Showing posts with label Unfinished. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Unfinished. Show all posts

Thursday, September 13, 2018

Some of Degas' Unfinished Paintings

I enjoy posting about unfinished paintings because I am curious as to how various artists went about their work, and unfinished paintings reveal intermediate levels of that process. For more on this, here is an interesting link to Christie's.

This post's subject is Edgar Degas (1834-1917) who left many unfinished paintings. In some cases he signed them, perhaps signifying that he considered them complete enough to his satisfaction.

Examples are shown below. Interestingly, those I found on the Internet had women as subjects. But then, that is true of the majority of his paintings.

Gallery

Woman Ironing - c. 1869
I found this in Munich's Neue Pinakothek, which prompted me to write this post. The image is very slightly cropped around the edges. The face seems to be completed. Note the two versions of her left arm and the muddled right hand. His signature is at the lower right.

Madame Théodore Gobillard - Berthe Morisot's older sister - 1869
Essentially monochrome aside for the foliage in the background. The subject's face isn't much more developed than the rest of the painting. Hands are roughly indicated. He signed this.

Ballet Dancer with Crossed Arms - 1872
Not much more than a sketch, yet it has his signature.

Woman Seated on Balcony - 1872
Note his working out the room's perspective (it's not quite correct). Again the hands seem to be saved for later development.

Woman with an Umbrella - Berthe Jeantaud - 1876
Like most other portrait painters Degas chose to complete the face before expending time and materials on the rest.

Study of a Girl's Head - late 1970s
If this is indeed a study (the title was as I found it on the Web), then it's not really an unfinished painting. I include it here to show Degas' brushwork and use of color.

Combing the Hair - 1895
This was painted later than the others and features his more familiar mature style. Interestingly, whereas it's largely "flat" Degas includes a table that provides as sense of depth by its shape and position.

Thursday, January 18, 2018

Some Unfinished Paintings by Pissarro

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) had a long, prolific career. His Wikipedia entry is extensive.

While I was surfing through collections of his work via the Internet, I came across three unfinished works. I'm not sure how interesting this is for the average reader, but I know that people who paint, along with art historians, usually enjoy stumbling across such items that reveal an artist's technique.

Gallery

Mountain Landscape at Saint Thomas, Antilles - 1854-55
One of Pissarro's earliest surviving works. Painted on his return to Saint Thomas, but quite possibly interrupted when he left again for France. At this stage of his career, Pissarro seems to be finishing a painting area-by-area.

Peasant Woman - 1885
Thirty years later, he is more into assembling his painting on a balanced basis. This seems to be a gouache or watercolor that requires different handling than oils. Nevertheless, he leaves important areas to be finished later.

Poultry Market at Gisors - 1889
Here Pissarro spent his time on the featured foreground subjects. Heads and faces in the distant crowd might or might not receive a bit more detail.  The far side of the market square is was roughed in when he set this painting aside. (Though he did add his initials instead of his usual signature, indicating ... something.)

Monday, May 15, 2017

Unfinished Le Nain

Unfinished paintings interest me because they reveal to some degree how an artist went about his business.

In December I encountered an interesting example at San Francisco's Legion of Honor museum in an exhibit of paintings by France's Le Nain brothers. The link (available as I write this) to the exhibit is here. The brothers' Wikipedia entry is here.

And here is what the National Gallery has to say about the painting in question, "Three Men and a Boy" from around 1647-48. It seems it was previously known as "A Trio of Geometers." But a cleaning revealed an unfinished image of three men (some think it's a portrait of the brothers themselves) with an image of a boy made using a different style and a different light source. I wonder what the geometers version looked like -- a quick Google search for it turned up empty -- and why it was so easily revealed by cleaning.

A further question is which brother was the painter; it seems that they all signed paintings using only "Le Nain." The National Gallery does not designate who did it. The Athenaeum web site has Louis as the artist. Curators of the exhibit believe the painter was Mathieu.

Gallery

This image is from London's National Gallery, owner of the painting.

My establishment photo taken at the exhibit.

Closer photo of the main unfinished area. Click to enlarge for a better view of the brushwork.