Colorist
 

can anyone give a definition of a person called a colorist

I'll give it a shot. A "colorist" is a person who relies more on color for expression than on, for instance, line or value changes. I usually think of a person as a colorist if they seek out brighter colors or more interesting color combinations: it seems to my eye that they delight in the intrigue of color.

Here is a definition for the word COLORIST.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorist

I think this part of the wikipedia definition would apply to portraiture:
"The term is also used to describe a painter using strong color skillfully in realistic or impressionist paintings."

I think of Sharon as a colorist.

"Colorist" is a pretty broad term. I suppose in its broadest sense it could include anyone who is not painting monochromatically. Often those painters who use paint directly from the tube and avoid the duller earth colors like raw umber etc. are called colorist.
Many would say someone like Wolf Kahn is a colorist. However, I find his color a bit too arbituary and nonsensical.
I think of Henry Hensche as a colorist. In fact, he called himself a colorist as opposed to being a "value painter". He said every form change is a color change. In other words, form is created on the canvas not by lightening or darkening color by adding white or black, but instead by painting the distinct and unique color that desibes the form.
Some of his former students have set up a website in his honor if you would like to investigate him further. http://www.thehenschefoundation.org/

Steve

Color-ist as color-doest
 

I think there are two kinds of colorists. Those who profess to eschew all for the sake of color and those whose strive to capture the pure and subtle essence of color in it's proper context.

In his book, "Jan Vermeer of Delft," Philip L. Hale states the following:
"The moment a man searches one quality for itself alone, he does, by that very act strip it of it's most important attributes. We too often forget that all things are made manifest to us through the action of light. 'Light and Shade' cannot truly be rendered unless it includes colour and form. Form as it appears to us cannot be rightly indicated without the aid of colour and of chiaroscuro. Colour, true colour, cannot be well suggested unless the shapes are right and the modulation: in other words, the drawing and values."

Interestingly, William McGregor Paxton was heavily involved in the writing of this book, which is actually the manifesto of the Boston School. Anyone who who has had the opportunity to see an original work by Paxton has seen the hand-print of a truly great colorist.

This definition and artist nails it for me. Thank-you Steve for that wonderful post.

The brilliance of the Impressionist movement is that they released the pictorial from the grip of chiaroscuro and form. It was the influence of the beautiful art coming in from Asia that alerted artists to the beauty of color and pattern alone.

It is a rather unusual perhaps but exhilarating way to paint. I simply mix the color and bring up to my model to see if it matches. After a few matches, you can judge if it needs to be bluer or pink etc. It simplifies the palette for me, anyway, to only white, naples yellow genuine, yellow ochre, vermilion, pyrolo ruby, raw umber, ivory black, ultramarine and viridian. You keep working until the color vibrates.

It becomes like a play and removes the mechanical and intellectual aspects from the process. When I had my workshop in Scottsdale last summer, I has my students running back and forth to the model with bits of mixed color on their knives. The poor model. Mine is used to it.

I have actually moved my model to face the light directly, thus de-emphasizing the form and playing more with a flat background. Klimt did that with great success, elegance and originality.

Julie-Thank-you for that lovely compliment.

Here are some examples of colorists at -I think-their best and most inventive.

Manet "At the Bar at the Folies Bergere", Klimt's "Eugenia" a Frieseke's " The Birdcage" and a gorgeous Chinese painting.

Manet, dearest to my heart, was a seminal figure in this movement. Bored out of his gourd , he fled Couture's atelier and left classical realism in it's stale old dust. He started by placing his figures directly facing the light, thus emphasizing the design and placement and lessening the influence of form. "The Bar at the Folies Bergere" is an example of that.


The Klimt painting is a, masterpiece of color organization. I love the way he used the bright green to describe the form of the face. He made a gorgeous painting out of a rather uninteresting subject.

The Frieske painting "The Birdcage" is a masterful play of light and complementary color -yellow and purples.

The 17th Chinese painting is a total delight -an important and overlooked feature in contemporary art. The beautiful arabesque of the pink and red peonies is anchored by that startling teal flower.

kuhl-er-ist
 

Obviously everyone has their own take on what a colorist is. Dictionary.com provides the following definitions:
col?or?ist [kuhl-er-ist]

Moor kuhl-er
 

This is a painting by Paxton called "The Breakfast" which was recently on exhibit at the Smithsonian in Washington DC. The first image is a full crop and the others are details. To me it just doesn't get any better than this.

Thanks for sharing these, Marvin. That first one by Paxton (not the one above - the other post showing the woman with a wallpaper pattern behind her) is amazing. Those touches of bright green seem essential to the piece (I tried covering them up to see the difference with and without).

