Zuloaga Paints Patterns

Ignacio Zuloaga, Self-Portrait, 1942

Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta (1870-1945) was an exceptional painter whose solid, largely earth-toned figure and genre paintings served for many Spanish critics and devotees as a kind of sober antidote to the sun-filled brilliance of the work of his contemporary, the great Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923).  Both were drawn to depicting scenes from the culture and folklore of their native land, but with very different means to that end.  Arguments raged over which artist captured the true soul of Spain in his work, the Valencian Sorolla or the Basque Zuloaga.  Sorolla employed his impressionistic, lightning-fast bravura brushwork mainly in the great outdoors to depict Spain as a land of sunny days and happy people.  Zuloaga’s Spain was a darker, more introspective place.

Portrait of Maurice Barres on Toledo Background, 1913

Gregorio in Sepulveda, 1908

Zuloaga was primarily a studio painter in the tradition of the Old Masters he revered and often referenced in his work, particularly Velasquez, Goya and El Greco.  His 1913 portrait of the French writer and nationalist politician Maurice Barres, author of “El Greco, or the Secret of Toledo,” pays homage to El Greco’s iconic view of that city painted some 300 years earlier. Many of Zuloaga’s paintings have a similar tonality.  His superb handling of the earth colors marvelously captures their sincere, natural beauty.  I have long felt that the earth colors have a spiritual quality to them.   No other pigments can match them for depicting human flesh.  We are of the earth and therefore the earth pigments are of us.

One of the things that fascinate me about Zuloaga’s paintings is his handling of the complicated fabric patterns he often used decoratively in his figure work, which has been characterized by many reviewers as “theatrical” in nature, and that’s a pretty good description. 

He didn’t slavishly copy these textile designs, as seems to be the practice of most of today’s photographic realists.  It’s a mystery to me how he was able to paint intricate patterns so boldly, precisely and convincingly from life without apparent effort.  Did he do a careful preparatory drawing of the exact shapes with a mannequin in place?  Did he alter the shapes to suit the composition?  Did he just invent some of the patterns?  How long did he work on those textile designs?  There is a similar boldness and solidity to his figures, as well, so his approach to painting these textile patterns seems entirely appropriate. 

In a 1916 book for a touring exhibition in America of Zuloaga’s paintings, the author, his friend Rita de Acosta Lydig, a beautiful American socialite who was famously painted by Sargent, Boldini, and Zuloaga himself, gives some indication that these patterns were primarily aesthetic creations in keeping with the painter’s “love of arabesque, of formal distribution and balance.”  She says Zuloaga made no preliminary sketches and used only written notes to suggest future compositions, which he undertook only after long deliberation and not until the spirit moved him.  He began his work with a bold charcoal drawing of the main outlines of the subject on a canvas toned a light gray.  From then on he painted without hesitation, employing a limited color palette to depict his subjects with firm contours in a manner she described as “sculptural.”

Zuloaga told her during one of their many conversations that he abhorred “with all my being mere slavish fidelity to fact -- the stupid and servile expedient of those who are content simply to copy nature.  I hold that the painter is entitled to arrange, compose, magnify, and exalt those elements that go to make up a given scene.   How is it possible for anyone still to believe that we should prostrate ourselves before actuality, especially today when we have at our disposal the camera, the cinematograph and color photography…The longer I live the more I detest those trivial, snapshot effects without a trace of individuality, of strangeness, or imaginative force.”

Zuloaga’s attitude, expressed so long ago, was perhaps influenced by the presumed but unproven use of the camera by his rival Sorolla.   It’s too bad he isn’t around to give this lecture today, broadcast live in HD in movie theaters in every city, to a stadium full of today’s photographic realists, who are bent on capturing every pore on the surface of human skin almost as well as any digital camera can.  But I guess it would just be a hopeless cause.

