Writing
George Romney (English, 1734-1802)
Master Hartley, c. 1795. Oil on Canvas.
A leading artist of his time, George Romney (1734-1802) was a sought-after portraitist for the social elite of late eighteenth-century London. Romney’s portrait work was appreciated for its smoky-smooth brushwork and his flattering depictions of subject in classical Roman poses and mythical settings. Romney’s work was influenced by an eighteen-month trip across Europe where he studied Raphael’s frescoes. Raphael’s influence can be seen in Romney’s subtle use of light and shadow to create a stunning display of depth while also illuminating the figure posed at the foreground of the painting.
Romney’s portraits were often commissioned by families. Families wealthy enough to afford portraits were portrayed in settings that represented the grandeur, dignity, and social status of the subject. Master Hartley, the subject of this visually unresolved painting, was likely overpainted by Romney in an attempt to rework the figure’s awkwardly extended right arm, which originally held a hat full of cherries. In 2003, a conservation team removed the overpaint, but decided to paint the arm out of the portrait once again.
A horizontal seam about 15 inches from the canvas’s top edge suggests that Romney extended the length of the canvas after the portrait’s initial composition was finalized, resulting in the piece feeling bottom-heavy and the figure rather small in relation to his environment.
Jennifer Bartlett (American, b. 1941)
Small House, 1998-1999. Enamel paint over silkscreen
grid on baked enamel steel plates.
Jennifer Bartlett (b. 1941) is an American artist best known for her large grid-like paintings and her process of systematically painting enamel on uniformly sized, cold-rolled steel plates. These large-scale graph-paper-esque installations are inspired by “pushpin art” popularized in the 60s. This type of art was a practice in which artists would hang their work on walls using pushpins, utilizing no frames or glass.
Small House, 1998-1999, is made up of 81 steel plates arranged in a 9 plate by 9 plate square. The front of each steel plate is coated in white baked enamel with a grey grid silk-screened and epoxied on top. Bartlett uses these cellular units to make up larger compositions, and the expandable grids allow for easy editing, packaging, and transportation.
Once installed on a wall, the margins between each plate become a part of the piece, and the negative space between plates forms a grid in the overall composition, becoming integral to the piece as a whole. By following a predetermined, deliberate, and controlled “method of organization” set for herself, Bartlett’s work becomes a systematic celebration of process.
Richard Diebenkorn (American, 1922-1993)
Ingleside, 1963. Oil on Canvas.
Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993) grew up in the Bay Area, attending Stanford University before going on to study at the California School of Fine Arts. Influenced by Arshile Gorky, Matisse, and Mondrian, Diebenkorn's early work was defined by gestural brushwork, an emphasis on flirtatious color, bold form, and a distinct sense of planar balance, and he soon became a nationally recognized abstract painter.
In the mid-1950s, Diebenkorn’s work took a drastic turn away from the popular Abstract Expressionist style of the time, and in a move toward figuration, Diebenkorn became associated with the Bay Area Figurative Movement. This defection from abstraction to a more representational style expanded toward the inclusion of landscapes.
Recognizing that “the emotional content of his work as its most salient quality,” Diebenkorn’s representational work of the early 60s did not lose the stylistic traits he’d developed as an abstract artist. Although straying from his past style, the cityscapes he created in these years offered a visceral sense of place that was nostalgic of Diebenkorn’s time in the starkly vertical landscape of the Bay Area.
Often sitting on the verge of abstraction and figuration, Diebenkorn’s work acts as external expressions of internal concerns. He described his work as “imagery that seems to pertain to landscape.” Despite its visual cohesion, the cityscape's converging geometric forms, high horizon lines, and curvilinear pathways convey the inherent tension between nature and humanity when set in the context of urban development.
Photographs of Grand Rapids Art Museum galleries via @grartmuseum on Instagram.