FEW IF ANY BOOKS ABOUT painting have been bestsellers. A handful, however, might be classed as having an impact on the world of painters, sometimes for centuries, other times in a particular period. Eight come to mind.
The sixteenth-century painter and art critic, Giorgio Vasari, gave us Lives of the Artists (1550). This long, ponderous tome, with its keen observations and Italian Renaissance gossip, established the solo artist as something special in society. It made some artists, such as the “divine” Michelangelo, heroic figures, a status pursued by artists ever since.
Lesser known is the French painter Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819). He codified the practice of outdoor painting in his 600-page book, Elements of Perspective (1800). The work mostly regurgitates what many books since the Renaissance had already said about linear perspective and other such artistic calculations.
In the second half, however, Valenciennes advocates quick sketching outdoors in oil on paper. And he was quite particular. An outdoor sketch should take no more than two hours, thus capturing a scene in its natural light. He even put a half hour down as the requisite time to catch an especially fleeting effect of sun and sky.
Valenciennes wrote at a time when academic studio painting was the norm, and the rediscovery of his volume—widely read by European art students—has put the lie to the idea that the Impressionists of the late 1800s “invented” quick outdoor painting. Even today, at plein air painting contests, the “quick draw” (or other such slogans), are set at two hours once the whistle is blown (and no cheating!)
Now we come to modern-day books, a few of which may be grouped as more “interior” advice for the painter. I would group together Vassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1910), and Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit (1923), a kind of morale booster for painters from this doyen of the historic Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts in Philadelphia. A third of more recent vintage is Art and Fear (1993), a little treatise by David Bayles and Ted Orland on the “perils” and “rewards” of artmaking.
All three go to the inner life of the artist—that nebulous world of motivation, emotion, and creativity. They also are short, discursive works, which has made them quick reads for artists. Moreover, for the reading public, they have conveyed this message: the artist, unsung in business and politics, nevertheless has an inner life worth considering.
My four final works are contemporary and fall in the “how to” category. Still, they are obviously infused with more than brass tacks, and have inspired many painters to improve their game. First is the Swedish-American painter John F. Carlson’s Elementary Principles of Landscape Painting (1928), which was being reprinted as late as 1973. It became a classic for one good reason. He clarified for all in his wake that a landscape has four values: sky is lightest, flat planes are next lightest, inclines are darker, and vertical objects are darkest. It’s a formula that never seems to fail.
In the same vein, much later, comes Kevin Macpherson, notable too because he was one of the first American landscape painters to go on the Internet big time. In 1990, he was the first painter on the website of the San Antonio, Texas.-based Fine Art Studios Online, now said to be the largest custom online web service for artists. Macpherson’s updated Landscape Painting Inside and Out (2010) is best known, rising on his prominence, especially as a former president of the membership organization, Plein Air Painters of America.
Stepping back slightly in time, we turn to Richard Schmid’s Alla Prima (1998, with a follow-up second edition). A consummate and admired painter, Schmid argues for the value of “painting from life,” and doing it in one shot—“all at once” (alla prima), or wet into wet, as they say. He gives us “everything I know” about painting.
Schmid popularized the “Flemish pallet” of a cool and warm version of the primary and secondary colors, and explained four fundamental ways to do a painting. The proof of his influence is twofold. He popularized the idea of painters doing color charts (systematically mixing all possible combinations of the eleven colors on the Flemish pallet).
Perhaps more telling, he argued for Transparent Oxide Red to replace the duller historic Burnt Sienna as the basic brown. You’ll notice now that the price of Transparent Oxide Red has shot up over the years—paint companies mindful of Schmid’s influence.
Finally there is James Gurney’s Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (2010). One might call Gurney an illustrator, but he is far more. He famously traveled the country drawing and painting with his painting partner, the equally famous late Thomas Kincaid (“the billion dollar painter”), and this summation of Gurney’s years of experience is rarely matched for its elegant, comprehensive coverage of the topic.
Its contents live up to the “color and light” promise of the title.
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