Submitted by Gurney Journey
I thought it might be fun to share a job-in-progress with you. So for the next few days, I invite you into my studio to see how a picture progresses from start to finish.
The Utopiales festival in Nantes, France, will take place Oct. 28 through Nov. 1, 2009. This year they invited me to contribute the artwork for the official poster.
Utopiales is one of the largest fantasy, comics, and science fiction festivals of Europe. The city of Nantes, where it is held each year, is the birthplace of Jules Verne. It’s also the home of the Royal de Luxe theater company (scroll down to the previous post).
So somehow the image has to weave together Jules Verne, giant mechanical creatures, and steampunk-flavored science fiction.
After a little Internet research I discovered that one of the famous places in Nantes is a town square called the Place Royale. I flashed on the idea of a huge insect aircraft departing from the town square. The scene could be set in the time of Jules Verne.
From these pencil thumbnails, I worked up three color sketches in oil and stuck them into the poster graphics from last year. From left to right, the titles are:
1. Arrivée Place Royale (Arrival at Royal Square)
2. Décollage nocturne (Nighttime Liftoff)
3. Départ pour Cigaleville (Departure for Cicadaville).
Tomorrow I’ll let you know which one we chose and the next design steps.
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
Earlier this month, the gargantuan marionettes returned to Nantes in western France, this time with a deep sea diver (Le Scaphandrier) in search of his gigantic niece.
In the second half of this video you can see how the operators lunge off the moving platform to lift the legs for each step.
The spectacle was produced by the street theater company Royal de Luxe of Nantes, who brought us the Sultan’s Elephant.
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Image from Flickr user misterstf
Previous GurneyJourney post on the Sultan’s Elephant, link.
Report on BoingBoing, link.
More Flickr images of the Giant Diver, link.
Wikipedia on Royal de Luxe, link.
Nantes municipal website with pictures and info, link.
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Submitted by foothills & highlands
10″x8″ oil on RayMar panel, painted en plein air, alla prima, on Tuesday June 30th (completed at 9:55am)…$85 including shipping…Sandra and I explored Crown Gardens and Archives in Dalton (GA) and found a painting in every direction
. This small addition to the main structure was set deep in shadows and as the sun crept in, I began painting using only yellow ochre, alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue (and of course white). I had challenged myself to use a very limited palette. Next time I think the mixing will go faster.
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Submitted by BRENDA YORK’S PAINTING A DAY
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Submitted by Art Blog By Bob
Inspired by Iris Schaefer, Katja Lewerentz, and Caroline von Saint-George’s Painting Light: The Hidden Techniques of the Impressionists (my review here), I decided to tap into my inner Beaker (above) and use the scientific method to find the best science-related art. For the July 2009 Art Poll By Bob, I ask, “Which of these science-related works of art make you wish you had paid more attention in high school lab?”:
William Blake. Newton (1795).
Leonardo da Vinci. Vitruvian Man (1487).
Jacques-Louis David. Portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and His Wife (1788).
Albrecht Durer. Melencolia I (1514).
Thomas Eakins. The Gross Clinic (1875).
Thomas Eakins. Portrait of Professor Henry A. Rowland (1897).
Erich Mendelsohn. Einstein Tower (1920-1924).
Charles Willson Peale. The Artist in His Museum (1822).
Charles Willson Peale. Exhuming the First American Mastodon (1806).
Joseph Wright of Derby. An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768).
Eakins and Peale get two mentions each because they did so many science-related paintings. Durer’s Melancolia I makes the cut because I can’t think of a single image in art history that contains more references to mathematics. Please feel free to include any favorites that I may have missed in the comments. But now put on your lab coat, strap on those safety goggles, fire up the Bunsen burners, and vote!
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Submitted by A Painting for You!
This is a work not from any one scene but a composite of the elements as seen in the Rocky Mountains. I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed painting it. Connie
Prints and Greeting Cards of this painting are now available in several sizes and options for ordering: Canvas or paper, Rolled in a tube or gallery wrapped, frames in several styles…All options are calculated for you. Click here!
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handwork.” ~ Psalm 19:1.
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Submitted by A Painting for You!
These lucky fishermen are up at first light, away from the business of life, out in the fresh air enjoying themselves. The morning fog is still hovering over the water and God’s glory is filling the heavens. Enjoy!
