The Telegraph insists on reading this in the base terms to which the age has become accustomed, but this is really a nice bit of portraiture. Look at how the painter managed to capture the liquidity of the eyes, for example: also the use of light, which shines on the eyes and nose at the correct angles to have come from a single source.
Photography spoils us: anyone can get those details right with a digital camera and a little practice. To have done it with oils on canvas is the mark of a craftsman.
I'm not familiar with Winterhalter, but that's a beautiful piece of portraiture, especially the hair and, as you say, the eyes and the highlights on the nose. I really can't take my eyes off of it. Even the way the necklace drapes is completely convincing.
ReplyDeleteI remember reading in an art history book that the technical expertise of artists in realistic painting reached its height just as the camera became common.
ReplyDeletePhotography spoils us....
ReplyDeleteDepends on our purpose. If we're looking for readily available storage of hard data, photography and its technological evolutions serve us well, and let us focus our efforts on understanding the data rather than on its acquisition.
If we're interested in craftsmanship for its own sake, photography doesn't even enter into the matter, except as a baseline against which to assess that craftsmanship when the subject no longer is available.
Of course there are uses for craftsmanship, but technical advances, of themselves, neither hinder or help. They're just another tool in the kit.
Eric Hines
I'd argue that a camera is a tool and can be used to create well crafted images as can a paint brush, although there is admittedly an immediate ease of use- but skilled use takes some time and effort, but not the many hours a painter needs to achieve such levels of craft. It's also good to remember that a camera is a crafty editor, telling you something, and leaving other information out- which might alter your understanding of what is presented in the image, to bend toward a greater truth, or to a lie.
ReplyDeleteThat portrait is impressive, especially so given the subject matter. Beyond the skilled rendering of the face, and hair, he interestingly has less definition in the background, and even the clothing, though the hair and necklace fall across it, as a kind of admission of how we can look admiringly at a young woman and focus on certain things, while de-emphasizing other aspects. A sound understanding of how we see being demonstrated by the artist.