8 Interesting Facts About Artists From History
Image: Michelangelo’s painting on top of the Palace of Versailles, by Adriana Geo on Unsplash
It’s late on a Friday afternoon as I’m sitting down to write this article. It’s a public holiday, which means it feels more like a Saturday than a Friday. My empty easel stands next to my desk, which faces the window, and outside the window hangs the grapevine. In Summer it makes a huge mess, dropping heavy bunches of overripe grapes onto the deck while it attracts the possums and small Asian paper wasps like ants to a picnic. But, in its defence, it does provide a lovely thick green curtain of privacy, shielding me off from the road outside and the neighbours across the way. So in autumn and winter, the vines are bare and the possums and wasps disappear along with any semblence of privacy. Everything I do at my easel and desk is now open to the neighbours and anyone who walks up the road and happens to turn their head in my direction.
On my desk, in front of me, perched on top of the two storage drawers that hold all my pastel pencils, is one of my favourite art history books of all time. It’s big enough to be a doorstop and it’s called, simply, Leonardo Da Vinci, by Walter Isaacson. It’s a brilliant book, and unlike many biographies, it’s a great read right from page one.
It was while reading this book that I learnt an interesting fact about Leonardo di ser Piero Da Vinci (1452 - 1519). I usually associate Da Vinci with his anatomically correct and highly detailed drawings of people and animals, his mechanical inventions, the Vitruvian Man, and, of course the Mona Lisa. I knew that he was an all round highly intelligent and skilled man, filled with natural curiosity and great observational powers.
“Leonardo is also well known to historians of optics, because he provided one of the very first studies of the penumbra…The penumbra denotes the partial shadow, that is, the mix of light and shade that occurs when the light source is greater than the opaque body.”
(https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/research/projects/FG_Dupre_Da_Vinci_Treatise_on_Shadows)
Image: Madonna of the Carnation, by Da Vinci (Wikipedia public domain)
But what I didn’t know was that Da Vinci actually spent more time thinking, observing and writing about shadows than about any other topic. Isn’t that amazing? Here is this brilliant man, with an intellect that was clearly above normal, skinning corpses to find out exactly what lies beneath and how it all works together, inventing war machines that speaks of an imagination and ideas that were way ahead of his time, painting people that look beautifully three dimensional and alive… and yet the thing that captivates his attention most of all is shadows.
This is what fascinates me about art history. The artists of old were, afterall, just people like you and me, each one with his or her own eccentricities, problems to overcome, life circumstances to deal with and thoughts that we might not expect him or her to have. If we look closely, we can find aspects of ourselves echoed in the personalities of old. As you read about the artist below, ask yourself which aspects of you were also reflected in that personality.
Claude Monet (1840-1926)
“Trains were stopped, platforms cordoned off and the engines, fully stoked to belch out as much steam as Monet wanted.” (Karin Sagner-Duchting, Monet, 1998.)
Image: Water Lilies and the Japanese Bridge, 1897–1899, Princeton University Art Museum
Few people would have as much confidence as Monet, and while we mostly assocaite him with waterlillies nowadays, it was actually light that fascinated him. Like many Impressionists, Monet was trying to capture the way the light plays on various subjects. In fact, he was so interested in light, that when he saw the way the early morning sun played on the steam that arose from the trains at the Station of Gare Saint-Lazare in Argenteuil, he arranged with the station master to have the departure times of the trains delayed by half an hour so that he could paint the sunlight in the steam at the exact right time. So the next time you feel a lack of confidence about approaching an art gallery or private buyer, or making a sales call, think about approaching your local train station and requesting the train schedule move up for half an hour just to allow you to paint them.
2. Gustav Klimt (1862 - 1918)
What I love about this Austrian painter’s art is the bold use of colour, symbols and patterns, but without making paintings that look childish or amateurish. I really enjoy looking at his paintings, and I often wondered about his sources of creativity. It turns out that Klimt was practising what Austin Kleon refers to in his book, “Steal Like and Artist”. Klimt really enjoyed visiting museums and galleries, where he filled his creative cup with visual stimuli, especially from Syrian, Greek, Egyptian and Chinese art, taking note of everything from architecture to pottery to paintings to the other people visiting the institution, in his little red sketchbook, which went everywhere with him. Later, he would use his sketches to embellish his own paintings with the ideas that were sparked in him by looking at other people’s art. No one creates in a vacuum, after all.
3. Georgia O’Keeffe (1887 - 1986)
"It seems to be my mission in life to wait on a dog."
https://www.anothermag.com/design-living/2391/georgia-okeeffes-chow-chows
Image: Georgia O’Keeffe - Blue and Green Music, 1921 (Wikipedia public domain)
Georgia O’Keeffe is mostly known for her close-up abstractions of flowers, but did you know that she was really attached to her dogs? She was devoted to the Chow-Chow breed, and owned six of them in her lifetime. From what I read, it sounds like she was really close to them, and treated them more like family members than like pets. She fondly referred to them as “little people”. I wrote about Georgia O-Keeffe and her fascination with her Chow-Chows here, if you want to read more about it.
4. Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas a.k.a Edgar Degas (1834 - 1917)
“…one sees no longer except in memory.”
(Charlotte Gerlings, 100 Great Artists: A Visual Journey From Fra Angelico to Andy Warhol, 2006.)
