Thomas Kitts

I received an email from my blog a while back asking a couple of questions about how Berthe Morisot painted. I thought my reply might be interesting to a wider readership, so here it is…

On Feb 25, 2019, at 11:36AM, Malcolm wrote: 

Mr. Kitts,

I received your email this morning about the micro and macrocosm of your painting brushwork and enjoyed the video. Very nice surfaces!

This evening I will purchase, and watch, your ‘Sargent’ video and hopefully that video will answer a question that I have about gestural brushwork.

But in case it does not I am also sending you this email to ask: in the attached image of the Berthe Morisot painting the brush work is very loose and superimposed over other brushwork, what medium (if any) would she have mixed with her oils to achieve those flowing strokes? They are fluid and almost translucent in areas.

And here was my reply…

Hello Malcom. Thank you for your kind words and email. For the record, the video you referred to is a 2018 demonstration of Sorolla’s methods, not Sargent. But I have just release a 17-hour demonstration of Sargent’s techniques a few weeks ago. So perhaps one or the other, or both, will be of interest to you…

But to return your original question: I have always loved the work of Berthe Morisot and feel her influence has long been underrated as one of the original French Impressionists. But I don’t consider myself an authority on her or her work. However, I do feel I can make a few educated guesses based upon what I know about the materials and methods used by Berthe and her brethren. But before I begin, it is important to appreciate few artists worked in the same way with the same materials over their entire career and I believe Berthe was no different. So what follows should be considered a quick generalization about our two paintings and not a scholarly summary of Morisot’s technique.

First, I have attached a different painting than the one you shared. It was probably painted close to the time of your Morisot. But with mine, you can zoom into the image to see more detail, which reveals a lot about her brush work. And please note, the observations I share refer to my image, not yours…

1. In general, Berthe painted on a tightly woven linen support. The ground or ‘primer’ would have likely been a mixture of lead oil and a calcium carbonate, or a chalk to aid in the adhesion of the paint layers. This was a common support used by French Impressionists and it is still a lovely surface to paint on today. So why not try it out yourself? If you like Berthe’s work, the support you paint on will often dictate the character of your brush work. 

2. I would guess her ground was somewhat absorptive and Berthe often stained it with a pigmented earth color such as burnt umber. (see the enlargements found in this post.) A thin wash would have been applied and allowed to dry before a painting was started. I say dry because I do not see any softening or diffusion in the lower layers of the painting. Diffusion would indicate Berthe painted into a wet surface, or a wet imprimatura, and we don’t see that here.

3. The colors she used contributed to the character of her brush work. Berthe used a (largely) opaque pigmented palette that was common to most of the original French Impressionists. (She married Eugène Manet, Édouard’s younger brother, and it was she who convinced Édouard to begin painting outside. She also introduced Édouard to her circle of young Impressionists, who received him as a champion of their cause.)

Berthe’s palette primarily consisted of cadmium yellows and reds, and I’d guess from this painting, prussian and colbalt blue, plus possibly an ultramarine blue, a viridian or emerald green, and a few earth colors such as umber, ochre, and sienna. For an impressionist, Berthe favored more neutral color mixes and she painted with a lead white, and there does not seem to be much use of black since it was considered an anathema to the theories of Impressionism. There may be more colors in this painting but confirming what they are would require some sophisticated lab analysis. For the most part, the lead white dictated the character of Berthe’s strokes. Lead white’s thixotropic properties create this kind of stick, drag, grab, and pull, and it tends to imbue such qualities into any other color it is combined with.