Prints of this painting are now available in several sizes and options for ordering: Canvas or paper, Rolled in a tube or gallery wrapped, frames in several styles…All options are calculated for you. Click here!
“Thy mercy is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds.” ~ Psalm 36:5.
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I prefer to be called Artiste LangdonArt because I created my own style as an invention in painting!
It took many years to try to find something that another artist did not do, and it’s this: two different landscapes in each painting; that is LangdonArt! In some ways it represents the World Upside Down, and/or the World Upside Up!! These landscapes are reflections on the world, on humanity since a tree is like a human for me!
A LangdonArt reflection or landscape is either a tempest or nature in tranquility; like peace or war!! Viewers at first think that these LangdonArt paintings are abstracts, and then they see a tree or trees, a reflection on water… but some, like a few artists, tell me that that is not how one makes a reflection! And to that I reply: I create new ways to do reflections, since it’s LangdonArt!!
To me, LangdonArt trees represent magic, a civilization, and in some paintings, there are civilizations like East and West, or the Orient versus the New World!! LangdonArt is also like magical scenes about First Nations and others ones who make up the world of yesterday, to-day and tomorrow!!! Each person is new to capture and create in this LangdonArt magical world, and twice if you turn the canvas upside up!!
ontart@yahoo.ca www.langdonart.com www.franco.ca/langdonart1
Submitted by Gurney Journey
Can you name the artist who painted these water lilies? I’ll send a deluxe Dinotopia map to the first person who guesses the correct answer.
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Addendum: Zelas correctly identified the Russian painter Isaac Levitan (1860-1900). The painting is 95cm x 128cm and was painted in 1895, before Claude Monet’s famous water lily paintings.
More samples of Levitan at Athaeneum.org/Levitan and Wikipedia/Levitan
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Submitted by foothills & highlands
7″x5″ oil on RayMar panel, painted en plein air, alla prima, on June 24th (completed at 8:20am)…$35 including shipping…The historic Tunnel Hill railroad tunnel is hidden in this plein air study, but is somewhere beyond the darkness on the lower left side. The sun had cleared Chetogeeta Mountain, turning the sky almost instantly from a golden haze to a clear blue. Taking the road to the left carries the viewer to the mouth of the tunnel.
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Submitted by BRENDA YORK’S PAINTING A DAY
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Submitted by Art Blog By Bob
William Glackens, A Headache in Every Glass, 1903–1904, Charcoal and watercolor heightened with white gouache on cream wove paper, 13 1/4 x 19 1/2 in. (33.7 x 49.5 cm) Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.170
“We’ve come together because we’re so unlike,” wrote Robert Henri in a May 1907 press release for the Macbeth Galleries show in February 1908 that would forever link him and the other seven artists in that show as The Eight. Later, thanks to the socially conscious work of some of those artists, The Eight became known under the less-glamorous label of The Ashcan School. Certainly works such as William Glackens’ A Headache in Every Glass (above, 1903-1904) left a strong impression, creating new headaches for a group too diverse for any label beyond a simple number. For almost a century now, the label of Ashcan has been hard to rip away. In The Eight and American Modernisms, Elizabeth Kennedy of the Terra Foundation for American Art tries to pull The Eight from the ashes of art history and clean up not only their reputation but blow the dust off of the lasting effect those artists had on American Modern art in the years after the 1913 Armory Show that allegedly tolled the death knell for The Eight as an influential force for American art. If conventional art history etched a tombstone for The Eight, the years would read “1908-1913.” “This exaggeration of the rapid ascendancy and demise of The Eight’s contribution to a nascent American avant-garde obscures a far more complex tale,” Kennedy writes in her introductory essay, “for each artist experienced a successful professional journey that defies group labeling, with its implication of a single unifying ideology or a static artistic outlook.” The Eight and American Modernisms raises The Eight from the grave and confirms that reports of their early demise were greatly exaggerated.