Hi Julie,
I love these images so much. Paxton just blows my mind. I'm glad you enjoyed it too.

If I may, I'd like to clear up a slight misunderstanding about Henry Hensche and his method of teaching.
During the Summer months for approximately 60 years (1929-1989) Henry Hensche ran a school in Provincetown, Massachusetts on the tip of Cape Cod called the Cape School. He never thought of his school as a comprehensive art academy. He expected his students to further their art studies elsewhere during the Winter months. Hensche and his teacher before him, Charles Hawthorne, thought of themselves as carrying on the legacy and discoveries of Claude Monet. They sought to teach their students how to paint the effects of sunlight, that is, the light key, the time of day, the weather, etc. They felt that if one painted all the color notes of a scene accurately and placed them correctly that that painting would be truer and more vibrant than a painting that was first drawn and then filled in with color.
Charles Hawthorne, in his school, would have his students paint backlit figures on the beach in order to teach them to see the big color notes. To keep them away from painting features like eyelashes, etc. and to have them concentrate on accurately seeing the color notes, Hawthorne made his students use broad palette knives.
Hensche later refined this method of teaching by having students paint colored blocks outdoors in the yard of his school.
Its true Hawthorne and Hensche discouraged their students from drawing when they were painting their color studies, but that was only in order to teach them to see the big color effects.
Hawthorne and Hensche were in fact very competent draftsman.
Here's an example of what Hawthorne had his students doing.

And here's an example of what Henry Hensche had his students painting.

Here are some examples of Henry Hensche's work:

By the way, members of the Boston School were very much influenced by the French Impressionist. Paxton, though slightly younger than DeCamp and Tarbell, was a part of that whole mileu as well. I don't think any of them eschewed cadmiums.
The "Blue Kimono" by Decamp at the High Museum is one of my favorite paintings too. Seen in person, its a beautiful tour de force. Here's the whole painting.

Steve,

I personally reach for whatever color works. I like a warm Vermilion as it is a very useful color in warm skin-tones. When I have to ramp up the volume, I use a ripping cadmium. I think trying to dictate what pigments work and what are out of bounds is like telling a trained pianist what part of the scales is useful and what is wrong.

Thank-you for your information about the Cape School. I wish I had known about it, instead of going to The Boston Museum School.

I found some more about the Cape School. Interestingly Henche was a in a direct line of teacher from William Merritt-Chase the founder of the Parsons School.

He was influenced by the Japanese prints and arts and often incorporated it into the arts. It was this cross pollination of Asian art to the French that produced one of the most exquisite periods of art in history. Of course the French influenced the American Impressionist movement as they all went over there to study.

Here is brief description of Chase and the Cape school.

http://www.mcbridegallery.com/amerimpressionism.html

Below is a beautiful Chase incorporating Asian design into a beautiful painting.

Also is a spectacular Monet of his wife in a kimono. This is a really poor copy of that magnificent painting at the Boston Museum.

Am I being too simple minded? I've been following this post and the topic seems to have gotten caught up in a this vs. that string.

As portrait artists, are't our major concerns mainly two-fold, color and form? Aren't we all (portrait painters) really colorists?

We need proper form to be able to represent a resemblance to the subject. All else falls under color, especially values. You cannot represent a color accurately (or to more correct, to represent what you wish the viewer to see) without hitting its value and chroma. After all, if you miss on the chroma you miss the overall effect of 3 dimensions.

I know that I am not in the same caliber as others here and maybe my failures are due to my simple mindedness but this is how I understand the art of portraiture.

KISS is my mantra.

Color me beautiful
 

Steve, I said Paxton didn't use any Cadmiums on his palette (although they were readily available to him at the time). This information regarding the content of his palette comes from James Childs who was a student of Paxton's student, Ives Gammel.

Having examined the DeCamp painting of the Blue Mandarin Jacket up close and personal, on numerous occasions, I see no evidence of Cadmiums there either. From that you can infer anything you wish, however, I never said Paxton or DeCamp eschewed them, I said I thought Sharon eschewed them (based on her listing of which colors were on her palette). Obviously I misjudged Sharon by taking her literally. My bad! You obviously misread what I said.

I happen to agree philosophically with much of what Henche says but I'm just not a big fan of amped-up over-saturated color, which to my eye stays right on the surface. On http://www.thehenschefoundation.org/OpenEyes.html/, Henche states, in his essay, that the "truths of Impressionism" have been "rendered obsolete and not worth striving for." This was obviously not the case with the Boston School artists who married the Impressionistic concept of a true color note to the Academic quest for accurate values and exquisite draughmanship, as evidenced in the images I posted above. This was practiced by artists such as Paxton long before Henche starting teaching.

