“In the collection of the Concord Art Association are two
lovely head studies by Couture dated 1876, painted as part of a series to
demonstrate his method. They show that he began laying his studies with an
outline of reddish-brown ‘sauce’ and then massed in the shadows with the same
diluted tone, finally proceeding to lay in the local colours – always careful
to avoid corrupting the vitality of his first sketch. Undoubtedly inspired by
such demonstrations, the students went to work following the master’s procedure.
They
were instructed to employ a limited range of colours, composed mainly of earth
pigments. For executing the ebauche of
the head, the typical palette consisted of silver white, Naples yellow, yellow
ochre, ochre de ru, red ochre, cinnabar, ivory or cork black and Prussian blue.
Earth colours dominate here because of their solidity – they were essential to
the execution of the ebauche ,
or underpainting. This stage of painting received the greatest
attention, and was continually emphasized during an artist’s atelier training.
In the rendering of the ebauche the
painter began rather crudely, laying in roughly areas of light and dark as well
as the general compositional movement. These areas he refined and adjusted in a
second application. But while the ebauche served as a preliminary state, it was considered a self-sufficient
entity charged with specific aims:
In general it is more important in
oil painting than in all other media to take care with the preparatory work,
and not confuse the ebauche with the
finishing process.
The palette for the ebauche was arranged in three divisions: one for the light
areas, another for the shadows, and the last for the demi-teintes. When the palette was prepared the pupil began by
tracing a preliminary sketch on the canvas with charcoal, removing excess
grains by blowing or beating the canvas with his hand-support. This left a
light outline clear of particles that might interfere with the paint. Next he
diluted his red ochre colour with turpentine, and traced over the charcoal
outline with this transparent tint, the so-called ‘sauce’. He now had a light
outline to serve as a guide for laying in the main masses.
The studio formula for painting the ebauche was empatez les clairs; peignez legerment
les ombres. That is paint the light areas
in impasto and opaquely, and the shadow areas in diluted and transparent tone.
Using the same tint that served for the outline, the artist was instructed to
establish ‘his principle dark masses, without entering into too much detail’.
Areas of shadow were not to be carefully united in the preparatory phase, but
to guide the placing of the lights and the middle tones.
The next step consisted of painting
the brightest parts, mixing the pigment abundantly with white, ‘use plenty of
rich impasto for your impressive light areas’. Moreover, it was necessary to:
Comeback to the centre of those
brilliant areas and highlight them with a still more brilliant tint; but do not
do this until your canvas is entirely covered and, so to speak, completed . . .
so that these final lively touches will impart additional relief a firmer
modeling than the other parts of the picture.
The light areas of the ebauche thus were to be put down spontaneously and freely to
lend interest and brilliance to the pictorial arrangement.
Once the local highlights were
rendered, the pupil began applying the graduated series of demi-tientes, beginning with a tone alomst imperceptibly less
luminous than the light areas. These first middle tones were not mixed with
black, a colour used only as one approaches the deepest shadows. At least six
middle tones where applied to like the lights with the darks. The final tones
were those of the deepest shadow ‘ allowing you to work over the thinly painted
brownish layer that you begin with, so as to establish the basic effect of the
finished picture’. As in drawing after the cast, the middle tines were
understood as indispensable to the effect.
At this stage in the development of
the ebauche the pupil was admonished not
to allow the individual tones to mix on the canvas, but to juxtapose them
carefully,
For this is not the right way to
blend and amalgamate the various tones: it should be done by means of
juxtaposing one another to the other an almost imperceptible gradation of
tines, and when all your tones are in place, and at a certain distance the head
emerges clearly, you may proceed to blend them.
In other words, when the demi-teintes are carefully juxtaposed, the individual patches fuse
at a distance and convey the appearance of relief. It was believed that thereby
purity of tone could be maintained; otherwise, the head would look dull and
muddy. Great streass was place on working the ebauche ‘as if your were working a mosiac’.
…
After this step of the ebauche was completed, the pupil was advised to link the
separate tones, ‘in dissimulating this effect of patchwork’. This was
accomplished by employing an individual brush for each demi-tiente, and with a light touch of color on the edge of the
brush the artist link the separate tones at their point of juncture. When this
procedure was completed, the passage from one tone to the other was
imperceptible, even at close range. All that was now necessary for the pupil to
terminate the ebaches were
several ‘inspired brush-strokes’, applied in both light dand dark areas to
enliven the surface and retain the original feeling of immediacy, The greatest
freedom was permitted in executing these last touches.
Treat the accessory features of
your ebauche in a broad fashion, not going
into every detail of hair or draperies; work in large masses to lay in the
general effect with accuracy. Then when you later set about finishing off the ebauche
you will not be hampered and confused by small details which
you may have gotten wrong in the first place; instead; at the second working
over you will have every opportunity of filling them correctly by outlining
them with a white crayon before repainting.
The ebauche embodies
all the qualities of an immediate and direct expression, as well as fulfilling
the essential goal of the general effect.
When
the ebauche was completed, it was set
aside to dry thoroughly, after which it was scraped and prepared for finishing.
Basically the same procedure was followed for the finish as for the preparation.
The demi-tientes were again
juxtaposed in the form of a mosaic, although the lights were made more
brilliant than in the ebaiche. In
these academic exercises, the fini
did not play as important a role as in the works submitted to the Salon or the Prix-de-Rome
competition. The pupil was taught that finishing the ebauche added depth to the colouring, and preserved the
pigments for a longer period. At the same time, it was felt that the ebauche
enabled the artist to approximate the true
relations of colour and light values instead of being contrasted by a glare of
white canvas. It further gave the artist more confidence in his execution than
if he had begun directly on the white canvas. Finally, the added layer of
pigment, especially in the light areas, preserved the pate from losing its brilliance ‘by taking on a sort of
transparency in the course of time, this impairing the relief and the general
effect’.
…
A glaze was a darker coat of more
or less transparent paint applied to the ebauche in pleine pate; it served to modify the under painting
in the interests of the general effect and to enrich a dull or lifeless area.
Another technique employed in finishing an ebauche in rich impasto was that of the frottis, or scumbling, In this procedure the artist modifies
the effect of his painting by overlaying parts of it with a paler application
of opaque color. Scumbling was usually carried out with a short brush that let
bristle marks in the applied pigment. Its appearance often resembles the ‘dry
brush; technique associated with watercolour.
The
background were rubbed in crudely and rapidly with broad brush strokes, and
were generally transparent in the way shadows were meant to be in the
conventional method. In both cases the grain of the canvas was permitted to
show though. The same technique was employed to good advantage in painting
landscape, where it was admirably suited to covering large areas like the
terrain and sky. Actually, the technique closely resembled that of scumbling,
particularly in the individual strokes, although the tow differed with respect
to function. As the background of a head or figure was never finished, it
always exhibited the ‘rubbing’ look.”
Pages 37 – 41
The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century
Albert Boime
Phaidon Press
London
1971
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