4. Consider how the paint is applied. The surface strongly suggest this painting was executed rapidly with paint being applied thinly at the outset. Later strokes were built up and applied more thickly, with more body, and with each pull retaining its own integrity. You do not find much blending between strokes or colors and there is little to no softening of edges. I don’t find any slumping in the thicker strokes so Berthe probably didn’t incorporate much, if any oil or medium beyond whatever was already in the paint. I don’t know if she, like many of her compatriots, purchased her paint from Sennelier in Paris. But if so, her colors would have been ground in safflower, not linseed oil, which behaves differently under the pressure of a brush. Applying paint straight from the tube with minimal alteration was a common practice among the French Impressionists because they valued expediency when painting from life, and color intensity above all else. Thus they did not like to overmix their color. They also preferred their finished work to have a matte surface because they felt glossy surfaces and pre-mixed color diminished the optical (partitive) effects they pursued over all else. Berthe often left small flecks of pure color in her strokes to excite the eye, with the flecks at times being analogous to the base hue, and sometimes the flecks being a complement or near-complementary hue. So as a card-carrying inside member of the French Impressionists, Berthe was likely to have been working straight from the tube, wet-into-wet, and pushing color into, or on top of color. If you look closely at the child’s lacy collar you will find Berthe ‘double-loading’ her brush – where she picks up two colors before she dragged the hair across the canvas – an entirely new and exciting way to paint that became central to the Impressionists’ aesthetic. 

5. In addition, from the marks we see, Berthe preferred using a stiff brush. Likely consisting of hog hair; and even more likely, a combination of short flats with worn down or flayed hair. (So failing to clean your brushes may have an up-side, yes? Ha!) You can see traces of her distressed brushes pressed into the thicker striated impasto strokes. She also applied flicks and touches of color with a round brush on occasion, reserving them for fine details such as the eyes and eyebrows. But please note: Berthe doesn’t use a small round to paint a large shape, nor does she render ’detail’ with a lot of repetitive strokes. Big areas are indicated with expressive gutsy pulls with a fully loaded brush. 

6. And finally, look at the directionality of her strokes. What you and I would call the gesture of the mark. She often pulled her strokes in alignment of a shape. Yet she also turned the direction of her strokes to follow the shifting surface planes to imply a sense of form. (Look at the shoulders of both figures.) Other times she pulled her strokes flatly aligned with the picture plane. (Look at the cheek of the nanny’s face.) Sometimes, some of Berthe’s strokes are short and appear to be laid down randomly, a technique reserved for areas of lesser importance. Sometime her strokes start off going in one direction but then arbitrarily whip around in another. All of this activity contributes to the energy you feel when you look at her work. Her unique brushwork is a crazy, layered, mark-making technique, yet her subjects and narrative still hold together. Why? (hint: Value Relationships…) French Impressionists used such loose and expressive brushwork to convey a sense of light, movement, vibrancy, and a  joie de vivre– with Berthe being one of the more wilder members of the club. In fact, in my opinion, Berthe was farther out there on the edge than all of her better-known male counterparts and yes, she deserves far more credit for being there.

So based on this painting and the others I spent time in front of in the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris last August, I don’t think Berthe used much medium at all, beyond the possibility of a little solvent at the start with the one possible exception being the isolated blue scribbles which define the nanny’s left wrist cuff. That blue paint looks as though it was thinned down with a solvent and added after the fact on top of dry paint. A corrective move, perhaps.

And in your opinion would that painting be completed in one sitting or over many days? 

This painting was probably largely completed alla prima, or within a single session. A few passages may have been re-worked or re-touched during a second pass. But given the way the surface looks, any revisions would have been minimal. There is no sign Berthe was working into what the Parisian Academics called a ‘couch’ – meaning, painting into an ‘oiled out’ area with fresh paint – which is how many artists in the late 19th century often made their multi-session paintings look like they were one-shot wonders.

Malcom, I hope you found this information helpful as you continue your studies. Be sure to keep looking at as many originals as you can find but don’t forget to paint from life as well. Why? Well, here is a quote to remember:

“Real painters understand with a brush in their hand…”

   –   Berthe Morisot

Most painters today think of Sargent as a realist; an artist who was capable of painting extraordinarily life-like portraits and beautiful landscapes with ease and fluidity. While both points are true, there is another aspect to Sargent that began to appear after he stopped painting the aristocratic portraits which made his reputation. Sargent began to push the compositions in his work beyond what was normally accepted by the audience of his day. (It is important to note, as we discuss this aspect of his work, that Sargent was well aware of how the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and Modernists were also challenging the established norms of the time, and likely, he was responding to their efforts in his own inimitable way.)
To put it simply, in the post-portrait period of his career, Sargent often consciously manipulated and violated many of the established rules and formulas of painting to create a compositional problem he could resolve in a novel manner.

