The Victorian Artists

"The Music Lesson" by Lord Leighton

I've always loved the paintings of the Victorian artists. For many years people turned their backs on works by artists such as John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, John William Waterhouse, Lord Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema, rejecting them as cheesy and overworked.

"The Pot Of Basil" by Holman Hunt

Yet these and other realist artists working in the 19th century reached amazing heights of artistic representation in their work. Never had the human form looked so real and natural as it did in their work. They reintroduced dazzling colour and beautifully observed nature into their paintings, even as photography appeared to kill off the genre.


I've recently been introduced to another artist of the period whose work I have now added to my stable of favourites. His name is William-Adolphe Bouguereau and, unlike the other artists I mentioned, he worked in France to produce paintings on classical themes. Many of his pieces are of nude women and exquisitely painted observations of the human form.

"After The Bath" by Bouguereau

Classical realist painting fell from grace as the impressionists gained popularity. Yet they have so much to teach us about composition, the use of colour and of draughtsmanship, as well as classical beauty.

Pulling it together

The first in the series was "Morning Inspection". I wanted to convey how many people were involved in preparing for the soldiers to leave for duty at Horseguards — that was my narrative. The major decision when starting any painting, however, is the composition and this has nothing to do with the cast of characters chosen for the work. The layout is crucial, and this is based upon shapes and their distribution on the canvas. I knew that I wanted the captain to be my central point, but there needed to be a dynamic around him or the piece would become too static. I thus decided on a composition based around two interlocking triangles, one large and one smaller, with an offset curve to hold them together at the top (the archway).

Since all the subjects in the painting are vertical, it became important to use other lines to stop the eyes from sliding of the top and bottom of the painting. I tried to do this by creating repeating diagonals throughout the image that form a zigzag leading from one subject to another, leading the eyes around and not out of the painting. These diagonals, such as the red arm on the right leading visually to the arm in the centre then onto the rider and down to the khaki uniform on the left, also serve to bracket the faces which are the important parts of the piece.

Colour distribution also plays an important role in a painting, especially where there are highly differentiated blocks.   Red is a dynamic colour, so I ensured that it created dynamic right angles in the painting to indicate tension and give movement whilst carrying the eye from left to right. The white areas are then designed to carry the eye in the opposite direction.

Lastly, I wanted to pull the viewer into the painting and this means setting up a dialogue where the subject "talks" to the viewer. I had two characters who were in profile, creating a wall to the viewer and one whose face is partially obscured. To compensate, they are balanced by the same number of objects interacting directly with the viewer — the soldier on the left, the horse, and the soldier in blue on the right. The interacting and non-interacting objects form an alternating pattern, to keep the viewer engaged with the characters in the painting even if they aren't attracted to the subject matter or the style of painting.

It might not be immediately apparent, but the dynamics of composition apply just as much if not more to a painting of a single subject. The first decision about the painting must always be one of how shapes arrange themselves on the canvas. There are time honoured principles that can be used to help decide the correct balance of shapes in a painting and Juliette Aristides http://www.aristidesarts.com/ book, "Classical Painting Atelier" gives a really great insight into how these work in a contemporary context.

Choices, so many choices

Photographers and realist painters are both involved in the process of making art about recognizable subjects. A good photographer will compose their shots, just as any good painter will compose a piece of art. Both disciplines require experience and hard work in order to translate the image in ones head into the work before our eyes. Both must make choices about what to leave in, what to take out, how to crop and balance an image.

In many ways the painter has the easier job because, unless a photographer has complete control over the environment they are shooting, there will always be extraneous pieces of imagery that will be included in the shoot especially when  out of doors. The photographer must be able to see the potential whilst taking in all that noise that could change the focus of the shot.

The painter, on the other hand, can pick and choose what to leave in and take out of a piece. They can change their mind and paint objects in and out of their work. The trick then becomes combining objects in a way that is harmonious and doesn't make a piece look like a collage. They have to lose the noise and keep the essentials and that doesn't just mean what objects are included in the final piece, because the painter makes constant choices about colour, direction of brushstrokes, emphasis, etc. as they paint.

I took thousands of photos of the Household Cavalry on my visit to Hyde Park Barracks. They were essential references for the paintings I created. The works themselves, however, are not copies of those shots. Once again, the snapshots were jumping off points for the paintings, which are based on a series of impressions, rather than a specific event.

A painting is not a photograph

We can now capture moments of beauty with cameras that allow us to trap every detail in digital format. Why then attempt to paint beauty if a photograph will do? It's an argument that's essentially been around since the introduction of the camera and is probably more relevant today than ever before, because the quality of photographic imagery is so good. People can take and edit unbelievably good images these days.

For me the answer is that a painting is not a photograph and their superficial similarities are deceptive. Yes, both the painter and the photographer must decide on the composition of their image and make choices about lighting, etc., but there the similarity ends. What may be a great photo will often be an abject failure as a painting. This is not to say that as a painter one will not recognize potential paintings in photographs, because one does. It is just that a photograph can only ever be a starting point for a painting and never the final piece.