In fact, many schools of painting championed the idea of what Henche called the "light key." For example, it was taught by Howard Pyle and can be seen in the work of Golden age illustrators such as J.C. Leyendecker, who happened to be a student of Bouguereau. They chose to utilize these effects in a more naturalistic and subtle way than Henche and Hawthorne.

My point is that there are multiple points of view on who or what defines a colorist. I was merely throwing in my two cents worth.

Regarding the drawing thing, obviously Henche could draw, if he wished to, based on the examples you've published, but then he flatly dismisses drawing as the foundation of painting and says, "This type of thinking has done more to cripple the development and usage of color in modern painting than any other fact." Ouch!

I believe the act of drawing, which I define as getting the right shape in the right place, can only help one to refine the color relationships.

That's all folks!

John,

Some portrait artists add color as in over a grisaille and others work directly using color to create light and form. Others leave form behind entirely. It depends on what your personal definition of portrature is, another thread entirely.

Here are some examples of what I mean.

The Raphael is probably a grisalle, highly modeled, color added. It is dependendent more on form than color.
The Renoir is directly painted with color, quite flat. It, though it is subdued, more dependent on color for it's effect.
The Klimt leaves form behind almost entirely and dependes entirely on color.
This clever Japanese portrait by Natori Shunsen, from the 1920's is almost posterized.

This is an excellent thread. The posted images speak so well in ways that words can't. This thread has greatly increased my understanding of what I am trying to do.
I was looking up Whistler and came acrossed this painting of his. I found it very interesting in it's use of flat color, especially when you think of Whistler as being a basically black and white artist.

Sharon,

I agree with your examples and your points on each. To me, though, each piece is a creation of the artist using color and form to one degree or the other. Thus, for me, we as portrait artists are colorists. I guess I should add "to one degree or another".

I, too, find this thread very educational. As you can probably tell that I speak from my personal point of view and it is enlightening to read other's views and the examples they post.

Perhaps I may learn something.

John, I'm confused as to whether you are confused ( :) how about that for a sentence?) but I just wanted to point out that there are three elements of color that (in my opinion) are frequently mistakenly condensed into two elements:
1. Hue
2. Value
3. Chroma (also called 'Intensity' or 'Saturation')
Personally, it helps me to think of color as a three-note music chord; you need to think of all three aspects to the color you are putting down.
Gamblin has an interesting discussion on this subject at this link . There's a dvd that you can order through the site that shows a 3-D model of the "color space" idea. I think it was free at one of the Portrait Society of America conventions and that's how I have it.
This is a wonderful thread and thank you all who have contributed to it, I'm enjoying it very much.

Linda,

You are correct. I'm bad.

I hope I paint better than I talk.

This is kind of funny when you consider the quote after my name at the bottom of each post . . . "It is more important what comes out of your mouth than what goes in."

You're not bad at all, John! It's just that whenever artists start talking about color and color theory, things get confusing pretty quickly. I think that a lot of artists say they object to too much color when what they are really trying to say is that they object to excessively high chroma in a painting.

By the way, Gamblin's 'color space' discusses historic and 'modern' pigments and is styled (somewhat) after the Munsell system. A good introduction to Munsell is on Wikipedia here. I don't know much about the Munsell system beyond what's there.

Intuitive approach?
 

Linda, do you actually think consciously about these three aspects of color when you are mixing it and applying it? Or do you just approach it intuitively? I think I'm the latter brand of artist, and I can't say it's been an easy road. I've made many mistakes and then have been forced to think about at least one of these aspects of color in order to work on a problem. For me, conscious thought about making art is painful. Although at one time I felt reasonably intelligent, painting has developed a different part of my brain. I'm not sure I'd do too well on an IQ test now. Sometimes I feel frustrated teaching because when I try to spout all this information I invariably forget something, i.e.:

"There are three aspects to color: Hue, chroma and...er..oh, darn, what is the third? It'll come to me in a minute!"

Then I end up saying "You just have to get it right!" and showing the student what they might add to get the desired result.

Sometimes I wonder whether my students think of me as inredibly goofy or incredibly ignorant.

I find that images used as examples are much easier to understand than words. If one is using "words", it takes me a while to translate into an image in my mind. When one says"high chroma" or "hue" one is always not quite sure what the speaker has in mind. Everything is relative. People have been telling me for years that my paintings are "gray" and "flat". For a few years I had no idea what they meant. Sharon's examples demonstrate with most simplicity exactly what that means. And one has to always ask, gray and flat compared to what? Any time another artist says something about my work, the first thing I do is find an example of their work , so I can see where they're coming from. It drove me crazy that I was using cadmiums and vermillion and people were still telling me that my paintings were "gray".
People have different ideas of what is warm or cool also. Any time you say for instance "earth red" or "paynes gray", there can be a variety of different hues that could be called that. Talking about images can be very confusing because different people use the same words to describe different things. Posting an image as an example helps very much.

