in black without making inaccurate transitions of tone. I still can’t figure out how he could do this under the lighting conditions that existed in the 19th-century ateliers of Paris and Rome. What a skillful painter he was with color!

Workshop:It has been suggested that Ingres used a camera obscura to project an upside-down, reversed image of his subject on canvas or paper so that he could trace and paint his subjects.

FW: I don’t believe this for a moment. Why would he do that? He had marvelous training in design from supreme masters such as Raphael and Michelangelo, and he was one of the most talented designers of all time. Today there is such an inclination to believe that artists had some technical trick to assist them in displaying their skills. My experience in teaching so many students through the years has brought me to the realization that some rare artists not only possess an innate skill but also a tenacious determination to solve a problem.

Woman Holding a Balance by Johannes Vermeer, ca. 1664, oil, 15⅞ x 14. Widener Collection.

David Hockney’s celebrated book notwithstanding [Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters], there is nothing that I have been able to perceive in Ingres’ finished portraits that provide any evidence of the use of mechanical contraptions. If he had had them, where are they, and why haven’t they been discovered?

One thing that is of great importance in learning to paint is to observe the actual scale of original works of art. Much of the approach to making a painting depends on its scale. The draftsmanship and even the laying on of pigment are subject to the size of the work. I often remind my students that museums such as the National Gallery offer an opportunity to learn by seeing things in actuality, unencumbered by the restrictions in scale of reproduction. And to think, for George Washington University students, the National Gallery is less than a hour away.

Vermeer: The Poetry in Projected Images
Picking up on his comments about the possible influence of images projected by a camera obscura, professor Wright lead us into a nearby  gallery, where some of the NGA’s rarest of 17th-century paintings are on display.

Workshop: Among the small number of extant paintings that are certified as being created by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) are a portrait and two interior scenes, which are in the NGA’s collection. Scholars are fairly certain that each of these exquisite pictures was created with the use of a camera obscura.

The Adoration of the Magi by Botticelli, ca. 1478/1482, oil, 27 9⁄16 x 41. Andrew W. Mellon Collection.

FW: Oh yes, without a doubt Vermeer possessed a camera obscura and an exceptionally fine one. A camera obscura is a box with a hole in it that admits light that is projected upside down and reversed on a wall inside. The device is often referred to as a pinhole camera. It has been in existence for more than five centuries. But Vermeer’s box had a high-quality lens in the pinhole that allowed a bright image to enter and reflect by way of a mirror onto a glass on the top of the box. The image was bright and clear because of the quality of this lens. This is not surprising because Vermeer’s home was in Delft, and Leeuwenhoek, the man that perfected the microscope, was also from Delft. In fact, not only were they both born in the same place but they were also born in the same year, and they lived only a few streets away from each other.

In spite of the excellence of this device, I don’t think Vermeer actually traced an image via the camera obscura because that would have been awkward, and the image would have been very weak. Furthermore, it was not even necessary. The camera obscura would have greatly enhanced his knowledge of the depth of field of objects, a concept that was not generally understood even with the advances in the knowledge of perspective.

My Daughter, Suzanne, Watering the Flowers 1974, oil, 18 x 24. Private collection. This painting was done in emulation of Vermeer. Wright’s daughter is now an adult, but the dining room of the house looks exactly the same.

Vermeer was also introduced to the miracle of the magical ‘photographic’ clarity of forms in light and color—images similar to ones we see through the viewfinders on our cameras, but much smaller in scale. Problems such as the juxtaposition of objects and people in space could be solved. Then there is the wet quality of color and its shift in hue within form that can be seen through the camera obscura. This knowledge can be affirmed in Vermeer’s pictures.

When one compares all of Vermeer’s paintings, it becomes obvious that he carefully selected and adjusted his subjects to enhance the reality of his pictures. People have speculated about the exact materials and techniques Vermeer used to achieve this molten formation and soft edges of his objects, and as yet there is no definitive answer to how it was done. Certainly Vermeer’s images are more sensitive and realistic in a “photographic” manner than those of his contemporaries, such as Pieter de Hooch, whose painting of the same subject was the basis of Vermeer’s original idea. The point is that he found some way of describing the naturalistic light coming from the window into the dark room. The paint is soft-edged but at the same time accurate with a moist appearance.

