Colorist

[Steve Craighead]

"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

[Marvin Mattelson]

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.

[Sharon Knettell]

Originally Posted by Steve Craighead

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 describes the form.

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.

[Sharon Knettell]

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.

[Marvin Mattelson]

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

[Marvin Mattelson]

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.

[Julie Deane]

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).

[Marvin Mattelson]

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

[Steve Craighead]

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.