Alex

How ever you teach it it has to be wonderful. Color is intuitive and you have a sensitive grasp of it.

There are, I am afraid, so many methods out there how to teach a student how to get the color of an orange just right-sadly they are all too too common.

What is missing in these methods is the exquisite harmony and interrelatedness of color, how one color works against another, not just how to fill an object in. That you can teach in spades.

Well, here goes. I have read this forum for a long time, but this is my first real post.

I am a little hesitant to put in my two cents on this subject, since I have noticed that some artists are passionately opposed to high chroma in painting. I personally can appreciate many kinds of art and will use whatever approach I think will work best for particular circumstances. I have also studied with great teachers on both sides of the spectrum, so to speak :)

When I hear the word colorist, I usually think of someone painting plein air rather than in a studio and I believe that a completely different approach is necessary when painting a subject posed out of doors rather than in the studio.

After viewing Henry Hensche’s work, posted by Steve Craighead, it is apparent that his color is very subdued in the indoor portrait (the seated boy) when compared with the outdoor still life. I don’t see this portrait as being a particularly “colorist” work of art and I believe it illustrates my point that painting indoors and outdoors require completely different approaches.

When painting a portrait out of doors, all the usual rules go out the window. Light is bouncing everywhere. There is a definite bluish influence on the upper planes of the face from the sky. Everything facing the ground usually has a yellow or greenish cast depending on whether there is grass.

The canvases of the Impressionists contain explosions of color (in contrast to studio landscapes done in prior times) since they were able to paint plein air with ease due to the portability of the metal paint tube. They were able to capture the true light key, with artists such as Monet painting the same scene at different times of the day and paying careful attention not only to the drawing but also to the specific color notes that made up the shadow and light shapes.

I thought that some members may be interested in seeing a few studies done during a week spent painting on the beach in Provincetown with Cedric and Joanette Egeli, who both studied with Henry Hensche. We did many studies of models on the beach each day, using mainly a palette knife on gessoed boards. We worked in the morning, took a two hour break at midday and painted again in the late afternoon. These are not finished paintings, but quick sketches which were done in a very short period of time. The goal was to try to and achieve the correct light key, the right value relationships and spots of color to capture the time of day and weather conditions. It is interesting how colorful white fabric can be on the beach.

When trying to get the correct light key, colors are not necessarily matched. They are interpreted. For instance, to get the warm effect of blue in sunlight you actually often end up using pink rather than a paler blue, which would look too cold. It sounds crazy, but it works!

Also, when working out of doors there is an even greater need to compress the value range than indoors since the separation between the brightest light (nothing is brighter than the sun) and the darkest dark is far greater than the white and black paints we have at our disposal. Therefore, if we attempt to exactly match particular areas of what we are seeing, we will not get the overall impression of the entire scene, although parts may be exactly correct.

Colorist painting, just like any other style of realist painting, is not just about color – it is getting the correct color in relationship to all the other colors in the right value in the right place.

Laurel,

A colorist in the sense of an artist is someone who uses color well and harmoniously. It has nothing to do with high or low chroma.

It has nothing to do with form or light. It has everthing to do with color.

Here are some examples of paintings that depend on mainly on color harmony instead of form.

Klimt
Whistler
Friseke
Redon

Thank-you for those studies-they are very enlightening.

Color can be high key, low key, saturated and flat.

Linda Ciaello posted a perfect example of a painting tho' grey - actually grey-green, it works a color harmony by the small touch of the pink flower-it's complement.

High key
Low key
Flat
Saturated

It seems to me there are 2 or 3 themes running through this thread.
One theme is line vs. color.
Did you know that that discussion has been going on for hundreds of years? According to Gardner's Art Through the Ages, there were "Poussinistes" and "Rubenistes". The Poussinistes were "conservative defenders of academicsm, who held that drawing was superior to color, against Rubinistes, who proclaimed that color was not only more important to a painting than drawing, but that it had wider appeal than the more intellectual, and thus restrictive, quality of line."
Delacroix, the colorist, and Ingres, the draftsman, took up the controversy in the 19th century. Here's a cartoon of Delacroix and Ingres jousting with paint brush and pencil in hand.

Steve,

I agree. The original thread was a discussion of what a colorist is. If you din't mind I will now prune this thread so it makes some sense.