Artists who work from photographs often make the mistake of painting everything in sharp focus, especially contemporary painters who take advantage of digital technology. Vermeer reminds us that our eyes can’t see everything in focus all at once. If the camera interprets foreground objects, the distant ones become softer and slightly blurred. If I stare into the light, the shadows become darker; and if I stare into the shadows, the light will appear brighter. By focusing on one thing or another, we establish levels of interest and importance. That truth applies to the paintings of Vermeer just as it applies to the photograph.

Pennsylvania Avenue From the Steps of the U.S. Treasury ca. 1892 2002, oil, 72½ x 108. Private collection. B.F. Saul commissioned the artist to create this painting for the lobby of the Chevy Chase Bank headquarters, in Bethesda, Maryland. It was done in emulation of Canaletto’s large but extremely detailed panoramic paintings of Venice and London. If one looks at sections of the painting, one can see not only dozens of narrative details extending over the mile to the Capitol Building but also, with clarity, the buildings in between.

Corot: The Practical Aspects of Plein Air Painting
Moving from the galleries of 17th-century Dutch paintings to those in which paintings by the great 19th-century European masters were displayed, Professor Wright turned his attention to a magnificent painting of Rome that Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) executed during one of his early visits to the Eternal City.

FW: Corot is one of the greatest plein air painters of all time. By “plein air” I mean painting outdoors “on the spot.” But what many artists fail to realize is that he was not dashing about the Italian landscape making quick studies. When we get up close to one of the plein air Corot paintings, we see that they are sharply focused and carefully executed. We realize the artist must have made repeated visits to the same locations and spent considerable time refining each small picture. They are so carefully constructed with light glancing across the surfaces of the buildings that they couldn’t possibly have been completed in one, two, or even three hours of painting because the conditions of light are constantly changing with the sky brightening and darkening as the clouds gather. He probably took a room in a building that afforded this view and went back and painted his picture at the same time of day when the same weather conditions prevailed.

I think Corot may have mixed up a large batch of a middle-value pigment that served as a ‘common denominator,’ and he pushed parts of the pile into the colors that were needed. I postulate this idea out of my own experiences with plein air painting; and because Corot’s paintings are built with subtle shifts between the planes of space, all of which come together beautifully to form a harmonious unit. That would not happen were he to mix each color separately.

Saint Jerome in His Study by Albrecht Dürer, 1514, engraving, 9½ x 7½. Rosenwald Collection.

When I attempt to paint outdoors, I have great difficulty battling the elements, not to mention the nuisance caused by mosquitoes and bugs buzzing around and getting into my paint. I am forced to resort to taking photographs of my subject and, to paraphrase Wordsworth, make my painting a “recollection in tranquility.”

Botticelli and Canaletto: Order Based on Linear and Atmospheric Perspective
As much as Professor Wright enjoyed talking about Ingres, David, Vermeer, and Corot, he became more excited by the opportunity to discuss two paintings that dealt more directly with the challenges of linear and atmospheric perspective. Those are issues he contends with in creating his own panoramic paintings of historical city scenes, and they are problems that his students struggle to resolve. Paintings in the next two galleries by Botticelli (1445–1510) and Canaletto (1697–1768) have helped Wright and his students find ways of placing figures and buildings in a believable space.

FW: The Adoration of the Magi by Botticelli is one of the best available paintings for teaching students linear perspective. It shows how an artist can control space using a single vanishing point. In addition to this linear system, Botticelli depended on the principle of overlapping forms to make his figures recede in space, gradually diminishing them in scale to give the paintings a strong sense of deep space. Added to this, Botticelli’s landscape becomes “bluer’ and paler in the distance.