This is one of my favorite paintings by Sargent. It isn’t one of his better known works, but it is a fine example for us to analyze here. Sargent painted Home Fields when he staying at Broadway, a quiet village in the Cotswolds of England while recovering from a disastrous rejection of his portrait of Madam X in Paris. While there, it is possible all the vitriolic furor that erupted over his outrageous portrait encouraged him to reflect upon painting for himself first, and others second. With that context being understood, analyzing the composition of Home Fields becomes more interesting because it suggests something about Sargent that few people appreciate. Sargent was a experimental formalist, who, if he had been born fifty years later, might have felt perfectly at home working as an Abstract Expressionist during the mid-20th Century. Yes, this is a big assertion to make, but signs of that kind of thinking are present in this painting and others. When Sargent pursued his own work for his own ends, via the landscape, he liked to cloak his unusual compositions with a power of descriptive might, perhaps to make the odd experiments more palatable to the public, or simply because he could. However, if we strip away the narrative elements and detail we are left with a fascinating interplay between abstract shapes, directional lines, and the physicality of his paint.
But, before I go further please allow me a moment of self-indulgence…
I first encountered Home Fields in 1983 as an undergrad at in art school. I stumbled across it in a monograph being sold in a museum shop. (I starved for a week to buy that book, hoping it would still be there when I came back for it.) I didn’t know much about Sargent then, as few people did. He wasn’t included in my history classes and when I showed Sargent to my painting instructor he dismissed the work as being manneristic. I struggled to accept what I was told and eventually decided it was best not to bring Sargent up in his studio again. This was at a time when the art world was beginning to turn back to more academic ways of working, and the primacy of Modernism was being reassessed.
Sargent’s Home Fields converted me into a plein air painter before I ever set an easel up outside. The fresh and direct handling of paint, the keen observations of light, and the outrageous graphic composition triggered something deep within me. I had been studying 20th century art that semester and Home Fields, and Sargent, seemed to bridge the gap between the traditional and the modern. I stared at that reproduction for weeks before finally seeing something I had missed. Sargent had literally put himself into the painting. (Do you see him?) Yet I did not read anything that pointed to that fact for years afterwards.
But back to Home Fields…Does it really imply Sargent was a nascent Modernist?
In a word, yes. The underlying force that gave rise to Modernism can be summarized by two things; an artist’s desire to be recognized as a member of the avant-garde, and the influential opinions of the 20th century art critic Clement Greenberg, a man who achieved cultural authority thirty years after Sargent’s death.
So what is, or was, the Avant-Garde? By itself, it is a fairly self-explanatory term since it loosely translates to ‘the vanguard of the main troops’. Applied to painting, it was used to identify any artist or movement that led the way from something old to something new. During the 1950s Greenberg rose to prominence by emphatically arguing the most pressing concern of the Avant-Garde was ‘flatness’ and ‘the dissolution of form’, an obvious appeal to break away from the timeline of European Art and setting up something uniquely American in its place. Greenberg was largely successful in his goals, turning US academic painting towards his interpretation of art, and his influence and pressure was felt by any artist who wished to be considered relevant. Up to that point, for over four hundred years, one of the most fundamental aspects to painting had been about creating the illusion of form and space behind the picture plane. But late-stage Modernism demanded the painter now relinquish the illusion of form and depth and place everything ON the picture plane. Nothing into. Nothing out of. Make it flat. Make it abstract.
(Side Note: I’m sharing this background in the hope it will encourage you to consider how you fit into the traditions we all love. Why? Because knowing this kind of stuff can guide you to a deeper, more meaningful destination.)