Whether Zuloaga invented his fabric patterns out of “whole cloth,” or altered the actual patterns significantly to suit the rhythmic composition of his paintings, this integrated, decorative work is truly amazing.  It seems to have been accomplished effortlessly in the course of his painting, and not as the result of some masochistic ritual.

I’m enormously impressed, regrettably, by painters who have the stamina and brush control necessary to paint fabric from life in great detail -- folds, patterns, tapestries, oriental rugs, intricate lace and such.  I get frustrated very easily when painting such things with my direct painting method and give up well short of paying proper homage to the designer or maker of the fabric.  I also don’t have the patience for carefully copying lettering on labels, newspaper headlines, and the like.  In short, putting in precise detail of any kind is damned hard work!

I remember that the late Ray Goodbred, one of my teachers at the Art Students League, used to advise us to paint just a few details near the center of interest and loosely suggest the rest.  I’m sure he would have gotten an argument from Daniel Greene, his classmate under the tutelage of Robert Brackman, who seems to enjoy painting every tile on a subway wall.  Flower painters also used to advise doing just a few of the important blooms in a bouquet and suggesting the rest.  There are a couple of Realist painters today who have built successful careers around this selective approach.  Scores of their students closely replicate their visually appealing, idiosyncratic techniques in lockstep and do quite well themselves in the art marketplace.

But for those who paint directly from nature without a special flair, suggesting detail is not good enough for the majority of today’s art collectors, who are in love with photographic rendering.  A perfect example of what many buyers of contemporary Realist art want is what they get from William Acheff, a southwestern painter of Indian paraphernalia.  His Native Indian potteries are portrayed to perfection.  And he puts highlights on every last one of those tiny beads in a beaded Indian moccasin.  Phew!  He does extremely well.  So do many other studio painters who focus on flatly rendering, in a photographic manner, all surface details of old kitchen items, plastic toys and anything else they have lying around the house.

There is a world of difference, though, between today’s painters of infinite detail and the Old Masters who painted in a similar vein.  The old painters established a solid, volumetric foundation first, in an atmospheric setting, and only then painted their incredible details to a fare-thee-well.  They managed somehow to keep those details subordinate to the beauty of the picture as a whole, only revealing them in all their glory upon close inspection.   I’m thinking at once of the linen collar ruffs often seen in Dutch 17^th Century portraits and the delicately embroidered dresses in French and Italian women’s portraits of the 18^th Century.

Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt,1628,Wallace Collection

Joseph Siffred Duplessis,  “Madame de Saint-Maurice,” 1776,

 Metropolitan Museum of Art

These painters had such fantastic brush handling skills that it may have been possible for them to freely interpret intricate textile designs as Zuloaga seems to have done, but in a much more subtle manner.  Who really knows?  Some of it looks so authentic that I guess they just turned the TV off and kept on trucking until they got all the fabric embellishments exactly right, as we attempt to do today.

It is really remarkable how the Old Masters, using finely pointed brushes loaded with fluid, full-bodied paint, made flawless calligraphic strokes to place the minutest details in low relief on the surface of the canvas.  Forever after, painters have been searching for an oil painting medium to match these “secrets of the Old Masters.”  The jury is still out on maroger and all the other “miracle” mediums introduced over the years.  But I believe that the remarkable effects obtained by these earlier painters were primarily due to their extraordinary paint handling skills acquired through long apprenticeships, which they entered into at a very early age.  This training enabled them to gain complete control of their materials, which included fluid, hand-ground paints and unremarkable, quick-drying oils.  We are just guessing when we try to modify commercial tubed paints in hopes of achieving similar effects.

You might see an incredible feat of lace painting by a painter today, but it literally shouts to the viewer, “Look at all my fine holes.  Didn’t the painter work hard to put them all in!”   Today it’s all about slavishly copying each little detail purely for photographic effect.  The resulting work looks flat as a pancake and lacks any discernible pictorial sentiment.  Say goodnight, Zuloaga.