Knight, Death and Devil by Albrecht Dürer, 1513, engraving, 9¾ x 7. Rosenwald Collection.

It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Botticelli built a scale model of the opened-beam structure in which the Magi appears. Leonardo suggested this kind of alternative in one of his handbooks, and we know that artists of Botticelli’s time were often called upon to create scenery for the festivals and plays presented in churches. It’s therefore logical to surmise that Botticelli could have built a model stable in ruin so that he could more easily determine how to paint the structure accurately.

Botticelli realized that as light diminishes, so does the perspective of forms. Shaded forms appear darker against the light of the sky. Leonardo describes all of this in one of his notebooks.

Workshop: You have said that you have a great love of the panoramic scenes of Canaletto and Bellotto and that they have influenced you in your historical scenes of Washington and Paris.

FW: Absolutely. Paintings like these of Padua and Venice by Canaletto and Bellotto, his nephew, fill me with awe because of Canaletto’s ability to describe delicate detail in deep space with windows of houses that are no more than slivers of paint. How could he paint them so sharply and so thinly with strokes of paint? There are often forms as thin as fine pen strokes but yet they are painted and not drawn. When I did my large painting of Pennsylvania Avenue From the Steps of the U.S. Treasury ca. 1892 for the Chevy Chase Bank, I was constantly thinking of paintings like this one. I also enjoy the fact that Canaletto’s landscapes are filled with anecdotal detail, such as tiny figures engaged in the activities of daily life. One could look at a painting like this for hours and still not see all that is going on. I have always loved to observe the microcosm in painting—ever since I first saw the scenes of Jan van Eyck in the National Gallery and the Louvre.

Prints & Drawings: Ideas and Techniques
Even though Wright has been using the NGA’s painting collection to teach his students, it is the museum’s print and drawing collection that has been especially important to him because of his love of making engravings. As the Paul J. Sachs Fellow in Graphic Arts at the National Gallery, Wright spent the better part of 1959 and 1960 at the home of Lessing J. Rosenwald, where the print collection was housed. Rosenwald personally guided him in learning about prints and the history of graphic arts.

Angel of the Annunciation by Martin Schongauer, ca. 1475, engraving, 6 9⁄16 x 4⅝. Rosenwald Collection.

FW: The prints that we see here today are some of the very prints—-the very same impressions—- that I studied many years ago. As a young man, I had the extraordinary privilege of working with Rosenwald, the man who assembled that vast collection of prints that became the foundation of the print collection of the National Gallery. In the months that I was there, I held many of these prints in my hands and was present when he purchased some of them from print dealers. He seemed to enjoy having me there to share his excitement about them. So you see, I have had an intimate knowledge of these precious works on paper for almost 50 years.

Workshop: What is it about engravings and etchings that makes you love them so much?

FW:  At a time when the computer seems to have usurped the creation of prints, it is important to look at the beautiful early prints to remind ourselves of the unique beauty that artists of the past were capable of achieving with a minimum of technology. If you think a giclée computer print is wonderful, take a close look at the tightly drawn, sinuous lines in concentric curves in Dürer’s engraving Knight, Death and Devil. There is a strange quality in the engraved grooves of ink that stand up like thin black threads on the paper—-especially the forms of concentric curves such as those of the belly of the horse. This technique of grooves incised into the plate conveying the image in lines, known as intaglio, just can’t be matched for detail and clarity by anything created with a camera—-even a digital camera, or by Photoshop. It is impossible to duplicate the quality in reproductions because reproductions are flat.

The print impression of an engraving done with a burin looks like a finely embossed image because the lines lay on top of the plate. I held this very impression in my hands many times when I was studying at Alverthorpe  [Rosenwald’s home], and there was no other print—-except maybe the Dürer Saint Jerome in His Study—that gave me such a desire to learn to make engravings with a burin. These engravings have such authority in the rendition of the most delicate lines cut in a copper plate and the vast vocabulary of imagery depicted that it takes one’s breath away.

