Posts tagged Hatching
Portrait of Elizabeth Siddal
Pen and brown and black ink with wash
12 x11 cm
Elizabeth “Lizzie” Siddal was Rossetti’s favorite painted and poetic muse, pupil, mistress, and later his wife. ‘She can be seen as Viola in Deverell’s Twelfth Night, Sylvia in Hunt’s Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus, and most most famously, Ophelia by Millais.’ (see previous post)
‘Millais had Siddal lie fully clothed in a full bathtub in his studio at 7 Gower Street in London. As it was winter, he placed oil lamps under the tub to warm the water, but was so intent on his work that he allowed them to go out.’ From this, Siddal caught a severe cold that never fully subsided, and as a result she became addicted to laudanum which eventually played a part in her own death.
She also wrote somber poetry in the style of Rossetti’s sister:
Dim phantoms of an unknown ill
Float through my tired brain;
When she was put to rest, Rossetti buried his own poems with her.
Seated Female Nude, 1810-20
Black and white chalk, stumped, on blue paper
22 x 15 in. (55.9 x 38.1 cm)
Recently, I spent some time exploring through a vintage store’s library art section and found book with Prud’hon’s Head of Vengeance in it. It really fascinated me that he used blue paper to work on as I seem to gravitate towards ultramarine blue being used in oil paintings for figurative shading.
In reading more about him, I found out little things like his middle name was adopted as his second Christian name in honor of Peter Paul Rubens. Also, that after his trainings were complete he never abandoned academic figure drawing alike most artists during his time did. This led him to creating an alternative approach and style that is still admired today. It’s an appealing that Prud’hon’s hatching technique runs parallel to the length of the form and away from the form on the outside of the figure.
I also really admire that, as seen with the image above, many of his drawings emit a soft language and a gentle stoicism.
