A Museum Director

Jose Villegas y Cordero, The Slipper Merchant, 1872, Oil on Canvas, 19 x 25.6 in., The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Jose Villegas, Ladies in a Garden, Oil on Canvas, 16.93 x 22.83 in., Private Collection

Jose Villegas, The Tennis Player (Pablo Ramos Villegas, the Artist’s nephew), 1905, Oil on Canvas, 74 ¾ x 35 ½ in., Private Collection

 

 

 

Most directors of major museums today have art history backgrounds, but when great European museums such as The Louvre, The Prado, The National Gallery and The Tate were getting started, painters ran the show.

Jose Villegas y Cordero (1844-1921), for example, was a very accomplished painter who served as Director of The Prado from 1901 to 1918.  He had a fine sense of color and could draw extremely well, thanks to rigorous academic training.

Villegas y Cordero began his studies in his early teens at the School of Fine Arts in his native Seville.  When he was 23, a patron sent him off to Madrid to study with Federico Madrazo, a member of the illustrious Madrazo family of painters.  Many years later, Villegas was to follow his mentor as Director of The Prado.  Federico, in turn, had succeeded his father, Jose de Madrazo y Agudo, who served as Director of the Prado from 1838 to 1851.  I’m getting unjustly sidetracked here by associated data, but the Madrazo family also includes Federico’s son, Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta (1841–1920), the most well-known of the formidable Spanish painting clan and one of my favorite painters.

In Madrid, Villegas made frequent trips to The Prado to copy Velazquez, whose work inspired him to develop a loose and spontaneous manner of painting, according to his biographers.  Villegas also admired the exuberant brushwork and Orientalist works of another teacher, Mariano Fortuny y Marsal (1838-1874).  Villegas went on sketching trips to Morocco to gather material for his own Orientalist paintings.  For a number of years, he had a very successful career in Rome and Venice, painting Orientalist, History and Italian Renaissance themes.  In Rome, Villegas inherited the mantle of Fortuny, who died in Rome from a malarial fever he contracted while plein air painting in the summer of his 36th and last year of life.  By the way, Fortuny was married to Federico Madrazo’s daughter, Cecilia, in case you didn’t know.  There was a lot of social networking among painters in the 19th Century. 

One of Villegas’ Orientalist paintings online is The Slipper Merchant, which is in the collection of The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.  The Museum has this to say about the painting:  “In the dimly lit, richly colored interior of a North African shop, a turbaned merchant serves a customer seated on a divan. Kneeling in front is an attendant, and barely discernible in the background is a craftsman at work. To the left, a man smokes a hookah. Villegas has adopted a subject made popular by Mariano Fortuny, but rather than exploring light effects, he provides an almost overwhelmingly detailed array of bric-a-brac. Even the picture frame, custom-ordered for this painting, is inscribed in Naskh script: "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet."

Near the end of his very successful career in Rome, Villegas was named Director of the Spanish Academy of Fine Arts in Rome.  Two years later he left for Madrid to become Director of The Prado.

I wonder what the museums would be like today if painters still called the shots, rather than medieval tapestry scholars and the like, who have to behave like high-end carnival barkers to pull in the crowds.  All the old painters I’ve met remember the halcyon days when they had the painting galleries all to themselves whenever they visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Wouldn’t it be nice to return to those golden days of yore?  Fighting through hoards of bewildered, bored and bellicose tourists is pure torture for any lover of painting.

Mario Fortuny, The Odalisque, 1861, Oil on Cardboard, 22.4 x 31.9 in., Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona

Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta (1841-1920), Fond Memories, Oil on Canvas, 32 x  36 in., Private Collection

What if I am?

The BBC had a long-running television show called “The Good Old Days,” which recreated the spirit and look of the British music hall of the “Gay 90’s,” to the extent of having the members of the audience dress up in period costumes and sing along to some of the tunes.  The show ran from 1953 to 1983.  I had never seen it until somebody uploaded a bunch of highlights onto YouTube a couple of years ago.

One of the acts was a little guy wearing a snappy red bandleader outfit, with a big bass drum strapped to his back and cymbals fixed on top of his head.  He performed a frantically comic version of “McNamara’s Band.”  When he first pranced onto the stage in this ridiculous getup, he stopped, looked squarely at the audience and, with a scowl on his face, declared, “What if I am?” in a defensive tone.  He got a big laugh.

