More Musings on 19th European Century Paintings in the Permanent Collection at the Metropolitan Museum off Art

Gustave Courbet's "Alphonse Promayet." 1881:

Reference Photo (c) Karmen Elsen

I have stopped at this painting several times when browsing the European Painting section.  Here's the Metropolitan Museum link: http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/436008

The painting is much darker and moody than my photo and that is probably why I was drawn to it. This is a painting of Courbet's violinist friend Alphonse Promayet. I studied how he rendered the shadows and the dark side of the face and figures. I am drawn to portraits and subjects in deep shadows in my own artwork and immediately gravitate toward artwork that has deeply dark subjects. I love to study how artists have accomplished bringing the figure, animal or object out of the dark without losing the life and color hidden in the depths. For me, mastery of the darkness without losing the life beneath the shadows is the ultimate goal. Keeping the shadows alive without losing the focus of the subject - that's an art. The shadows cannot be flat as they would be if you used black paint but alive with color no matter how subdued it is. The value of the darks must still be maintained. And Courbet does it so well. 

I hadn't really explored Courbet much but my husband is a fan and has pointed his work out many times.  

I think my recent deep readings on Caravaggio have given me a new found appreciation of how to paint the dark side WELL. It is not that I hadn't seen these works, I just DISCOVERED the luminosity, the depth and the masterful observation Caravaggio and painters like Courbet, Corot, De La Tour, Diego Ribera, and Fantin LaTour.  They did tend towards high contrast paintings that many call tenebrism.  

(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenebrism )

My recent close up study of this painting left me peering into the darkness to see the violin emerge and to see exactly how he managed the effect. Perring through the shadows to find the deep set eyes.  Just pure mastery.  Worth a look at the Metropolitan Musuem of Art...


Fantin LaTour's "Portrait of a Woman."  1885:

Reference (c) Karmen Elsen

Here is another painting that I stare at for a long time from every angle - closeup and from afar. LaTour has not sought to capture his subject enveloped in shadow but he has used such beautiful neutrals and rich darks in her gown that I stop in my tracks every time I pass it.  I think that it is also the expression of the sitter that keeps meenthralled. There is such feeling and emotion there amidst all of the neutrals and darks of his palette of colors.  Her expression  is imperious, haughty, disdainful and for me at least, there is much more beyond those eyes.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art knows little of the sitter and quotes Fantin LaTour's wife as relating in her notebook that the sitter referred to herself as Madame LeRoy but all suspected that was not her real name. She was someone of position no doubt as her companion/husband commissioned a portrait of himself from LaTour the following year.

http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/436295?=&imgNo=0&tabName=gallery-label