Image: Deux danseuses, 1879, at the Shelburne Museum
Personally, when I think about Degas as an artist, it’s his pastel ballerinas that come to mind first. I associate him with pastels and the impressionists. But apprently he started using pastels as a medium in and of itself only a bit later in life. It sounds to me like he might have taken them up more frequently because of his failing eyesight, but that’s not based on a fact, just personal interpretation. First, he took up photography when he realised his eyesight was deteriorating, and then also pastels. As a last resort, when his vision was presumably too bad to continue painting, he turned to sculpting dancers and horses out of wax. I can’t even imagine, nor would I spend any time trying to do so, what it would be like to have this kind of problem - an artist losing his eyesight, or, for that matter, a composer losing his hearing (Beethoven), or a swimmer losing her leg (Natalie Du Toit)… The next time I get frustrated because my paint doesn’t arrive fast enough by post, I’ll remember Degas. He had much bigger problems.
5. William Hogarth (1607 - 1764)
William Hogarth - David Garrick (1717-79) with his wife Eva-Maria Veigel, "La Violette" or "Violetti" (1725 - 1822)
Image: William Hogarth - David Garrick (1717-79) with his wife Eva-Maria Veigel, "La Violette" or "Violetti" (1725 - 1822) (Wikipedia public domain)
Hogarth really deserves an article by himself, because to pick just one interesting fact is hard. Maybe I’ll list his instead of just picking one.
He discovered that even the fine arts could be a dangerous occupation when he got himself arrested for spying on the French, when he was caught sketching the port fortification in Calais.
He is said to be the forerunner of the graphic novel, with several series on modern morals, such as A Rake’s Progress and Marriage a la Mode.
This led to him being dubbed the “comic literary painter”.
His engravings were copied and plagiarised so often that in 1735 alread hy lobbied for The Copyright Act to protect the work of writers an artists.
Artists and writers had copyright issues since long before the internet then….
6. Michaelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573 - 1610)
"after a fortnight's work he will swagger about for a month or two with a sword at his side and a servant following him, from one ball-court to the next, ever ready to engage in a fight or an argument, so that it is most awkward to get along with him."
(https://www.caravaggio-foundation.org)
Image: Caravaggio - Judith Beheading Holofernes (Wikipedia public domain)
Caravaggio’s paintings depict mostly people in fearful or dramatics cenes, rendered in high detail with ample skill. He was a true master, so when I read that he didn’t do any preparatory drawing, I was amazed. It is suggested though that his patron, Cardinal Del Monte, would have had knowledge of optical lenses and as such, could have helped Caravaggio project his images onto the canvas. I wonder if the art police were around in those days, to criticise artists for using a grid or a projector or tracing paper as drawing aids…
7. Georgio Vassari (1511 - 1574)
“As the initiator of a learned tradition of discourse on Renaissance art, Vasari’s vocabulary is in some respects limited. For example, he employs the adjective ‘beautiful’ over and over again, much to the despair of all his translators.”
(Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists.)
Image: A Cover of the Lives, written by Vasari. (Wikipedia public domain)
Vasari was an accomplished painter, but he was also a historian, engineer, architect and writer. In fact, he is credited with writing the first book on Art History, called Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects. This book included information about Leonardo Da Vinci, who died eight years after Georgio was born. Vasari even wrote a revised edition a few years later with more updated information about Da Vinci. This book is considered one of the most famous and widely read books in the older literature of art and the first important book on art history. It has been translated into English for anyone who is interested in reading it.
8. Albrecht Durer (1471 - 1528)
“… it also shows off Durer’s virtuoso abilities as a figure painter, and his mastery of Renaissance painting techniques.” (Crenshaw, Paul. Discovering the Great Masters, 2009.)
Image: The Adoration of the Trinity, Albrecht Durer, 1511 (Wikipedia Public domain)
I’ve heard of artists going to great lengths to get the right amount of detail in their work, but when I read that this German-born artist made a brush out of a single hair taken from the back of his hand, I was astounded. I’m not sure how true it is, since I haven’t found any other reference to it other than the excellent, in-depth article written by Nelson Ferreira on old Flemish painting techniques (see References below) but knowing what a great artist he was, as well as a writer, thinker, printmaker and theorist, it wouldn’t actually surprise me too much. It’s clear that the man noticed details, so having to come up with a tool to depict them accurately would be in line with his art style.
WHo is your favourite artist from history? Do you know any interesting things about him or her? Please share in the comments below.
References and wonderful books for further reading
Books (Beautiful books, written by excellent authors and researchers. Highly recommended.)
Discovering the Great Masters: The Art Lover’s Guide to Undertanding Symbols in Painting. Crenshaw, P, Tucker, R and Bonfante-Warren, A. Universe Publishing, 2009.
100 Great Artists: A Visual Journey from Fra Angelico to Andy Warhol. Gerlings, C. Arcturus Publishing Ltd, 2006.
Monet. Sagner-Duchting, K. Benedikt Taschen-Verlag GmbH, 1998
Klimt and His Cat. Capatti, B and Monaco, O. Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. 2005.
Websites to visit and enjoy
https://www.christies.com/features/Albrecht-Durer-10-things-to-know-8053-1.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lives_of_the_Most_Excellent_Painters,_Sculptors,_and_Architects
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/16th-century-flemish-painting-technique-mixed-egg-oil-nelson-ferreira
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/william-hogarth
https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/research/projects/FG_Dupre_Da_Vinci_Treatise_on_Shadows
(https://www.caravaggio-foundation.org)
All images, unless otherwise indicated, were taken from Wikipedia and are in the Public Domain.