Sargent presented us with a flat front face. This aligns the shed with the front of the picture plane. (Perhaps I should explain what the picture plane is. You can think of it as the actual surface you paint on, the canvas or panel. In a traditional composition the artist treats the picture plane as a piece of glass set into a window frame, through which you can see the world. Whatever the subject might be, it would be placed behind, or rarely in some circumstances, in front of the picture plane. (Sometimes, using extreme foreshortening, Caravaggio would try to the viewer to believe parts of his figures were projecting out in front of the frame in 3-D. So the idea of the picture plane is not a recent concept.) With late-stage Modernism, the goal was to have everything set ON the picture plane – neither behind nor in front.)
However, there are more things to consider than the shed. Sargent deliberately placed the shed so that the right side abuts against the right side of the painting. That placement is unusual. It attaches the shed to the edge of the painting and inhibits our ability to visually push it back. As a result that shed becomes a foil to everything else Sargent invests into his composition.
Next, look at the row of trees and distant hills Sargent has arranged along the horizon line. (The yellow lines.) They are dark and soft and vary in size. But when massed together with similar values they create a strong horizontal force that spans the picture plane. Plus, the base of the trees and hills have been arranged to be in-line with the shed, again further flattening the picture plane. Taken together, the virtual horizon line, the shed, and the trees and hills contradict the illusion of deep space.

Take a moment to appreciate how he designs with whatever falls within his view. One set of diagonals make their appearance as cast shadows (blue lines). Following the principles of classical Renaissance perspective those shadows correctly converge towards a common point along the virtual horizon line. Don’t let any slight variance in the convergence confuse you. This was a quickly executed painting and I don’t think Sargent was overly concerned about maintaining mathematical precision. Sargent used this convergence to generate a powerful visual push into the picture plane – creating what many of us today call a ‘lead-in’ – and interestingly, those diagonals point us away from the shed. (Convergence is a time-honored way to direct the eye towards a specific area of a painting.) Due to Sargent’s amazing ability to capture light, shadow, and color, we can feel the exact time and position of the sun. It is behind us. It is late fall or winter. It is the end of the day.

And even more diagonals… To design with the shadows would have been enough for most painters, but not for Sargent. He chose to include another diagonal movement within his view: that rambling fence (red lines). The fence itself echoes what the shadows are doing, but the figure/ground relationship has been inverted as a counter movement. (The fence is light against dark and the shadows are dark against light. Plus, the fence is a fixed object and the shadows are ephemeral and remain in constant movement.) The fence provides a similar repeating motif to the shadow, yet is different. Just like the shadows, the fence moves diagonally into space. But this time the fence points us towards the shed, and in doing so, effectively balances out the shadows that are pointing us to the left. When combined, the fence and shadows form a downward “V” which points directly to the feet of Sargent – and thus our feet as well. (So perhaps now you realize how Sargent inserted himself into this painting, using his own shadow, and perhaps you can better appreciate how this turns you, the viewer, into Sargent himself. We are seeing what Sargent saw, from exactly where he saw it – another nod to classical Renaissance perspective, when the fixed position of the painter’s eye becomes our own.)

But there are even more, subtler diagonals to consider… When Sargent included those wispy trees in the middle ground he threw up another barrier to deep space. Yet he also uses the base of each of those trees (the pink line) to provide a series of stepping stones that lead us to the shed again. He is simultaneously encouraging our eye to travel into the picture plane again, and impeding our path to get there.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

And finally, as if anyone could run out of things to say about this painting… There are additional simplified shapes and contours created by various elements in this painting to consider. Shapes that continue to line up in such a way to lead us relentlessly back to the shed. That d*mn shed! I can’t think of a single classical painter who would have put it there – certainly not one who lived and worked before the advent of Modernism. Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Poussin, Rembrandt, Fragonard, Watteau, Reynolds, and the rest of the usual suspects would never have put an orange rectangle against the side of their painting and then expended so much effort trying to push it back into space with all these diagonals. (And it bears repeating, Home Fields was not an anomaly for Sargent.) Traditional painters were far more likely to place their point of focus, like a building, towards the middle of their painting, about one third up from the bottom, and then lead our eye up to, and around the area in a circular fashion. The old masters would never have done something so quirky as to place a building against the edge of the canvas. They would have considered that a nutty thing to do, or worse, a terrible error of judgement.
Arguably, how much of the composition in Home Fields was calculated vs how much of it sprang forth directly out of Sargent’s intuition is anyone’s guess, especially since he left few personal insights into his methods or technique. But the obvious things he did to flatten this painting, and the diagonals he introduced to penetrate or contrast that flatness are there for everyone to see. If Home Fields was just an aberration we could dismiss it as a happy collision between a genius and an unusual subject. But after years of studying Sargent’s oeuvre, I think not. Everything in this painting feels calculated, and if you look at it long enough you may come to the same conclusion I have – that Sargent intentionally set up tricky compositional problems and then enjoyed finding novel ways to resolve them. In other words, Sargent experimented with some abstract ideas that would not be explored in greater detail until after WWII, when Abstract painters such as Kline, DeKooning, Pollock, Motherwell, Still, Nevelson, and others took the stage.