Robert Henri, Figure in Motion, 1913, Oil on canvas, 77 1/4 x 37 1/4 in. (196.2 x 94.6 cm) Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.69
From the moment you look at the cover of The Eight and American Modernisms and behold Henri’s 1916 Betalo Nude, you know that this isn’t your father’s (or grandfather’s) idea of The Eight. The grime of gritty realism gives way to the symphony of tones and color in that nude, just one of the many nudes that The Eight painted during their heyday and long afterwards. As both artists and teachers, Henri and John Sloan were especially “dedicated to the representation of the human figure as the vehicle for portraying their expressive ideas,” writes Kennedy. Henri’s 1913 Figure in Motion (above), painted the same year that Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 wowed crowds at The Armory Show, responds to European Modernism without slavishly following it. “Experimental painting of the nude model in the studio was one of the theoretical strategies that some of The Eight continued late into their careers,” Kennedy explains, but never at the expense of losing their own personal vision. “It is necessary to pierce the core, to get at the value of a movement and not be confused by its sensation exterior,” Henri said of his reaction to new art movements. It is this “dedication to individualism in art, writing, and teaching” on Henri’s part that “fostered American modernism” argues Sarah Vure in her essay on Henri.
George Luks, Knitting for the Soldiers: High Bridge Park, c. 1918, Oil on canvas 30 3/16 x 36 1/8 in. (76.7 x 91.8 cm) Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.87
Kennedy and her cohorts do their best to individualize each of The Eight and allow them to stand alone rather than force them to stand together. Perhaps none of these individuals was so “individual” as George Luks. “Sometimes you wonder over his versatility,” a New York art critic wrote of Luks in 1920, “a character actor, a low comedian, even song-and-dance man, a poet, a profound sympathizer with human misery, and a human orchestra.” In her essay on Luks, Judith Hansen O’Toole links Luks with Henri, calling both “passionate humanitarians seeking to forge a new artistic expression that was truly American and of their own time.” Luks’ Knitting for the Soldiers: High Bridge Park (above, c. 1918) brings the World War I home front home while portraying “realism” with color and vibrant style. Such paintings by Luks, who resisted the “social realist” label for himself, laid the groundwork for the social commentators of the 1920s and 1930s. Luks painted portraits of coal miners not only because they struck him as interesting subjects, but because they reminded him of the miners he’d known during his childhood in Pennsylvania coal country. “Making art was their life,” Kennedy writes of The Eight in her introduction, “not merely the practice of their profession.” Luks lived and painted with passion and was found dead at 67 in the doorway of a speakeasy in 1933 after losing in a brawl. Each of the essayists in The Eight and American Modernisms beautifully breathes life into their subject and integrates living and painting to the point that they become one again.
Ernest Lawson, Brooklyn Bridge, 1917–20, Oil on canvas, 20 3/8 x 24 in. (51.8 x 61.0 cm) Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.43
After reading these essays, you come away with a sense of The Eight as a truly pivotal group in the trajectory of American art history—the link that connects the past with the future. Trained by American Impressionists John Twachtman and J. Alden Weir, Ernest Lawson brought Impressionism to the big city. Essayist Jochan Wierich sees Lawson as the heir to the American Romantic tradition of the Hudson River School as much as an heir of European Impressionists. “Lawson demonstrated to his contemporaries how the art of landscape could survive and refashion itself as an expression of modern life,” Wierich writes, in works such as Brooklyn Bridge (above, from 1917-1920), which “combine pastoral tradition with urban reality.” The grit and grime of the Ashcan School label disappears in such transcendent and transformative works. Lawson builds a bridge between Thomas Cole and Edward Hopper that continues a tradition without chaining any one artist to a single style. Both conservator and innovator of the American tradition in art, Lawson and the rest of The Eight retained the elusively definable “Americanism” of art without closing eyes to possibilities from abroad.
Maurice Prendergast, St. Malo, after 1907, Watercolor and graphite on paper, 15 1/8 x 22 in. (38.4 x 55.9 cm) Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.121
In her essay specifically on Maurice Prendergast, Kennedy uses the greatest exception to ideas of The Eight to “prove the rule” of their uncategorizable diversity. Prendergast stood as the “only member of The Eight whose reputation grew more favorable in [The Armory Show’s] immediate aftermath,” Kennedy explains. Suddenly, oddball works such as St. Malo (above, from after 1907) seemed not so odd in the context of Post-Impressionism. Sadly, it took the affirmation of artists from overseas to free viewers to accept Prendergast’s unusual style. The Eight and American Modernisms looks to free viewers to accept these artists as individuals and then, again, as a group of artists united in the same goal of furthering American art and contributing to American society in their own diverging ways. “The Eight’s simultaneous recognition of non-representational art as a valid expression of contemporary art styles while refusing to embrace the authority of abstract art as the only ‘true’ vehicle for modernity encouraged other American artists to insist on the integrity of their own creative ideas,” Kennedy concludes. In other words, The Eight accepted other artists on their own terms and asked for nothing less for themselves. The failure of that courtesy costs us a clear picture of how vital these artists and their philosophy was to the beginnings of modern art in America. The Eight and American Modernisms rescues The Eight from the ignoble dustbin of art history and washes away the smear of Ashcan School for good.
