Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Introduction
- PART I
- Introduction: Old and New Studio Topoi in the Nineteenth Century
- 1 Studio Matters: Materials, Instruments and Artistic Processes
- 2 Jean-Léon Gérôme, his Badger and his Studio
- 3 Showing Making in Courbet's The Painter's Studio
- 4 Making and Creating. The Painted Palette in Late Nineteenth-Century Dutch Painting
- 5 14, rue de La Rochefoucauld. The Partial Eclipse of Gustave Moreau
- 6 The Artist as Centerpiece. The Image of the Artist in Studio Photographs of the Nineteenth Century
- PART II
- Introduction: Forms and Functions of the Studio from the Twentieth Century to Today
- 7 The Studio as Mediator
- 8 Accrochage in Architecture: Photographic Representations of Theo van Doesburg's Studios and Paintings
- 9 Studio, Storage, Legend. The Work of Hiding in Tacita Dean's Section Cinema (Homage to Marcel Broodthaers)
- 10 The Empty Studio: Bruce Nauman's Studio Films
- 11 Home Improvement and Studio Stupor. On Gregor Schneider's (Dead) House ur
- 12 Staging the Studio: Enacting Artful Realities through Digital Photography
- Epilogue: “Good Art Theory Must Smell of the Studio”
- Index
4 - Making and Creating. The Painted Palette in Late Nineteenth-Century Dutch Painting
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Introduction
- PART I
- Introduction: Old and New Studio Topoi in the Nineteenth Century
- 1 Studio Matters: Materials, Instruments and Artistic Processes
- 2 Jean-Léon Gérôme, his Badger and his Studio
- 3 Showing Making in Courbet's The Painter's Studio
- 4 Making and Creating. The Painted Palette in Late Nineteenth-Century Dutch Painting
- 5 14, rue de La Rochefoucauld. The Partial Eclipse of Gustave Moreau
- 6 The Artist as Centerpiece. The Image of the Artist in Studio Photographs of the Nineteenth Century
- PART II
- Introduction: Forms and Functions of the Studio from the Twentieth Century to Today
- 7 The Studio as Mediator
- 8 Accrochage in Architecture: Photographic Representations of Theo van Doesburg's Studios and Paintings
- 9 Studio, Storage, Legend. The Work of Hiding in Tacita Dean's Section Cinema (Homage to Marcel Broodthaers)
- 10 The Empty Studio: Bruce Nauman's Studio Films
- 11 Home Improvement and Studio Stupor. On Gregor Schneider's (Dead) House ur
- 12 Staging the Studio: Enacting Artful Realities through Digital Photography
- Epilogue: “Good Art Theory Must Smell of the Studio”
- Index
Summary
A drop of water is large enough to contain the image of the sun, why then would a palette not be able to give a notion of our school of painting?
ANONYMOUSOne of the most striking works in the oeuvre of the famous French Impressionist Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) is a painting of a landscape with farmers. Not because of its subject matter, but because Pissarro painted this picture on one of his palettes (fig. 1). It is a telling example by an internationally renowned artist of a phenomenon that occurred throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century, albeit mostly unnoticed by critics and art historians. Admittedly, Pissarro's work clearly stands out when compared to the average palette- with-picture from the period. When looked at from an aesthetic point of view, these works very often hardly seem to deserve any attention at all. What gives them special interest, however, is the fact that these little artworks use the palette as their support. They are artworks painted on — and thereby literally shaped by — a tool that embodies the act of painting itself. This essay aims to provide insight into the position and meaning of this phenomenon in nineteenth-century Dutch painting.
MIXING PAINT
The simple answer to the question why painters as diverse as Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch, Carel Storm van ‘s-Gravesande, Louis Apol or Henriette Ronner-Knip all produced painted palettes in the second half of the nineteenth century would be that earlier painters simply could not have done so, due to their very different working methods. For artists up until the mid-nineteenth century, making paint and mixing color was a time-consuming and expensive business, carried out in the painter's workshop. Artists therefore used only a limited range of colors at any one time — different “palettes,” so to speak — which were selected especially for the part of the painting they were working on. It is therefore highly unlikely that they could have created the type of painted palette discussed here, as they would never have had all the colors necessary available on their palette for a full painting.
Pissarro's palette still exhibits the colors he used for building up his landscape.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Hiding Making - Showing CreationThe Studio from Turner to Tacita Dean, pp. 73 - 85Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2013