Problems and solutions with the three-quarter view. Finishing touches.
Portrait of Madame X by John Singer Sargent, 1884
John Singer Sargent was an American expatriate artist, the leading portrait painter of the late 1800’s – early 1900’s. In addition to his approximately 900 oil paintings, he also painted more than 2,000 watercolours documenting his worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.
As a budding portraitist and avid watercolourist, his work caught my eye early on in my own creative journey.
Sargent showed me that formal and informal artworks can be equally enjoyable. The focus on a single style, medium and subject is often the interpretation of historians rather than from the artists, their journeys and their art.
John Singer Sargent’s 1884 Portrait of Madame X has to be one of the most famous profiles in the history of art. The profile is a great example of a pure contour line. Whether drawn or painted, the discipline of following a single contour is a key to effective image making.
Madame X was one Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, an American expat and socialite, wife of Pierre Gautreau, a Parisian Banker. Sargent did not paint her portrait as a commission – he pursued her somewhat for the opportunity. While this work was in progress, Virginie was enthusiastic, but then quickly changed her tune when the painting first appeared at the Paris Salon, the preeminent exhibition of the day.
Although we find no difficulty today, for those times it was a bit risqué, as a portrait anyway. People were shocked and scandalized. Sargent maintained however, that he had painted her “exactly as she was dressed, that nothing worse could be said of the canvas than had been said in print of her appearance”.
Interestingly, other portraits of Mme. Gautreau have a quite different feel and nothing like the drama and impact of the Sargent masterpiece. Contemporary photographs of her certainly only show a glimmer of the painting. We cannot see what Sargent saw: the attitude, the facade, the forced show. Madame X is not a very sympathetic painting, perhaps a bit too clever and contrived, but you notice it. This painting could never have been conceived as anything other than a profile. A profile with attitude!
During the year following the scandal, Sargent departed for England. He hung Madame X first in his Paris studio, and later in his studio in London. In 1916, Sargent sold the painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, writing to its director “I suppose it is the best thing I have ever done.”
Let’s investigate some potential descriptive problems and the keys to capturing different viewpoints:
Portraits in Profile
There’s something about the profile that is set apart from other forms of portrait. The indirect gaze, away to the left or right; the ancient form, seen on coins, stamps, tapestries, fresco’s. Profiles are less about personality, more about status and a recording for posterity, value and respect.
The Greeks even considered a profile as the origin of painting, stemming from the legend of the Maid of Corinth. Bidding farewell to her lover about to go to sea, she noticed his profile on the wall illuminated by a candle and promptly traced it in charcoal as a memento.
Photographs can’t communicate a profile directly, it’s in there certainly however – frustratingly, the camera ends up leaving it to you to resolve the profile.
A line needs to be selected, drawn. Drawn with care and careful observation.
I think this is a reason we’re so intrigued by the profile, it’s that pure expression of line work, not nearly so prevalent in other portraits. At it’s essence, a profile is pure contour.
When I lead drawing sessions, I invoke that careful, contiguous line drawing, “contour drawing” as a valuable exercise in observation and pacing. Drawing slowly and deliberately – this is the best way to resolve the profile. Even after some investigative sketching, it’s clear that a slow hand resolves the final image. Some artists like it and some less so, but it’s always useful. For me, its a stimulating contrast to some of my other methods, and I value the results.
The classic three-quarter view
Perhaps the most common view in portraiture, the three-quarter view poses some specific challenges. As the head turns from a straight-on, full face view and the front of the face therefore swings to the side, some effects can surprise and catch you off guard:
The key ideas I keep in mind are:
The distance between the tip of the nose and the corner of the far cheek is an important measure: we humans seem to have a notion that the nose is in the center of the face and so subconsciously position it too centrally in a three-quarter view. Protruding out in front of the face, the nose will swing around to the side like a weather vein as the head turns.
It is invariably tricky to capture the dynamics at the far side of the mouth and its external physiology. The contours forming the almost coincident upper lip and far cheek can be tricky to see, let alone differentiate effectively.
The positioning of the ear is important in any three-quarter view. It underpins both the amount of turn and perspective: whether you are looking up or down on the subject. Look carefully at the distance from the eye to the ear and also horizontally, assessing where the ear is in relation to the eyebrow and base of the nose.
Reinforcing Lights and Darks
An often neglected “stage” in a painting is restating lights and darks. Paintings often start well, particularly when they are following a value study: clear, maybe even monochrome darks contrast with lights. Forms are blocked and connected, colour and context added. Details and adjustments made. Then suddenly it’s gone all muddy! Or perhaps it nearly almost works but looks lifeless. What once looked really dark, or light, looks less so now, essentially because there is so much more going on. It’s about contrast or relative value. It doesn’t matter a whit how dark or light something is when it blends into the surrounding area.
The solution is of course, quite simple: make the darkest dark even darker and lighten lights wherever possible. This is often termed “restating”. Two things are going on here. When initially applied, what looks very dark is often not as dark as you think…because of the starkness surrounding – and now the opposite is true, given it’s been surrounded by mid-tone.
Typical areas to look for intense darks include: corners of the mouth, upper eyelid, top of the nostril, hair line, ear. Then correspondingly for highlights: cheek, nose, lower lip, chin and reflections on the hair.
I’m sometimes asked what’s more important, the lights or the darks? Well, I think TV’s Bob Ross got it right when he said: “you have to have the dark in order to show the light.” A dab of pure dark here and there, I’d say a cool blue-black.
Exercise
- Develop a three-quarter view portrait….even better, try a few with different viewpoints – including a profile! After some initial drawing and washes, check for ear and nose position – don’t let your eye fool you, measure – I do!
- Review a selection of your portraits, both paint and dry media for consistent and decisive treatment of darkest darks and lightest lights. Find 5 places to intensify the darks and 3 places to pull out lights.