[Many thanks to The University of Chicago Press for providing me with a review copy of The Eight and American Modernisms and to the Terra Foundation for American Art for the images from the catalogue above.]
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Submitted by Ancient Artist: Developing an art career after 50
Cervantes’ humorous story of Don Quixote follows a country gentleman in his fifties as he sets off on an imaginary quest. The initial exploits are met with amused tolerance by the townsfolk, supporting the aging Quixote’s belief that he’s a knight-errant on grand chivalrous quests. Despite farcical setbacks, each “success” magnifies the validity of Quixote’s reality. But toward the end of Part Two, attitudes change. Quixote becomes the butt of mean-spirited jokes. Well-meaning friends convince Quixote that his quest is delusion, the product of age and insanity. The story ends with the loss of Quixote’s faith. He accepts reality imposed by others, but is gripped with a deep and persistent melancholy. When Alsono Quixano dies, he’s sane in the eyes of the world but inwardly a broken man.
It’s a story that has entertained generations and is deep in our collective psyche. There’s something both humorous and pathetic in the idea of the last “hurrah,” the aging character setting out on a grand adventure after a lost dream. We laugh at his interpretations of reality, we pity his disillusionment, and secretly fear we might be Quixote and not know it.
For me, the idea creeps in when I least expect it. I can feel successful within my own studio, caught up in the pleasure of creation. But I also exist in an interdependent relationship with the people and events surrounding me, which can affect me deeply. Success is just as stressful as rejection: both could be signs of my own delusion, succeeding out of pity, rejection from reality.
Is this the Quixote Effect? I don’t know. Maybe other people are better at rational thinking than I am. All I know is I can’t allow myself to doubt the validity of my quest. Short of writing a manifesto, I decided to go into my studio and prove something to myself.
“Self Portrait at Age 61″ @ Sue Favinger Smith, 2009
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Submitted by A Painting for You!
“A Walk Through The Canyon” was a delight to do. With all the delicious colors, harmonizing the cool colors with the warm colors, I think I understand what Delacroix was talking about when he wrote in his journal, that “Colors are the music of the eyes.” I try to thank God nearly every day for the wonderful colors He gave us in His creation. When I see these… I think, “Look what God has done!” ~ Enjoy!
Prints of this painting are now available in several sizes and options for ordering: Canvas or paper, Rolled in a tube or gallery wrapped, frames in several styles…All options are calculated for you. Click here!
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“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.” ~ Psalms 1:1-3.
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
Here’s the debate in a nutshell: the Parthenon is perhaps the most famous icon of Athens.
Between 1801 and 1812, during the Ottoman occupation of Greece, Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin removed many of the Parthenon’s sculptural elements and took them to London. The so-called Elgin marbles now reside in the British Museum.
Greece would like to have the Elgin marbles back, and has just opened the New Acropolis Museum in Athens to house them. The argument for returning them is more than simply an appeal to return art to its land of origin. As a single work of art, proponents, say, the Parthenon cannot be fully understood unless the pieces are seen together.
Why keep them in London? Some argue that their safekeeping in London has protected them from looting, weathering, and other damage that might have occurred in the intervening years. But the British Museum admits that they have suffered from the act of removal, from overzealous cleaning, and from the 19th century pollution of London.
It’s safe to assume that they would receive responsible curatorial care in either location today, and either way they would end up in a museum, not adorning the Parthenon itself. But museum officials are understandably reluctant to agree to all restitution claims, which would ultimately empty the museums.
What is your feeling on the issue? Where should the Elgin marbles live? Do they represent a different case than other works of art? Please vote in the poll at left and offer your thoughts in the comments.
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Wikipedia’s gives the full story of their removal and both sides of the issue for repatriation, link.
NPR’s radio coverage yesterday, link.
British Museum’s official story and position, link.
New Acropolis Museum, link.
Issue blog “Elginism,” with various angles on the story, link.
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Submitted by Art Blog By Bob
Oh, you gonna take me home tonight?
