Art History

Oct 31 2020

What is a Pieta?

Guest post by Pat Knepley

Pieta (pronounced Pee-yeh-ta) is the word for the theme in Christian art of the mourning Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of her son, the crucified Jesus. One of the most important themes in Christian Art, the pieta is usually a sculpture in wood or stone, but sometimes is a painting. All through the ages, this theme of the mourning mother of God has evoked powerful emotions.

The Pieta (Italian for pity) was an idea in art that came about in Germany in the 1300s and was called Vesperbild. In other European countries, it was known by the Latin term Mater Dolorosa, or Sorrowful Mother. The Lamentation of Christ – the portrayal of those close to Jesus mourning Him after his body was taken down from the cross – had been a part of religious rites in the church for quite some time, but specifically the idea of Mary as the mourning mother had only reached Italy in 1400, and soon became a staple of religious art.

The Röttgen Pietà, an early fourteenth-century sculpture is made of painted wood, with an elongated figure of Christ, with an oversized head and exaggerated wounds. The grief-stricken mother is also portrayed in an abstracted fashion, and these unrealistic elements serve to elicit a sense of angst and pity for the tragic scene.

As religious icons moved across Europe, the theme of the pieta reached artists of other countries. In France, we find the painting of the mournful virgin, known as the Pieta des Villeneuve-les-Avignon, believed to be painted by the French artist Enguerrand Quarton. This oil paint on wood masterpiece of the late Middle Ages is notable for its restraint in showing the grieving mother, as her hands are in prayer rather than clutching her son’s body. The other figures are still and solemn in their sorrow.

Many artists have created their own version of the pieta. Do you know who created the most famous pieta of all? Check back next week to find out.

Here is a discussion about the Rottgen Pieta.

Take your art to the next level with See the Light videos:

Art Projects: Peaceful Seas (Winslow Homer) Download

Peaceful Seas Art Project (Winslow Homer). Watch and produce your own watercolor in 4 step-by-step downloadable video art lessons with master artist, Pat Knepley.

October 13, 2018 No Comments

Art Projects: Repeated Sweets (Pop Art – Wayne Thiebaud) Download

Repeated Sweets focuses on the pop art of Wayne Thiebaud. Students create a watercolor project and learn the art elements: shape, space, and color; and the art principles: pattern, repetition, and motif.

Start creating now with these downloadable video art lessons!

October 13, 2018 No Comments

Art Class Volume 6 – Lessons 21-24: Texture and Form

Are you ready to make your drawings look 3-D? In Art Class Volume 6, Pat Knepley teaches you about the art elements: texture and form, and how you can use these to create realistic-looking drawings. Lessons include: The Elements of Texture, Choosing the Right Tool, Make it 3-D, and One Shape, Three Results.

August 2, 2018 No Comments

And don’t miss these free resources from our blog:

Ring of Tulips 2

May 27, 2019 No Comments

About the Project In Part 2 of the Ring of Tulips project, Jim shows how to add depth and variety to the tulip image created

Mauve background with a rose. Text overlay: Digital Art Projects. Draw a Stylized Rose. See the Light Art

How to Draw a Beautiful Stylized Rose

May 13, 2019 No Comments

About the Project This week we’ll build on the skills learned in the Marigold Mandala lesson by drawing a stylized rose. In addition to working

Are You Having Fun Yet?

September 5, 2020 No Comments

Whenever I started a new art class, I always gave my students one important rule: Have fun! If you are a homeschooling mom or dad

Oct 14 2019

Collage: Turn Scraps into Art

[Guest post by master artist, Pat Knepley]

Spanish artist Pablo Picasso may be the most well-known name in the world of art. And most people think of him as a painter. However, Picasso was also a sculptor and even brought back an ancient art form to be part of the modern art scene: collage. The term collage derives from the French “coller” meaning “glue”.

In Picasso’s case, he and friend and fellow-cubist painter Georges Braque, coined the term collage to mean the act of pasting scraps of flat objects (paper, lace, wicker, labels,) onto the surface of a painted canvas to make it part of the visual statement.

Picasso started this modern trend by adhering some chair seat caning to one of his canvases. His friend Braque pasted scraps of shredded paper. Later, newspaper clippings and labels from bottles , in fact any flat object would be incorporated into a painting, so that the words were part of the overall composition. There are other artists who through the twentieth century and into today have embraced collage as a viable art medium.

When the Post-impressionist Henri Matisse was plagued with health problems later in life, he gave up painting in oils at a tall easel, as was his custom, to try a new medium of art – collage. Matisse began to cut out large paper shapes and have assistants glue them to a large canvas to “paint with scissors”. His foray into bright colors, organic shapes, and oversized compositions brought a whole new audience to appreciate the genius that is Matisse.

The African American artist Romare Bearden used collage to great effect to tell stories of black Americans, with a special emphasis on musicians. What makes Bearden’s collages so intriguing are the many layers of painted papers, magazine clippings, and photographs to create complex images. When Bearden made collage his signature technique in the 1960s, he started off with simply torn or cut paper. But as the years went on, he added foil, textured materials, and miscellaneous found objects.

Next Time: An easy and fun Charlotte’s Web collage project for you and your children to try.

Interested in doing more collages? Scroll to the bottom of this post and check out Art Projects: Poppy Collage.

Notes:

For more about Romare Bearden, see:

nga.gov/education/classroom/bearden/methc1.shtm

To learn more about Picasso and his collage work, check out this video:

Oct 07 2019

More than Words: Illustrating Great Stories (Pt. 2)

Guest post by Pat Knepley – In part one of this post, we looked at three great illustrators. This week we’ll consider four more: N. C. Wyeth, Arthur Rachkam, Jessie Willcox Smith, and Edward Detmold.

