The Artist’s Sketchbook

Let us first consider what a sketch is not.  A sketch is not a finished drawing; a finished drawing is often a work of painstaking effort and an artistic product in-and-of-itself – a drawing is its own thing.  A sketch is not a preparatory drawing for a larger work per se; preparatory drawings during the Renaissance, for instance, were works that were made to be used to transfer finished compositions to larger canvases or onto the wet plaster of a fresco.

No.  A sketch, simply, is an artist’s first draft, a rough idea, the idle result of his drawing implement(s) and spare paper.  They are not finished works of art, but, rather, places where he is thinking on paper.  Most every artist of any importance (and most who are not) have kept sketch books – Your Correspondent has been guilty of this, as well.  Artists carry sketch books on vacations, on the subway, at the café or restaurant, at the concert or to the market.  In short, wherever there is life (or landscape!), the working artist takes his sketchbook, ready to think on paper.

And that’s what an artist’s sketchbook is – thinking on paper.  Sketches are not made for the general public, or even for small audiences – they are reference works for the artist as he is working out his ideas, planning out his compositions, or explaining his ideas.

Artists will also add sketches to the darndest things.  Much to the horror of restaurateurs everywhere, I am an inveterate tablecloth sketcher.  Can’t help it – but I do make sure that I doodle in pencil, so as not to ruin the cloth.  I have also added little sketches to the bottom of bills and receipts, and in letters.

Many artists, in fact, have loved to put little drawings in their letters.  Here is a typical letter from Van Gogh:

These are not finished drawings, and are just tossed into the text as an illustration.

Look, here, at Thomas Eakins, who sought to illustrate his letter about furnishings he admired with some quick sketches:

What I find most interesting about the sketches of even the greatest artists is that they are not often all that good.  And that’s the point – a sketch is simply the artist thinking pictorially, because that’s the way artists think.

That was what came to mind during a recent visit to Rome, where I saw a sonnet Michelangelo wrote to a friend (essentially, a poetic letter), about the experience of painting the Sistine Chapel.  (See above.)  The sonnet also has a very loose sketch of himself, arms overhead, brush in hand, performing an impossible task of artistic creation.  The sonnet reads:

Here like a cat in a Lombardy sewer! Swelter and toil!

With my neck puffed out like a pigeon,

belly hanging like an empty sack,

beard pointing at the ceiling, and my brain

fallen backwards in my head!

Breastbone bulging like a harpy’s

and my face, from drips and droplets,

patterned like a marble pavement.

Ribs are poking in my guts; the only way

to counterweight my shoulders is to stick

my butt out. Don’t know where my feet are -

they’re just dancing by themselves!

In front I’ve sagged and stretched; behind,

my back is tauter than an archer’s bow!

This is not an impressive sketch (and, perhaps, not an impressive sonnet), but it is a perfect example of the artist working out his ideas on paper.

More on sketches tomorrow!

George Paul Leroux, Part I

The more I look at pictures, the more I am delighted, moved and intrigued by what I find.  I’m sure that the name Georges Paul Leroux (1877-1957) is one unfamiliar to many, but his work is alternately beautiful and disturbing.  He is something of a forgotten master, and I suspect that this is a result of the historical moment in which he lived, and his stark, bleak representations of The Great War.

Surely a look at the Academic male nude below demonstrates his mastery of form, his coolly controlled drawing and his sensitivity to light and dark.  However, these qualities became less relevant as the Twentieth Century progressed, and the vapid tropes of Modernism came to the fore.  As Leroux grew older, the fundamental artistic language he spoke was lost.

Leroux was born in Paris, son of Gustav Ferdinand Leroux, a printer of art prints.  Leroux and his brother, Auguste, would study art in Trelly, before serving in the 130 Infantry Regiment, completing his military service in Chartres, where he would regularly draw and paint the cathedral.  It was in Chartres that he met painter Paul Jouve (1978-1973), who became his lifelong friend.

Leroux studied at the national School of Decorative Arts and the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, later working in the studio of Leon Bonnat (1833-1922).  Leroux painted many slice-of-life pictures of Paris before going to Rome in 1907.  He would grow to love the Italy, and he would return there almost every year to paint the Italian countryside.  On Friday, we will look at his most beautiful Italian picture.

The Great War, however, changed much of his life.  He would marry Mathilde Gabrielle Planquais in Meudon in 1915, and his international travels were curtailed by the War.  It was after the War that Leroux would paint two of his masterful war pictures.