Oh, down beside that red firelight?
Are you gonna let it all hang out?
Fat bottomed girls, you make the rockin’ world go round.
—From “Fat Bottomed Girls” by Queen
Beauty is truly in the eyes of the beholder, especially ideals of female beauty, which vary by culture and era. These ideals of the past appear in the works of artists throughout time. The seventeenth-century in Europe must have been the era of the fat-bottomed girl judging by the works of Peter Paul Rubens, whose voluptuous vixens live on in the modern-day adjective “Rubenesque.” Born June 28, 1577, Rubens always had an eye for a girl with some meat on her bones. In Venus at a Mirror (above, from 1615), a decidedly non-waifish goddess admires her plump face in a mirror while presenting her broad back and ample rear to the viewer. A black woman attends to Venus on the right, a familiar trope of portraits examining beauty personified that Edouard Manet riffs on in the black handmaiden of Olympia. Sadly, the contrast between the black woman and the white goddess reflects the racism of the period, which could only find beauty in European tones. In modern day Hollywood, where slender Kate Winslet is seen as “Rubenesque,” Rubens’ Venus would be judged enormous, maybe even obese.
In the 1620s, Marie de’ Medici, the queen-mother of France, commissioned Rubens to paint two allegorical cycles now known as the Marie de’ Medici cycle to commemorate her life with the late Henry IV of France. One of those paintings, Rubens’ The Arrival of Marie de’ Medici at Marseilles (above, from 1626), shows the young queen disembarking from the ship that had brought her from her native Florence, where she married Henry IV by proxy. A helmeted, blue-caped embodiment of France greets Marie on the gangplank. Beneath them, three buxom Nereids stand with Poseidon and other mythological sea figures that protected the new Queen on her voyage. Marie de’ Medici may be the intended center of attention, but the Nereids upstage her with their beauty, nudity, and fluidity. The rolls of their flesh roll like the waves themselves, making the sea goddesses seem to move even when standing still. By contrast, Marie seems statuesque in a bad way—cold, lifeless, and literally bloodless. There’s little promise of passion in the proxy marriage between Marie and Henry judging from this picture.
Rubens first wife died in 1626. Four years later, he married a voluptuous 16-year-old beauty named Hélène Fourment. Hélène became the muse of Rubens last years. She modeled at least one, and perhaps all three of the full-figured women in Rubens’ The Three Graces (above, from 1636). Granted, Rubens painted male figures who could use a gym membership, too, in works such as Bacchus (1640), but clearly Rubens’ ideal womanly figure was a full one. I guess it stands to reason that an artist with such a vigorous, omnivorous approach to life and art would admire women who also grabbed all the gusto they could. Rubens art does nothing by half measures, including portraying the female figure. Many primitive cultures worshiped a full-figured female type as the embodiment of fecundity. Despite being surrounded by the trappings of European civilization, Rubens “Rubenesque” ladies embody the fecundity of the primitive drives of his prodigious imagination.
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
I had supper last night with the great-granddaughter of Frederic Church at her home less than a mile from Olana. She said she found one of Church’s journals from his Near East expedition as she was exploring the attic a year or two ago.
“The reason I liked him,” she said, “is he seemed to have no fear.”
During his 1868 expedition to the lost city of Petra, she told me that Church was in mortal danger from the local Bedouin tribes, who had killed an artist in the region not long before. It was considered blasphemy to make graven images. But Church “hired a bunch of people to guide him. He payed them a great deal of money so they didn’t want to kill him.”
At one point the locals blocked his way and threatened his life. Church then asked to borrow a mirror, because “he realized a mirror was a sacred thing.” He took the mirror, and, while the Bedouins weren’t looking, he painted a crack on it. He then showed the cracked mirror to the angry men.
Then, announcing he would restore the mirror to its original condition, “he went behind the tent and erased the crack.” The men believed him to have divine powers, and they alllowed him to pass safely.
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
Here’s a pencil sketch of The Black Friar Pub in London. What attracts me to a scene like this is the weird juxtaposition of elements. The wedge-shaped art nouveau landmark stands alone, surrounded with stark geometric postwar forms.
I used two grades of graphite pencils, an HB and a 3B. I sharpened the soft pencil into a chisel tip, which helped with the treatment of the window details..
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
Louis Daguerre is best known as one of the pioneers of photography, but he was first a painter.