The blank canvas is there as a challenge, not to terrorize you • Paint like a locomotive • Don’t try to frost the cake before it is baked • A painter’s life is not for the faint of heart • You will learn more from one hundred starts than you will one hundred finishes • Begin with red, yellow, and blue and expand upon that • Nothing becomes more obvious in a painting than boredom • Don’t eat the paint • Inspiration is for amateurs • Beware of the workshop teacher who quotes too many maxims (ha!) • Painting is a verb, not a noun • Put enough paint down to be able to push it around • Painting isn’t hard: you just have to put the right color in the right place, in the right shape, at the right time • Art is a crazy way to make a living, so just deal with it • Acknowledge your inner child and encourage creative play, but ignore the tantrums • Painting is not like having an affair, it is more like being married with children • And speaking of children – your paintings are not your babies – Be willing to drown, strangle, or expose them to the elements should it become necessary • Mimesis is fancy art-speak for “Hey, it looks like a photograph” • Draw, draw, draw – then go draw some more • Ask yourself as you paint “Is it art yet?” If so, put the brush down • Be bold, be proud, be polite • It ain’t the paint, it ain’t the brushes, and it ain’t the canvas. It’s you • Look first, paint second • Check out an artist’s work before you let him go on too long about it • Don’t keep reworking the fun passages as they are certain to go downhill • When you attend another artist’s opening leave your business cards and portfolio at home • Paint is unpredictable so remain open to being surprised • Painting is not a race unless you are working under the sun or against the tide • The best way to preserve a brush is to never let it dry out • All art is abstract • Be a poet, not a reporter • For goodness sake, simplify! • The fewer the touches, the better the brushwork • A signature is not enough to justify a painting • Paint for the ages but don’t overlook the now • There is no “Secret Sauce of ye Olde Masters” guaranteed to transform your work • Search for the beauty in the ugly for it is often unpainted territory • When you are painting try to forget you are painting • Yes, you may be an artist but it is better to let others introduce you as such • Disconnect all ego from your work or life will become painful • The term ‘tortured artist’ is oxymoronic because painting should be a joy • Selling a painting does not mean it was good, and conversely, not selling a painting does not mean it was bad • Be sure to have fun while you paint because if that is all you get then at least you got that • Color can be irksome and idiosyncratic. Need proof? Mixing yellow and black does not make darker yellow, it makes green • Stop assaulting your viewers with too much detail • If you think you have ‘arrived’ as a painter then you haven’t • Every artist is emerging, no matter the age • Don’t paint just the cupcakes in life, paint the turds too • If you don’t know how to paint, but want to learn how, marry someone who can • Don’t overprice yourself because your work does nobody good stored in your closet • Be on the lookout for the crazy nut-bars in this business, and be polite when you run into them because some of them have money • If somebody insists upon telling you how great an artist your are, don’t argue • ‘Kontent is King’ so choose your subjects carefully as you may end up painting them over and over again • The key to success is remembering what you want and following through • If someone absolutely insists upon telling you what Art is supposed to be, begin nodding your head gently, take a slow step back, and then politely excuse yourself • Beautiful brushwork is like a fine cup of tea – something best served up fresh and consumed with appreciation • Leave the histrionics out as they seldom add much • A cynic is a failed romantic • Let me elaborate on that further: a cynic is a failed romantic and irony is a literary device with no place in a painting • Watching a video or reading a how-to-paint book is like watching or reading about sex – both can be instructive, but never a satisfying substitute • When critiquing your own work learn how to form your own conclusions – after all, the only opinion that counts is yours…

For more general craziness, and perhaps a few actual helpful painting tips, visit Thomas’s informative blog at www.thomaskitts.com.