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James Ward: between Constable and Turner, 3
James Ward (1769–1859) started work on his second huge painting, The Triumph of the Duke of Wellington, as soon as his preliminary study had been accepted by the British Institution, in 1816. From the...
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Porting from WordPress to Storyspace, 2: links and stretchtext
In the first article in this series, I started importing the HTML and images from my series on the history of oil painting, to assemble them into hypertext to be accessed from Storyspace Reader. In...
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Alchemy: 12 – novel resins, water, and the uncertain future
In the late 1800s, for a short period, a new method of painting in oils became prominent: that of the Divisionists and Neo-Impressionists. Instead of applying layers of paint, or working alla prima,...
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Meet the family: William Merritt Chase at home
Some of the best paintings of the Masters are those of intimate family moments, such as Rubens’ Two Sleeping Children (c 1612-13). William Merritt Chase (1849–1916) made many informal sketches of his...
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Family portraits by William Merritt Chase
Having seen the family of William Merritt Chase (1849–1916) at leisure and play, this article shows a selection of the many portraits which he painted of his wife and their children. Chase gained...
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Alchemy: 13 – milestones in the history of oil painting
This final article in the series draws together the details from the previous articles to produce a chronological summary of the major milestones in the materials and techniques of painting in oils....
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Barbizon crosses the Atlantic: William Morris Hunt
When William Merritt Chase moved into his new Tenth Street Studio in 1878, he took over the prime studio area in what was almost certainly the first purpose-designed building for visual artists in...
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Into the Light: Paul Helleu and high society
Several of John Singer Sargent’s works feature another artist as a model, together with his beautiful wife: Mr and Mrs Paul Helleu. Below, for example, is the best-known of these, usually titled rather...
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The Forgotten Pre-Raphaelite: Marie Spartali Stillman, 1 – to 1883
Now unfortunately overshadowed by Impressionism, the Pre-Raphaelite movement was a major influence in European painting in the middle and later years of the 1800s. The core of the Pre-Raphaelite...
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The Forgotten Pre-Raphaelite: Marie Spartali Stillman, 2 – 1884 to 1892
In the first article, I gave an account of the early life and work of Marie Spartali Stillman (1844–1927), up to her return to England after five years in Florence, in 1883. During that period she had...
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The Forgotten Pre-Raphaelite: Marie Spartali Stillman, 3 – from 1892
In my previous article, I described the life and work of Marie Spartali Stillman (1844–1927) during some of her most active and productive years. This article completes my account. Late 1892 saw...
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Shinnecock summer: William Merritt Chase in the country
In 1891, plein air painting, particularly in oils, was a relatively new technique in the US, and growing rapidly in popularity. It was Janet Hoyt who first invited William Merritt Chase (1849–1916) to...
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Thomas Eakins: the centenary of his death
The year 1916 was pretty grim. In Europe, the Great War had been raging two years, at a prodigious cost in human life, and looked set to continue until all the fathers and sons in Europe lay dead in...
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Into the Light: Susan Macdowell Eakins, more than the artist’s wife
Like many artists, Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) married another artist, Susan Hannah Macdowell (1851–1938), better known under her married name of Susan Macdowell Eakins. Like many artists’ wives, their...
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Students of Chase: his greatest legacy
No one knows how many students William Merritt Chase taught, but they must have run into the thousands. He taught from around 1879, when he took his first student on, until well into the twentieth...
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Into the Light: Julian Onderdonk – bluebonnets and pseudonyms
Often omitted from lists of William Merritt Chase’s students, and known mainly to Texans, Julian Onderdonk (1882–1922) was a prolific American Impressionist painter. The son of a painter and former...
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Sierra, wide colourspaces, and browser engines
One of the first changes that I noticed when my Mac started up after installing macOS Sierra was its display. I have loved its Retina 5K 27-inch display from the moment that I got it last December, but...
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The spontaneous or methodical: Chase and Eakins at work
William Merritt Chase was born just five years later than Thomas Eakins, and they both had the benefit of a European training. Yet their paintings and working methods were so different. Chase seems to...
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Skiffs, sculls, and rowing regattas
When first shown to the public in Philadelphia in 1871, Thomas Eakins’ astonishing painting The Champion Single Sculls (often known as Max Schmitt in a Single Scull) (1871) was described by one critic...
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Prizes, performance and still life: Chase’s fish speciality
Still life painting has been popular among impressionists. Some, like Cézanne, made it central to their art, the means by which they tested approaches before taking them out into landscapes, for...
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