“What if I am” is a neat phrase that has been sneaking into my thoughts lately.  It would make a good title for a motivational self-help book with a confrontational bite to it.  You might also say, “I’m doing my own thing and what’s it to you.”  Might be a best-seller on Amazon.

.

Not that it matters to anybody else, of course, but that’s kind of how I’ve conducted my negligible painting career for many years.  I have no interest in following the crowd to make a buck.  I have absolutely no burning desire to blaze new ground with my painting.  The things I like to paint are simply the beautiful things painters have always painted from life. Accurately recording any old scene from contemporary life, like strip malls with lots of utility poles, traffic lights, signage and parked cars in them, or village intersections with lots of utility poles, traffic lights, signage and parked cars in them, or urban environments with lots of utility poles, traffic lights, signage and cars in them, as former advertising illustrators and graphic designers are good at doing, is not for me.  Snapshots tell you all you want to know about such scenes.  We are advised to paint 24/7 and not wait for inspiration.  But it seems to me there’s no point to painting, or engaging in any creative art, for that matter, if you are not inspired.  We’re not digging ditches here.  I’m not supposed to be inspired to paint?  How is that possible?   My inspiration comes from looking at nature and looking at beautiful paintings.  Pretty original, huh?  That’s all there is to that, and really all that I can say about my own painting.  You look, you like, you don’t like.   

Painters are initially attracted to painting and other forms of art because we love creating it.  Millions of deadbeat Americans like me now call their passion their profession these days, even though many of my comrades at easel have waited to take up painting until the kids are grown or they have retired from another career.  This late start in the brush-cleaning routine makes them easy prey for the bottom-feeding artists who figure out ways to profit off that passion.  These profiteers are in high gear now that warm weather has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere.

I have to say I’m a devout curmudgeon concerning the art business.  What if I am?  I’ve been paying attention to all the art marketing magazines for years and haven’t seen fit to embrace any equally satisfying alternative attitude.   Of course, I could just smile and try to take advantage myself of all the marketing opportunities available for artists, but I’ve got far too much integrity to sell art like life insurance or encyclopedias door-to-door.  A Lutheran life insurance salesman knocked on our door in my little home town when I was 12 years old and sold me and my brother $1,000 life insurance policies, something every child should have, considering the potential disasters lying in wait when puberty strikes.  You never know what can happen to you, after all.  He opined flatteringly that I would make an excellent man of the cloth, so of course he got the cash from this youngster of integrity and I got that valuable Lutheran life insurance policy.  It expired in a year, and I’ve resisted all temptation to purchase another policy from the various purveyors, praise the Lord.  But then I’ve never met another Lutheran life insurance salesman, either.  And now AARP won’t leave me alone.

I recently looked into an online gallery that wants to attract “emerging and mid-career” artists with “a positive attitude.”  That leaves us me out.  Who wants to promote the work of a curmudgeonly artist well past mid-career? 

Right now there is a mountainous flurry of happy painting experiences waiting round the bend, as artists traipse hither and yon to pick the pockets of millions of other artists through useless enterprises such as vanity workshops, plein air painting excursions, conventions, instructional books and videos, pay-to-watch demos, and much more. 

But everybody seems to have a jolly good time spending their money on these communal endeavors.   Somebody is hosting a week-long workshop in the fall at a Happy Trails ranch miles from nowhere in sagebrush country.  Dinner at the bunkhouse is $60 bucks, and McDonald’s takeout is probably not an option.   I don’t know any artists in New York City who can afford such extravagances.  Of course, I don’t know many artists.  But somebody else is probably paying the bill for most of those who attend these art-related social events anyway. 

Then there are the handyman artists who produce unnecessary custom art supplies like pochade boxes, pre-primed art panels,  giant double-mast easels for your 8 by 10 foot studio with low ceilings, and exclusive brands of oil paints “without fillers” to satisfy the voracious appetites of profligate artists and the credit card companies. 

Whenever I see the phrase, “call for entries” in the art magazines, I want to scream.  Many artists do answer the call, but few are chosen.  Why should I pay an entry fee of $40 bucks for juried exhibitions and risk getting rejected so you and your friends can socialize on a regular basis at swell receptions for the chosen few, most of whom are members of the sponsoring art club?  And I just saw that an art supply manufacturer is sponsoring a contest with a $40 entry fee.  Most of the prizes are this company’s own art supplies, which I never use.

