Rose Frantzen Video

I ran across the below video today and found myself watching it all the way through. The video is of artist Rose Frantzen speaking at her show in the National Portrait Gallery last year. The show consisted of 180 12x12 portraits of the people in her hometown,  Maquoketa (mah CO ket ah).

In the video she tells stories of the people, the materials and the processes that went into painting all of those portraits.



Rose studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, and while there, painted at the Palette & Chisel where she met and studied under Richard Schmid. Later, she also attended the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, studying anatomy with the late Dean Keller.

Rose paints mainly figurative and allegorical paintings and has an ever evolving style -- painting thin and layered for one painting, and then loose and thick for these alla prima portraits.

She has a book about the portraits here. It has been on my book list for a while now, and after watching this video and seeing all the paintings, I think the book has moved up to the top of the list.

If you want to see more of her work, visit her site at Old City Hall Gallery
If you want to view some process videos of two portraits, visit her brothers site here

Dennis Miller Bunker

Portrait of Walter Griffin

I'll be turning 29 later this year, and a recent conversation with some other artists (about trying to "make it" as a young painter) reminded me of an artist that only lived till 29, yet had an amazing career.

Jessica - 1890

Dennis Miller Bunker (1861-1890) was born in New York City and studied at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League with William Merritt Chase. He attended the Ecole des Beaux Art in Paris, learning from Jean-Leon Gerome. After graduating in 1885, he returned to the United States and took a job in Boston teaching at the Cowles Art School. That same year Bunker had his first one-man exhibition at the Noyes & Blakeslee Gallery in Boston.

In 1887 Bunker met John Singer Sargent during Sargent's visit to Boston, and in 1888, spent the summer with Sargent at Calcot Mill in England painting in plein-air. That summer was a turning point for Bunker's painting style as he became greatly influenced by impressionism and turned to brighter colors and looser brushwork. He brought this style back with him to Boston and was praised for his new work.

John Singer Sargent - Dennis Miller Bunker Painting at Calcot

Bunker always felt like an outsider in Boston's society and in the Spring of 1889 resigned his teaching position at Cowles Art School, lived briefly that summer at Medfield, Massachusetts, and then moved back to New York City. Earlier that year he had met Eleanor Heady of Boston and they were married in October 1890. They moved into Sherwood Studios in New York City, but during a visit to Boston that Christmas Bunker fell ill and died at the age of 29.

Portrait Sketch of Eleanor Hardy Bunker

Within those 12 years from training to death, Bunker had accomplished more than most of us would ever achieve in a lifetime. It's quite a reality check! I guess I should get painting.

To view several letters written by Bunker, go to the smithsonian site here
To see a neat little overview of Bunker, check out the Qwiki

Portrait of Anne Page

Second Portrait of a Woman

Technical Insights: Daniel Gerhartz

Dan has started a blog that highlights the technical thoughts behind some of the paintings from his recent book. There are two posts so far, and both have great insights and close-up imagery.

Hopefully Dan keeps this up, I would love to read more from him and start to create a personal resource of all of these posts for my library.

For Dan's Blog visit: http://danielgerhartz.wordpress.com/

If you like the idea of saving these (or any webpage) for yourself, you could use Joliprint to convert the pages into pdf's. It's what I use, and it generally does a pretty good job -- a whole lot easier then copying and pasting everything into word or something. I then print them off and stuff them in a folder or notebook. (this makes me feel very studious, like I'm in fifth grade cutting out news articles or something)

Casey Baugh Updates

I was on Casey Baugh's site the other day and noticed a lot of updates that I thought I would make you aware of.

Casey just finished his first solo show with Wendt Gallery in NYC and his site has the 22 paintings from that show. I really loved Casey's previous paintings and some of these new ones aren't exactly my favorite, but there is no doubt that he is an amazing artist and perfect for the contemporary collector.

In addition to all the new works, he has added an archive section with a selection of his older paintings and drawings.

Casey has also started a new form of teaching through short videos. These videos walk you through one of his paintings and have in-process photos with voice-over. He is calling this "new" form of art demonstration Art Unlayered. I really like this concept and think that it could evolve into something great. For $15 each, these HD videos give you about 10 minutes of insight into his process. Below is a sample video from Casey (watch it on YouTube for the higher quality):

Nikolai Blokhin

I don't know much about this artist, except that he is from Russia, was born in 1968, and that he can really paint and draw. His website can be found here.

These images say it all, so here you go:

Edmund Tarbell

In a previous post, I spoke of Thomas Dewing and highlighted some of his extraordinary paintings. Dewing was a member of a small group of elite painters in the New York/Boston area known as the Ten American Painters (referred to mostly as "The Ten").

 

Seated (left to right): Edward Simmons, Willard L. Metcalf, Childe Hassam, J. Alden Weir, Robert Reid

Standing (left to right): William Merritt Chase, Frank W. Benson, Edmund C. Tarbell, Thomas Dewing, Joseph De Camp

Another member of this group was Edmund Tarbell. He was born near Boston and graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, along with two other artists that would also became members of The Ten, Robert Reid and Frank Benson. After continuing his studies and traveling in France and throughout Europe, he returned to Boston and soon after held the position of his former teacher, Otto Grundmann (Edmund was 26!).

Tarbell also co-founded The Guild of Boston Artists in 1914, and in 1919 became the principal of the art school at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in D.C.

Most of the examples here are of his interior figures which he painted later in his life. I can see some similarities to the work of Dewing, and I wonder if that was the composition and subject style of the time, or if "The Ten" influenced each others works and subject matter. In either event, I absolutely love these paintings.

More on Edmund Tarbell:
Art Renewal Center
Wikipedia
flickr

More on "The Ten"
Antiques and Fine Art Article
Amazon
Wikipedia