Rosenwald’s personal favorite of all of his engravings was Schongauer’s Angel of the Annunciation, which we always pulled out to show to the many students who came up in busloads.  The comparison of a good impression with a superlative impression of the same print demonstrates the ‘mystique’ of the burin engraving medium.

Workshop: So the National Gallery has served as a great font for teaching your students to be artists?

FW: Both my students and I benefited greatly from the quality and accessibility of the NGA’s collection and from the extraordinary temporary exhibitions that were held there through the decades. These were a most important source of instruction for my students—especially the drawing exhibitions from places like The British Museum and Windsor Castle, in England, and the Albertina, in Vienna.

But let us not forget the other great museums in Washington that have also played a role in the learning process: The Phillips Collection, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and The Library of Congress. My students have visited them all.

M. Stephen Doherty is the editor in chief of Workshop.

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Comments

Hello

Im seeing your site on the net, and i am whriting to you from Portugal. I have american family and i saw on New Bedford Massachusstes USA on the house of my cousin Katheleen and Jay Amaral ,a special picture, i think oil painted replica ,with a boy and a girl with a very very nice expression, may be ashamed expression ,because there was a broken jar with flowers also on the picture, that the boy and the girl had broken when they were joking i think...... and a broken jar of flowers.
The picture i think is a replica may be a american or european artist with exatly the description that i told you.
I think the boy and girl are dressed from century 19 or beginning of twenty century or may be mor ancien and the tipe of reproduction is like the pictrues that i saw in yours
Masterpiece Flower Oil Paintings Reproduction painted like

same style.
So plesae i want to purchase that picture, but i dont know the reference or the author or the shoping where the picture was purchased.
I know that was purchased on New Bedford USA, on a shop or a moll, but my cousin dont know the name of that picture ,and dont know the author.

Please can you help me giving to me references of the picture that ive told to you and the way i can find it?
If you have that picture i will purchase it.
Ok thank you for rour help i wait your reponse
Its more or less like Alma-Tadema75 style of peinture...thank you nhave, so please help to me to find that picture that i want to purchase.....thank you very much.
My name Jose Rito

Braga Portugal
yours sincerely
Jose Veloso Rito 28 6 2007

Hello

Im seeing your site on the net, and i am whriting to you from Portugal. I have american family and i saw on New Bedford Massachusstes USA on the house of my cousin Katheleen and Jay Amaral ,a special picture, i think oil painted replica ,with a boy and a girl with a very very nice expression, may be ashamed expression ,because there was a broken jar with flowers also on the picture, that the boy and the girl had broken when they were joking i think...... and a broken jar of flowers.
The picture i think is a replica may be a american or european artist with exatly the description that i told you.
I think the boy and girl are dressed from century 19 or beginning of twenty century or may be mor ancien and the tipe of reproduction is like the pictrues that i saw in yours
Masterpiece Flower Oil Paintings Reproduction painted like

same style.
So plesae i want to purchase that picture, but i dont know the reference or the author or the shoping where the picture was purchased.
I know that was purchased on New Bedford USA, on a shop or a moll, but my cousin dont know the name of that picture ,and dont know the author.

Please can you help me giving to me references of the picture that ive told to you and the way i can find it?
If you have that picture i will purchase it.
Ok thank you for rour help i wait your reponse
Its more or less like Alma-Tadema75 style of peinture...thank you nhave, so please help to me to find that picture that i want to purchase.....thank you very much.
My name Jose Rito

Braga Portugal
yours sincerely
Jose Veloso Rito 28 6 2007

I am assisting an artist with trying to market his etchings(intaglio). We have gone to numerous galleries, everyone of them has told us,"I love your work". However they can't, don't, or won't house his artwork because they are not housing that type of art. I'm in southern california, where can I go(galleries, internet, competions...etc.) so that someone will give us some type of guidance to get his work seen?

Frank Wright is deranged.

Hi, I am looking for a painting by,Paul Padua(Boy and Girl)...If anyone has any info. Will you let me know? Thanks so much!