Painting 1 The Practice of painting
PART 2 Close to home
Project 4 Drawing and painting interiors
Exercise 1 Research point
Research the works of the Dutch realist genre painters and choose two or three that particularly appeal to you find out what you can about the artist and their intentions look at the devices employed by the painter to draw the viewer into the experience of the occupants of the room
Look at interiors that have been painted by various artists from different periods. Look especially at how illusions of space have been created how doorways and windows form a part of the composition and how furniture and objects are depicted either as a central focus for the painting or as secondary to any human drama.
The term Genre was not even a word in seventeenth century Holland and it was not until 1976 at an exhibition in the Rijksmuseum that the works of 17th Century artists such as Breugal van Honthotst, Brewer, Steen, Dou, de Hooch, Vermeer and Maes were grouped together as the Dutch Genre painters.
Dutch Genre paintings were of everyday life, but they were posed for in the artists’ studios many had a double meaning attached to them and many involved musicians, soldiers and brothels, others involved disorderly households in various states of dishevelment and yet more involved quiet domestic scenes. They were not portraits but some of the same models appear in different guises in several pictures and are realistic enough to be recognised as such. The genre grew out of the works of Peter Breugal the elder and his contemporaries in the latter half of the sixteenth century. At the time Holland was in the throes of the reformation and the Protestants did not need altar pieces to fill their churches and chapels as it did not agree with their new doctrines. As a result of this contraction of the art market, Dutch artists began to concentrate on genre pictures, Breugal became known as Peter the Peasant for his many pictures of peasant weddings and celebrations and ordinary daily life Gombrich p280) This became a tradition that lasted through the whole of the Dutch golden age and even into modern art, I am thinking principally of Courbet, Van Gogh and Hopper
In the seventeenth century Holland was the greatest trading nations in the world and all kinds of treasures from its empire arrived on its shores many of these items such as oriental rugs appeared in some of these paintings as symbols of the wealth of the patron who had commissioned the painting. The sale of paintings was relative to the craft of painting in the pictures and so the Dutch artists of the period were highly skilled technically in order to satisfy the taste of their patrons.
If I had to choose 2 they would be 2 that I have seen in real life the first I saw in about 1990 in the Rijksmuseum and the second in an exhibition in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Figure 1 (2.4.1.1) The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer (source)
Vermeer uses the perspective of the table and the window cill to draw the viewer into the room the basket and utensil hanging on the wall give a firm sense of believable space between the edge of the window and the rear wall. The way that the shadows fall across the walls is a masterful rendition of light in a real space. By adding the corner of the room and the edge of the floor solidly grounds the architectural space such that you want to turn your head to see what is in the other side of the room to the right of the milkmaid. The small box on the floor gives a further sense of flatness to the floor, Vermeer has created a room that you can walk into and look at the ceiling, you had to check back at the painting then to see if there was a ceiling, there isn’t but Vermeer had planted the image of that ceiling in your mind, and you can see it, and how the light plays across it without it even being there and somehow you know that it is early in the morning in this room but no one but Vermeer told you that.
Figure 2 (2.4.1.2) The Lacemaker by Johannes Vermeer (source)
This is a painting from later in Vermeer’s career, again he draws the eye into the space using the perspective of the furniture and cushion but slowly as the eye lingers to examine the detail of the threads and sewing paraphernalia on the tables now that your eye is relaxed Vermeer gives you a young girl engrossed in her sewing. The depth of the figure further increases the space in the painting and although there is only a blank wall behind the figure you can construct the space of the room in your mind, because of the way the light falls across this wall and you know that her mum has placed the table in this position in the room so that it gets plenty of light and doesn’t strain her eyes as she sews. Who told you that? Vermeer did of course, he only had to slow down your eye so that you could think about things.
Moving on just a little, Nicholas Maes treats space in a very different way to Vermeer. He uses the technique of chiaroscuro to establish the depth in his scene with a strong light in the foreground and an atmospherically weaker light in the rear. The scale of the figures in perspective also promotes the sense of depth in the scene and again the eye is slowed down as it lingers over the unwashed pots. The figure of the older servant, and her gesture draw you into the space, She is obviously explaining the situation of the unwashed pots to you, her Master, but you are much more interested to see who has come to visit in the front room.
Figure 3 (2.4.1.3) The Idle Servant by Nicholas Maes (source)
Figure 4 (2.4.1.4) The potato eaters by Vincent Van Gogh (source)
Van Gogh had a very strong sense of internal space in this painting from the early part of his career the perspective is sometimes there and sometimes not This has a tendency to flatten the picture space so that the eye remains focused on the action of the central figures rather than exploring the space of the room. It is almost as if the characters are positioned in front of a stage backdrop and the real sense of space is conjured up by the use of the warm yellows in the foreground against the cool greens of the background. I am particularly impressed by the light fitting, which somehow manages to provide a link between Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding and Picasso’s Guernica. It is usual to see the floor in an interior, Vincent merely indicates where this would be by indicating it by the position of the window in the back wall this is just enough to stop your eye looking for it and stay concentrated on the unfolding drama.
Figure 5 (2.4.1.5) The red room by Henri Matisse (source)
Here is another painting of a woman quietly going about her business in an interior space there seems to be a theme running down the centuries that the interior of the home is a very feminist space. This picture was painted in 1908, not long after the Cezanne Retrospective in Paris and there are definite echoes of Cezanne in the still life of the objects on the table. Matisse was very interested in pattern and by using the same pattern in the table cloth and the wall he has flattened the perspective in the room turning the painting into a flat decorative panel. If you look closely the chairs, table and the view through the window follow the rules of perspective yet give a distinct feeling of vertigo that enhances the swirling patterns of the fabric. The figure is subdued enough so that the eye does not concentrate on it but meanders across the painting examining the pattern effects. Matisse was a master colourist and the contrast of the red room against the cool green exterior keeps the space of the room in your face and intensifies the redness of the room whist the green gives the eye a place to rest from the red so that successive contrast can come into play.
Figure 6 (2.4.1.6) Study for the nurse in the battleship Potemkin by Francis Bacon (source)
Bacon has established a three dimensional space in his interior by merely scratching the paint surface this gives a convincing sense of space even though the floor and ceiling do not have a common vanishing point. The furniture is also scratched into the paint surface and I find it quite amazing how my eye can conjure up a winged chair from so few descriptive marks. Bacon has used the contrast of the reds and greens to firmly plant the figure in the foreground of the space he has created. After the colour excesses earlier in the 20th century Bacon gives us colours that could have come straight off a renaissance palette.
So there you have it, space, time and a little bit of continuum.
My Learning Log 
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