N. C. Wyeth

Newell Convers Wyeth was the patriarch of an entire family of successful artists. He and his wife home schooled their children, and included art instruction as the first subject each day. Their son Andrew Wyeth became the most well known American realist painter of the twentieth century. N. C. painted more than 4000 illustrations for publication over his lifetime.

One of his most successful books was when he illustrated the Robert Louis Stevenson classic Treasure Island. Wyeth had a vivid imagination that translated into stunning illustrations filled with compelling characters and exacting detail.

Wyeth was known for studying every aspect of the genre he was illustrating in order to heighten the realism, even spending some time out west working on a ranch so that the cowboys he drew for his western stories would be true to life.

N. C. Wyeth - Boys King Arthur — N. C. Wyeth – Boys King Arthur

Arthur Rackham

Arthur Rackham was one of the illustrators during England’s golden age of Book Illustration for the later years of the 19^th century until the start of the Depression. His style of using pen and ink line drawings overlaid with watercolor washes created an ethereal and fanciful look that worked well with the range of stories he illustrated. One of his classics was the fairy tale Rip Van Winkle published in 1905.

Jessie Willcox Smith

Jessie Willcox Smith was an American illustrator known for her works in Women’s magazines and for Children’s literature. Born and educated in Philadelphia, Smith had a long and successful career portraying young children even though she was never a parent herself.

Her rosy-cheeked children graced the covers of many magazines in the early twentieth century, and revealed an intuitive sense of children’s moods and movements. In addition to magazine work, Smith also illustrated classic Children’s literature, such as The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley and Heidi by Johanna Spyri from 1922.

Jessie Willcox Smith - Heidi — Jessie Willcox Smith – Heidi

Edward Detmold

Edward J Detmold was born in 1883 in England, and he was a twin. He and his brother were both talented artists with a gift for capturing plants and animals in all their natural beauty. Detmold was influenced by the compositions and color of Japanese prints. In 1909, Detmold illustrated Aesop’s Fables., and since so many of those stories have animals as the main characters, this commission was well suited to Detmold’s skills.

For the home educator, linking art to literature is a natural. Use a book your student is currently reading and have them illustrate one or more scenes. There are two approaches to take with a project like this: illustrate a scene that is described well, making sure the details match; or illustrate a lesser known scene where the artist can fill in details that the author did not take the time to describe.

More imaginative students will like this option. Keep the drawing to simple black pen or a very fine marker over an initial sketch in pencil. The more details added by the young artist, the better! Carefully reading a favorite line, within a chapter so get context, can provide the perfect inspiration (and caption) for a drawing. So start reading some classics and let the words cause your imagination to translate into beautiful pictures.

Try your hand at illustrating a Bible story with Art Projects, Dreams of Joseph:

Art Projects: Dreams of Joseph (Marc Chagall)

Sep 23 2019

More than Words: Illustrating Great Stories

Guest post by Pat Knepley

Our current culture is overwhelmingly visual, with television and movies accounting for most of the narrative stories we know. Since the time movies were invented in the early part of the twentieth century, many classic pieces of literature have been put to film, and indeed may be have more of a following than the original written work.

Who can read Frank L. Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of OZ without envisioning Judy Garland as Dorothy, as she played in the 1939 film? Or read Margaret Mitchell’s classic of the antebellum South Gone With The Wind and not imagine Clark Gable as Rhett Butler?

But before the dawn of motion pictures, the only images attached to great works of literature were the ones in the mind of the reader, or the very few that were illustrated.

Illustrations in Classic Literature

Classic Literature is called “classic” because it transcends the time it was written to appeal to a wide audience with a compelling story. Many works of fiction fit the bill – from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll to Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle. What makes these works unique is that they were more than words: these two classics contained iconic illustrations.

Most people think of book illustrations as being for young children’s picture books. But there are many classic books for adults that have masterful illustrations that can also be considered classic. For Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the original illustrator was Arthur Rackham. For the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, it was Sidney Paget. The work of these artists did much to popularize these stories even more. Book publishers would often take a book or magazine series that already had commercial appeal and re-introduce it with well-executed drawings that brought the story to a whole new audience.

George Cruikshank

Most scholars agree that it started with the works of Charles Dickens, a writer in 19^th century England. His classic tale of an orphan on the streets of London , Oliver Twist, was illustrated by Dickens’ friend and fellow countryman George Cruikshank. Cruikshank was a caricaturist who made a name for himself going after the politicians of the day in England. But when he illustrated the colorful characters in Oliver Twist in 1838, the entire world was able to see his incredible talent, and enjoy Dickens’ endearing story all the more.

Howard Pyle

Considered the father of American book Illustrators, Howard Pyle was born in Delaware in 1853. From a young age Pyle was more interested in drawing than in his academics, so he was encouraged by his parents as a teenager to study classical art in Philadelphia. He started his art career as an illustrator for several magazines out of New York. In

1884, Pyle wrote and illustrated The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, which is a novel that wove English folklore and traditional ballads into an exciting narrative that became an instant classic. Pyle was a master illustrator, and founded his own school in 1900 to train other illustrators. Several of his pupils, including N. C. Wyeth, became famous in their own right following the principles espoused by Pyle.

In 2 Weeks: In Part 2 of this post, we’ll look at three more illustrators, including one of the greatest illustrators of all time: N. C. Wyeth.