John
Hicks Artist and Lecturer
The Bay Tree followed my rediscovery
of Henri Fantin-Latour on a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum. I
still find his painting quite baffling in that he starts with a clichéd
subject like a vase of flowers, which he virtually reconstructs as impasto
oil paint on a bleak monochrome canvas background. What appears as an imitation
of the subject is actually a delicate relief of oil painted marks. Like
all great illusionists, this magic is undiminished by revealing how the
trick is done.
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|
| The Bay Tree, Oil on canvas, 48 cm X 33
cm (February 2002) |
Detail of scratched surface |
As both the V&A and The National
Gallery in London seem ashamed to display their twelve Fantin-Latours,
the best way to see how he did it is to visit the Fine Art Museum
of San Francisco's web site: http://www.famsf.org/
where a miraculous enlarging procedure called "Zoom" brings you so close
you can see the canvas - and wonder at the virtuosity of the brushwork
that plays over it - but search through all his drawings until you reach
a flower painting.
These painted shapes are getting closer
to recreating what I want from the garden, using gestural marks, but I'm
still unable to apply these on canvas without the safety net of a repaintable
ground.
Comments or questions regarding this site?
johnd.hicks@virgin.net
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