I came across this remark from the Canadian painter E. J. Hughes recently: “Leonardo’s Mona Lisa sure would have lost out if he had spent only 2 of the 4 or 5 years he took to complete it. It is thinking about him ……, among others, that partly makes me feel so awful to send away a ‘half-baked’ painting.”
The Mona Lisa was probably not finished because Leonardo was infamous for not completing work … it languished in his studio during his lifetime … perhaps being fiddled with to get that smile just right! In his own words da Vinci said “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
In fact Leonardo’s masterpiece may just be the most famous example of the 19th century’s Eugène Delacroix’s wonderful musing: “Paintings finish themselves in the corner of the studio.”
Finishing paintings is a very personal thing, perhaps well summed up by the art writer Paul Gardner: “A painting is never finished – it simply stops in interesting places.”
Break-a-Brush!
David
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“One always has to spoil a picture a little bit in order to finish it.” Eugène Delacroix, once again.