None of this nonsense is necessary for you painters out there, and it will only confuse you anyway.  Continue your “home schooling” after your studies and paint whatever you like that is extremely convenient and comfortable for you to paint.  Never walk more than a few blocks from your studio to find your subject matter.  Paint only by natural light, even when it is overcast to the point of being nearly unable to see your subject matter.   Don’t spend more than $6 or $7 for a small tube of paint, no matter what the color is.  Buy the big tubes of brands your rich friends turn up their noses at.  Avoid juried shows like the plague.  Paint your subjects in the way you alone are capable of painting them at the time of their execution.  And unless you are a mad genius, I can guarantee that you will end up an alienated “starving artist” just like me.  Ah, yes, “What if I am?”

 

Sir Thomas Takes Advice

Thomas Lawrence, Elizabeth Jennings, 1799, Oil on Canvas, 50 by 40 in., Private Collection

Thomas Lawrence, The Calmady Children, 1823, Oil on Canvas, 30 7/8 x 30 1/8 in., Metropolitan Museum of Art

Thomas Lawrence, Lady Maria Conyngham, 1824-25, Oil on Canvas, 36 ¼ by 28 ¼ in., Metropolitan Museum of Art

I may have mentioned this before, but I hate having people try to tell me how to paint or what to paint.  When I began painting in oils more than 30 years ago, I felt that at last I had found something in my life that I loved doing and had some control over, and I don’t want anybody else giving me advice on how to “improve” my paintings.  They are my creations and they are what they are, for better or for worse.  I think most painters feel as I do, even though we are not talented enough to produce masterpieces and will likely remain anonymous and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. 
 

If Sir Thomas Lawrence P.R.A. (1769-1830) had felt the same way about taking advice, you might not have heard of him either.  Sir Thomas is one of the greatest of all the many wonderful portrait painters working in the British Isles from the 17^th to the early 20^th Centuries, capturing on canvas the characteristic fair complexion of the natives, which takes the light so well, is lovely to look at and ideal for replicating in oil paint with copious amounts of white paint and touches of red and yellow ochre. 

Portrait painting became the preeminent art form in that once-mighty kingdom after Anthony Van Dyck settled in London in 1632.  Somebody once said Van Dyck showed the English portrait painters how to paint their countrymen.  Somebody also said that portraiture has been in decline ever since his death.  And somebody else likened the thought that Van Dyck might have retouched anything on a portrait head, after his rapid painting in one sitting into a tacky surface, to be rather like “spitting in church.”  One look at a Van Dyck portrait and you agree with them.

Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641), Cornelius Van der Geest, 1620, Oil on Panel, 37.5 by 32.5 cm, National Gallery, London

Lawrence succeeded Reynolds and Gainsborough in carrying on the tradition of portraiture in the grand manner established by Van Dyck.   He was something of a child prodigy with his gift for getting a likeness.  When he was around six years old he began helping his hapless innkeeper father pay the bills by either reciting poetry or drawing profile portraits.  As a young man, he learned how to handle oil paint with a brush better than most other painters of his day.  This enviable virtuosic facility, coupled with his god-given talent for capturing the spirit of life in his sitter’s faces, propelled Lawrence to fame as Europe’s premier portrait painter.  And if you love looking at outstanding portraiture, you have to smile when viewing Lawrence’s delightful depictions of animated young female faces.  His Royal Academy colleagues recognized his genius by electing him their President, succeeding Benjamin West.

But Lawrence was primarily self-taught, which is a fatal defect in lesser artists who aspire to paint from life in a traditional manner.  He skipped the cast drawings during his brief stay at the Royal Academy to concentrate on his commissioned portrait work.  Maybe that explains why I’ve always felt his full-length compositions and drawing of the sitter’s extremities do not match the quality of his “headshots.”  The voluminous, body-concealing fashions of the day were a great help to Sir Thomas and his fellow portrait painters because they could fill their large canvases decoratively and avoid grappling with uncompromising anatomical accuracy.

Perhaps this lack of academic training is the reason Lawrence apparently didn’t mind receiving critical advice when he was working on a major full-length portrait, unlike most painters today who bridle at the merest hint that their photographic confections might not be picture perfect. 