In Eparges, 1915, Leroux depicts the stark horrors of war in a manner less grotesque than Goya, but equally compelling.  The Great War irrevocably changed the notions of warfare in the popular imagination.  The tens of thousands of dead – an entire Lost Generation – erased visions of heroic leaders cleaving through anonymous cannon fodder, the heavens above heralding the victory of God’s chosen.  Rather, greater access to communications, photographs and written first-hand narratives underscored the fact that war involved vast quantities of mud, blood, pain, and dead men.

It is the dead, in fact, that create the focal point of In Eparges, 1915.  Look at the living figures in this fascinating picture.  The living men find the corpse of a comrade, examining his papers to identify him before lowering him into the grave that the others are digging.  But all of these men are anonymous – faces are turned from us, or in shadow.  It is almost as if the living were the ghosts … and the dead man the only animated figure.

The off white the dead man’s shirt and the focus of light on his white head and hands provide the human focal point. His uniform lies crumpled beside him (obviously stripped off by his brother soldiers) – he is no longer a soldier, a figure representing a nation or an ideology, but simply a dead man.  There is no excessive gore or carnage to inspire horror – it is just our stark humanity laid bare.  That, I think, is the root of the picture’s power.

The landscape is dotted with simple, hand-made crosses; the upturned mud littered with burial tools and stones.  The only hint of transcendence, aside from the peaceful look on the dead man’s face, are the faint stars above.  I cannot but help think the dead man looks at the stars, or that the stars look down on him.  Otherwise, the circumstances surrounding the dead man would be too terrible to contemplate.

Johann Friedrich Overbeck: Doubting Thomas (1851)

We continue our look at Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789 – 1869), leader of the Nazarene Movement which sought to return art to its more Christian, early Renaissance roots.

Fate was kind to Overbeck after his arrival in Rome.  The Prussian consul, Jakob Salomon Bartholdy, commissioned Overbeck and fellow Nazarenes Peter von Cornelius, Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow and Philipp Veit to create a fresco telling the story Joseph and his Brethren for his home, the Palazzo Zuccari.  This led to commissions from Prince Massimo for frescos illustrating Tasso, Dante and Aristotle.  Perhaps this commission did not reflect his High Christian ideals, as he worked on this for 10 years before passing the task onto his friend, painter Joseph von Führich.  Overbeck would then turn to a subject perhaps closer to his heart, the Vision of St. Francis, for the Porziuncola in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli near Assisi.  Rome would remain his artistic and spiritual home until his death in 1869.

Doubting Thomas (or The Incredulity of St. Thomas), painted in 1851, amply displays all the strengths and weaknesses of Overbeck’s work.  The picture is based on the Biblical account of Thomas the Apostle who, when confronted by the resurrected Jesus, insisted on touching His wounds in order to believe it was truly He.  (Hence the common parlance “Doubting Thomas.”)  Once he stuck his finger into Jesus’ wound, he professed his faith – becoming Thomas the Believer.  Jesus says, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”  (The negative effect unquestioning faith has had on humankind is incalculable – but that is a subject for a different blog.)

Overbeck frames the central images of Christ and Thomas with a wonderful circular window, further enhancing the centrality of the images with the natural light of the sky.  The tiled floor and framed central figures call to mind such early Renaissance masters as Masaccio (1401 – 1428), an artist linking the Gothic and Renaissance traditions.

All the figures seem too posed for any sense of naturalism, such as Christ’s upraised arm allowing Thomas to touch the wound while bestowing what looks like a blessing at the same time.  This Christ is also much younger and more approachable than the rather patrician Jesus of Christ in the House of Mary and Martha.  The distribution of weight on both of His legs also seems reminiscent of classical statuary – something which certainly would not have been Overbeck’s wish.

Though certainly a ‘good’ painting, again I cannot help but wonder at what Overbeck was seeking to toss aside.  Below is a painting of The Incredulity of St. Thomas by a late Renaissance master, Caravaggio (1571-1610).  It is by any yardstick a magnificent painting – and more human in scope and feel than that of Overbeck.  More importantly, Christ and his disciples are in no way diminished by the blatant humanity of the piece.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Thomas is a real human figure lined by care, and the wound in Christ’s chest is certainly a horrific reminder of His ordeal.  Granted the different styles, aesthetics and eras of both artists, but why would Overbeck believe a less sophisticated approach to his art equaled deepened religious conviction?  It is a question similar to those of today, who think religious devotion equals a distrust of science and a renunciation of the modern world – a world which, to the dismay of some, continues to spin.