Sharon, it is nice to "meet" you. I had the pleasure of viewing one of your paintings in a gallery in Boston when attending the PSA conference a few years ago - a gorgeous, large pastel of a ballerina in red, hung behind plexiglas. It was gorgeous, quite high chroma, if I recall correctly :), and a skillful colorist work.

With regard to my post and the above quote, I think we are actually in agreement. I also really like Mr. Craighead's succint description of what a "colorist" is. This is what I was attempting to do on that beach in Provincetown. I am certainly not holding out the studies I posted as examples of great paintings. Far from it - they were merely rough records of figures in late afternoon sunshine, morning sunshine, a cloudy morning and midday bright sun respectively. The goal was learning to see the color spots and relationships between the colors. Students of the former Cape Cod School of Art use the term "colorist" to describe their approach and I was using the term in that context. Maybe your definition does not agree with theirs. With regard to high chroma, I know some painters (one of my teachers, in particular) who do not like the work of the Impressionists, which was largely done out of doors, because of the bright colors they used as opposed to the more subdued, low chroma, indoor paintings of the old masters. I don't think I mentioned anything about form in my post, so I don't think we have an argument there. However, without light there is no color, so I respectfully submit that light has a lot to do with being a colorist. If I went beyond the parameters for this thread, I apologize. Going back into the woodwork now!

Laurel,
Do not even DARE go back to the woodwork:) It's a pleasure to have you here.

Oh good heavens! Double Ditto!

What comments -refreshing and a totally welcome addition to this thread!

Of course it does not hurt that you like my painting! :)

Laurel, of course light has everything to do with color in western art. It makes form. However in eastern art it was not necessary as the pictorial plane was flat and the color arrangements had more to do with color harmonies-ie complementary color etc.

The impressionists were highly influenced by the arrival in Europe of the art of Japan and China . They began to experiment with flattening out their art, relying more on color than on form until form was replaces entirely by color, especially with Klimt and Redon. Finally color eclipsed form entirely with abstract art.

Here are two examples of the use of complementary color arrangements.

Benson: Red Orange and Blue Green.
A Japanese scroll, Kubo Shunman, 1757-1820, Edo period : Blue and Orange.

HURRAH FOR HENSCHE!

The quote quite literally sums up my perspective of the challenge of painting and more clearly expresses what I was trying to say regarding all of us being colorists (to one degree or another).

The way I try to use color is to suggest what the subject is doing. In other words, on a face, is the plane I am focusing on turned toward the light or away from it. Observing the surrounding colors, do any of them influence the color of the flesh of this plane in relationship to the light? How bright or dull is the color compared to its neighboring planes. Is it closer to my eye or further away?

All of these questions and more go through my mind when I am trying to determine what color to use. This is why I think of us all (portrait painters) as colorists.

All portrait painter are not colorists, even good ones.

Some are excellent at making form and subtle skin variations, but are not particularly good colorists. As I have said before color and color compositions can be independent of form, even in portraiture.

I am posting an early one of mine as an example, it has form but is really a black and white painting. It goes from light skin-tones to dark skin-tones. There really is no color. Tints maybe, but you could get the same effect coloring in a photo.

The next is a Bronzino. The form and design are beautiful, but the face goes from light skin-tone to dark skin-tone. The dress goes from medium to dark red. The is really no color composition. The color areas are FILLED IN with tints of color.

The third is an Ernest Major, who is a fine colorist. The skin reflects different colors AND temperatures of light. The white dress is not simply white but is alive with many variations in color, especially the orange reflection of the fan. The dress does NOT simply go from light to dark as does mine. Notice the cool blue tints in the skin, especially in the arm. This is missing in the Bronzino.

Sharon,

I think we must agree to disagree.

All of your examples still impart to me the artist's decision, whether conciously or not, to manipulate color. Even in a charcoal the artist decides to abandon color (maybe this is too extreme for my point).

Regarding your dress in your first post, you did use color to create the forms even if it flows as the same hue from light to dark.

By the way, the painting is beautiful.

Thank-you John!

That little portrait got me quite a few commissions. It was done more than 15 years ago. I think I have learned (I hope) a bit more about color since then!

Using A COLOR is different than being a colorist or using color well. I can use, let us say, an orange color and go from light to dark, depicting the fruit. That mean I am using a color to fill in rather than using it as part of a field of harmonious color. In that portrait I FILLED IN each area with an appropriate color.

Filling in areas of form, even with the appropriate color is, as I see it, is not being a colorist . That would be like a child with a coloring book filling in the individual areas with crayons. even IF they got the right colors in the right place. It is getting the colors into a harmonious union whether they be flat or have form, that is the role of the colorist.