When painting his 1799 portrait of Elizabeth Jennings, for example, Lawrence, who was 30 years old at the time, took so much advice from his close friend Joseph Farington, a landscape painter and noted diarist, that he should have been ashamed of himself.  Farington did everything but paint the picture for him, it seems.  All the sordid details can be found in the catalog for Christie’s auction of British and Irish art in London on Nov. 11, 1999.  Christie’s transcribed Farington’s diary entry of March 17, 1799, in which he recounts all the advice he gave Lawrence regarding this portrait.  I found Farington’s account fascinating and somewhat surprising, considering the high regard I’ve always had for Sir Thomas.  I’ve done a tiny bit of cosmetic editing of Farington’s diary entry to make the sentences less choppy and a little easier to read.

Elizabeth Jennings was celebrated for her beauty, Christie’s tells us in its painstaking research into this portrait.  Farington said “the beautiful Miss Jennings” had no serious competition in London’s social whirl “during two or three seasons successively.”  He was eager to follow the progress of her portrait in Lawrence’s studio and discussed the portrait over breakfast with Lawrence when it was nearly complete.

Farington writes, “I told him that it was a picture of a higher order than any female portrait I had seen of his painting -- more sober and solid, and free from flickering lights.  The principal defect appeared to me to be that the arms did not appear to be of the same flesh as the face and neck, but too cold and purply, and that the light sash which was thrown round the waist and arms was too much of the same colour with that of the skin, the whole too pinky. He admitted readily the truth of the remark. I said there wanted an opposition -- a change of colour to give value to the flesh, and to produce richness. I mentioned that possibly a little blue might be of service if it could be introduced.  He received all I said very kindly, and declared that my opinion had at different times been of more use to him than that of any other person.  He asked me if I thought he should put into the Exhibition [Royal Academy] any whole lengths of ladies, I told him by no means, unless they are as well painted as that of Miss Jennings.”

Lawrence subsequently asked his friend to drop by on the following Sunday to discuss finishing touches to the portrait, and there was still much about the work that troubled Farington.

“We then looked at his portrait of Miss Jennings now in its frame.  I saw that the light on the picture was too strong and we agreed that it would be best to glaze it into shade, and then by reflected lights only.  I went home and returned to him after a few hours and found the picture prodigiously benefitted by alteration.  He then tried pink and blue on the shoe.  Those colours did not answer.  I recommended yellow brown, which answered, and gave value to many other colours.  I told him the neck had the appearance of coarseness from a fat wheal in it, and did not seem to be the neck of that face.  He felt the observation immediately.  I then recommended to him to try the effect of a strong yellow colour about the right arm above the light, to pass round bracelet form.  He did and was delighted with it.  I then recommended to him to make the upper part of the sky of a more grey silvery colour -- at present it is of a tanny, leathery tint.  I left him making the alterations...”

Phew!  After a session of such potent advice, even coming from a close friend, I just might want to give up painting or shoot myself.  But the great Sir Thomas apparently did as he was told in every instance, according to Farington.  I'm surprised Farington didn't say anything about that rather awkward hand positioned at her waist.  This portrait was a rather early work by Lawrence, and I wonder if he needed, or was as eager, to accept so much painting advice later on in his career when he was piling up accolades for his work.

When the portrait of Miss Jennings was exhibited to great acclaim at the Royal Academy, Farington wrote that it “caused great alarm among the portrait painters…West said it made all the other portraits of women look like dowdies.”  Farington must have been very pleased at having played so large a role in the final product.

Now about that "shoe" Farington “coloured” for Lawrence.  You might notice that there are no shoes, or legs for that matter, in the painting of Miss Jennings auctioned off by Christie’s.  That’s because the new owner of the painting in 1912 had it reduced to its present size for some reason.  It’s easy to lop off disturbing parts of a painting, and often necessary for the emotional health of the painter or the owner of a painting.  Maybe Miss Jennings would still have at least her one shoe on if Lawrence had trusted his original instincts to paint it "pink and blue." Maybe the owner was just sick of looking at that “yellow brown shoe" suggested by Farington.  Maybe the full-length just didn’t fit over the new owner’s fireplace.  Whatever.  

Joseph Farington (1747-1821), Scotch Landscape, Watercolor, 20 ¾ by 33 ¾ in., Private Collection