England

Citizens and Kings: Portraits in the Age of Revolution, 1760—1830 |Royal Academy of Arts | This was a very difficult show for me to absorb. Quite simply, I was overwhelmed by the volume of works on display; it was a huge collection, I only had an hour and It was quite crowded the day I attended. Although the works were amazing, the collection was less about the art and more about history. It was an intellectually deep show and to be appreciated fully, really required more knowledge about the period than I possess. I did take the time to do a few sketches, but I am not sure if I still have them. These were the most memorable works for me: Ingres’ Napoleon and Houdon’s Bust of Franklin.

Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, Design – Victoria and Albert Museum | This show was stunning and I remember it as one of my favorite visits. It was a little crowded but I was able do a quick sketch of an original drawing. (see my drawing at right)

NG London/Exhibitions: Velázquez

NG London/Past Exhibitions: Renoir Landscapes 1865 – 1883/Introduction

Tate Britain | Past Exhibitions | Holbein in England

Tate Britain |Past Exhibitions | How We Are

The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings – Exhibitions – Royal Academy of Arts

Tate Modern: International modern and contemporary art

National Portrait Gallery

British Museum – Welcome to the British Museum

France

Louvre Museum Official Website

Claude Monet’s garden at Giverny

Rodin Museum

Musée de l’Orangerie

Musée d’Orsay: Home

Visiting the Palace of Versailles: discover the palace of Versailles.

Italy

Museo Correr

Accademia Gallery

Official Site Borghese Gallery Galleria Borghese – The collections

The Uffizi Gallery, Florence Italy – ItalyGuides.it

The Netherlands

Museum het Rembrandthuis

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam – National Museum of Art and History

Van Gogh Museum

Russia

The State Hermitage Museum

Spain

Museu Picasso

Winslow Homer was a “Yankee to the bone,” during a time when all of America was falling in love with the European aesthetic. American society during the post-Civil-War industrial boom was war-weary and wanted to forget about home for a while so they found solace in European Old World art and architecture. Whistler became an expatriate and America artists followed him en masse. Sargent became the darling of the wealthy on both sides of the Atlantic, but on their return, many American artists could not sell their European style paintings because the wealthy wanted to buy only from authentic European artists. When I lived in England, I became very interested in Whistler and Sargent because I could relate to them as a fellow expatriate. Homer became so annoyed with fellow artists burbling on about beauty, he dismissed them and replied that his pictures were not intended to be beautiful. Ironically, he moved to Europe to escape them and everything else that he felt was wrong with American art. But he steered very clear of the art meccas; he decided to go to a somber fishing village on the North Sea of England. There he became somewhat of a recluse and began to paint the untamed sea. Eventually he moved back to America, to Maine, where he went on painting seascapes until his death.

I discovered Thomas Eakins through reading this book and was awed with his discipline. He entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and submitted himself to its crusty academic curriculum. He copied in pencil and chalk, again and again, plaster casts of famous antique statues. He dissected cadavers at a medical college to aid his accuracy in figure drawing. He did this for five years before beginning to paint. Then he went to Paris and worked from living models. He sold very little in his lifetime and was under appreciated before he became known as one of America’s greatest painters.
Google Image Search on Eakins.

• The Pencil of Nature (out of print)
• Eugene Atget (Aperture)
• Julia Margaret Cameron (Phaidon 55s)
• Alfred Stieglitz (Aperture Masters of Photography)
• James Vanderzee (Phaidon 55s)
• Henri Cartier-Bresson (Photofile)
• Walker Evans (Photofile)
• Koudelka
• Don McCullin (Photofile)
• Sabastian Salgado (Photofile)
  
• Witness in our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers
• Magnum Stories
• Black and White Photography: A Basic Manual
• Photo Idea Index
  
• The Photoshop book for Digital Photographers
  
• Digital Negatives: Using Photoshop to Create Digital Negatives for Silver and Alternative Process Printing
• Geometry of Design: Studies in Proportion and Composition
  
• Introduction to Two-Dimensional Design:Understanding Form and Function

The Pencil of Nature, in the words of its author, Henry Fox Talbot, was intended as “the first attempt to publish a series of plates or pictures wholly executed by the new art of Photogenic Drawing, without the aid whatever from the artist’s pencil.” Talbot went on to stress that the images were “depicted by optical and chemical means alone, without the aid of any one acquainted with the art of drawing.”

The series was published in London between 1844 and 1846 in six separate fasicles. (The word is from the Latin facisculus which means little bundle). Printing technology at that time was unable to reproduce photos in books, so real photograhic prints were included in the fasicles.

The original copies are extremely rare. The Pencil of Nature has been reprinted in 1968 and in 1989 by two different publishers, but they, too, are either out-of-print or very hard to find. It has only been recently that I was lucky enough to come across a copy of the the 1968 reprint.

Because of my passion for photo history, I was blown away that I was actually able to get my hands on this book!

Because I am am fascinated with golden section design patterns, I find the title graphic very intriguing. That it contains many golden ratio measurements is not surprising to me, due to the period, Talbot’s intellect and education. I have started to recreate the image in Adobe Illustrator and have discovered an underlying dynamic rectangle grid. The design was not thrown together quickly, but evidences quite a bit of planning. It is not easy to reproduce with modern computer technology. Because of the precision tools I have at my disposal, I can make the entire graphic snap into the underlying grid, which I have done. I had to make some changes to the original to make it fit, because it is off a bit. It was too difficult to remain faithful to the original variance, so I stuck with the original goal that was not attained. I only had to recreate one corner to copy and reproduce the three other corners. As you can see, I am not finished; it is still a work in progress.

Even though the photos are fairly simple, they are well composed. I see a lot of golden section measurements in them as well. Whether this is accidental or planned, I do not know.

The text is amazing. I thought that it was most unfortunate that it is not easily available. I discovered that the URL www.thepencilofnature.com was not taken, so I bought it and published the text.