An interesting photo but not something that would make a good painting

A painting of the same horse

Much of my work focuses on horses in motion painted in great detail. Horses are a very complex subject with a difficult anatomy. Yet we all seem to have an almost instinctive understanding of how they should look and when an image is "not quite right". To paint a horse in motion requires the use of photography to truly understand their movements. Before the cinematography of Muybridge in the late 19th century, we had no real idea of how the legs of a horse moved at the faster gaits, and even the best painters of horses would paint them looking like rocking horses if they wanted to show them galloping. Yes, photographs are a huge bonus if you're trying to get it right, but they can also lie. They can flatten and distort causing muscle definition and even bones to seemingly disappear and they can foreshorten so that a head can appear to be growing straight out of a shoulder.

I take thousands of photos of horses in motion, yet I never paint any of them. I use my snapshots, together with my understanding of the horse, as a jumping of point for my work. I may use a particular image as the basis for my composition but there will be numerous other factors, including my memories, that play into the piece as I try to bring the horse to life on the canvas. It is why I have learned to insist that I must see and photograph my subject myself, because a painting is not a photograph and can never be.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". It's true, we all have different ideas about what is beautiful. For me, there is beauty in the liquid grace of an arabian horse floating above the ground as it trots, or a bird of prey carving its path through the sky. Perhaps I find great beauty in nature because I know that it beauty masks harsh the harsh realities of survival and death. Which raises the question: how much of our response to beauty is related to the poignancy of loss and the awareness of our own mortality?

Regardless of what we find beautiful, there is no doubt that it has the ability to reach into us and stop us in our tracks. It has the capacity to directly communicate with our emotions and to change them and the way we view our lives, even if for a brief moment. Faced with beauty, we can step out of ourselves and perhaps feel at one with our world.

In nature, all beauty is transient because the flower will fade, youth will age, and a movement will end. They are fleeting moments that we may be lucky enough to witness. This is where art can fulfill a vital role, for it allows us to capture those moments and hold them fast, to be viewed at any time, in any setting, and for years to come. It means that beauty can inspire us again and again.

Ice Station London

It was bitterly cold when I delivered prints of the first three Household Cavalry paintings to Hyde Park Barracks. The thermometer said it was -4°C, but the wind made it feel far colder. The young men at the gate were obviously suffering as well, though putting a brave face on things despite the glowing pink ears and noses. They were absolutely charming as I waited to be taken to the Officer's Mess, and the young private who then escorted me kept up a lively chat that helped us forget how cold we were both feeling.  

I'd promised that I would provide the Mess with prints of any paintings I completed as a result of my visit to the barracks. Infinartum helped me to keep that promise in style, because they looked just amazing and I'm so happy that they will hang for the men I portrayed to see. It occurred to me that I've spent so much time looking at their faces — enlisted men and officers — that I feel as if I know them, even though we've never been introduced.  

What is the purpose of art?

A beautiful piece of art is a beautiful piece of art, and it usually follows rules known for centuries and which often mimic the natural world. But beauty has nothing to do with what is touted by the cogniscenti as being worthy of attention by collectors. The contemporary art of recent decades has been promoted as challenging and thought provoking; designed to stir emotions very different from those elicited by the sublime. This provokes the question: what is the purpose of art?

Art is no longer used as a record of life, because we have cameras to do that for us. In fact they're everywhere, recording every little mundane detail of ours and others lives. Cameras in phones, on computers, in the sky, and on walls above our head. The images they create aren't art, are they?

Those CCTV images can be thought provoking, but we don't tout them as art. Perhaps because we recognize that art can only be art if we set out to create it. In that case, art is essentially a profound form of communication. The artist sets out to say something visually to the viewer by speaking directly to their emotions.

Yet we've all been to museums where contemporary pieces are accompanied by long explanations of exactly what the artist is trying to say. But surely that makes these pieces a failure as art, because they cannot communicate on their own in this great age of communication, where people are probably more open to ideas than they have ever been in the history of man. And they need curators and experts to explain their message.

There have always been artists who have challenged the received wisdom and moved art forward. Movements that have been shunned later as reactionary, such as the pre-raphaelites, were avant garde in their day. Art needs to evolve and allow room for new ideas to develop. But it also needs to find a place where people will be inspired to care for it, because the work involves them and speaks to them.

So, what is the purpose of art? Is it always to challenge and provoke in obscure ways? Why do we need this in a world of 24/7 news channels and information overload? Cannot art be acceptable when it provides a haven of peace for us? Perhaps the purpose of art is also to feed our souls and bring us out of the mundane, not to remind us of the depths to which we can sink as human beings. Surely there must be space for all kinds of artistic expression, including those who simply want to tell the world that there is beauty out there.