In 1803 he became a pupil of Degotti, a scene painter for the Paris Opera, and soon began he working on panorama paintings. He created enormous realistic depictions of cities and historical scenes.
To add to the illusion of reality, Daguerre’s paintings were arranged in rotundas lit from above. In 1822 he invented the diorama, a form of scenic entertainment that combined the panorama with a “diaphanorama,” which used translucent oiled paper lit from the side in subtly changing vistas.
To audiences of his day, these spectacles must have held the same “gee-whiz” appeal of HDTV or 3D movies in our time.
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Submitted by A Painting for You!
This was another intense study I did of one of Hudson River School Master painters, Jasper Cropsey. I loved the color, light, mood and atmosphere as well as detail in the trees, leaves and grasses. I hope you enjoy this painting as much as I enjoyed painting it! ~ Connie
“But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” ~ I Corinthians 2:9.
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Submitted by A Painting for You!
Imagine yourself being in the Old West, standing out in the open prairie, with the wild open plains, horses running free, the drama in the sky and clouds, teepees on the horizon… It’s anybody’s guess what could happen next. Enjoy!
Prints of this painting are now available in several sizes and options for ordering: Canvas or paper, Rolled in a tube or gallery wrapped, frames in several styles…All options are calculated for you. Click here!
“Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” ~ Psalm 16:11.
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Submitted by A Painting for You!
This is the second in a series of paintings entitled the “Sailboats in the Sunset Series”. This work pictures a beautiful sunset that is also reflected in the ocean. There are sailboats along the horizon and breakers are making their way to the shore. Sunsets and sunrises are my favorite time of day to paint because that’s when you can see the most dramatic lighting. Enjoy!
“Then spake Jesus unto them saying, “I am the Light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” ~ John 8:12
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
Tor.com has just posted a set of my images in their web gallery. The TOR Gallery is a great place to survey what’s going on in contemporary fantasy art. My pictures can be seen here, and all of these will be included in the upcoming book.
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
Here’s a handy way to get a fresh look at a painting. For just a few dollars at an auto part store you can get one of these stick-on convex mirrors.
They help you see your work in a new way because they both reverse and miniaturize your composition, making it immediately clear if you’re getting the Big Statement right.
Remember: objects in mirror are closer than they appear!
Related GJ post on getting a fresh eye and Lorrain mirrors.
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Submitted by Art Blog By Bob
Betalo proved to be an ideal model for exotic dress. Her athletic dancer’s physique and pretty face enhanced the exoticism of the costumes in works such as Dancer of Dehli and Dramatic Dancer, both done in 1916. In that same year of 1916, Henri painted Betalo several times in the nude. In the version above, Henri surrounds the pale-skinned, dark colored beauty with blues, grays, and whites. Like Whistler in works such as Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Little Blue Girl (1898), Henri approaches abstraction in the composition of pure color compliments and contrasts but remains in the figurative tradition through the centering theme of the nude. Betalo must have seemed like a godsend of a model to Henri in her amazing versatility. A living, breathing example of chiaroscuro, Betalo exuded the drama around which Henri could experiment in color with full freedom. Betalo’s natural grace in motion comes across in Henri’s ability to paint her lounging but simultaneously raising herself slightly from the couch, as if anticipation of something or someone.
In the painting of Betalo nude above, also from 1916, Henri surrounds his private dancer with pinks and greens. As with the blue-gray nude above, the colors around her become echoed in her pale skin. Just as the dancing costumes clothed her in other paintings, the colors around Betalo “clothe” her in these nude paintings. There’s also that same sense of movement in Betalo’s reclining pose, as if she’s right at the moment of lifting herself into a new position. I doubt Betalo could hold such a suspended pose for long, but Henri tried to work quickly to get a sense of the essence of the moment. “Do it all in one sitting if you can,” Henri said of capturing the spirit of a model. “In one minute if you can. There is no virtue in delaying.” For Henri, speed and movement were more virtuous than meticulous detail. Henri’s nude paintings of Betalo Rubino and other women around 1915 and 1916 present them as vital, alive, confident women rather than passive objects receiving the artist’s gaze. For many feminist critics, female nudes represent the repressive patriarchy of art history. I agree for the most part. However, Robert Henri’s nudes express rather than repress the fullness of womanhood and present the private dancer to the public eye in all her glory.
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