Thursday, September 24, 2020

Techniques

Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.
~Leonardo da Vinci


For Art Thursday, some lesser-known painting techniques: grattage, verdaille, brunaille, repoussoir, and rosemåling. (Maybe repoussoir is actually well known and I just hadn't heard that term?) The brunaille paintings are pretty different -- one seems more golden than brown. I'm including them both because I can't decide which to leave out.

Apotheosis
by Giovanni Guida
Grattage (literally "scratching", "scraping") is a technique in surrealist painting which consists in "scratching" fresh paint with a sharp blade.

Sleeping Woman
by Pietro Rotari (1707–1762)
Verdaille is a painting executed entirely or primarily in shades of green. Such a painting is described as having been painted "en verdaille."

The Visit to the Tenant Farmer
by Jan Brueghel the Elder
Brunaille is a painting executed entirely or primarily in shades of brown.

A Sibyl and a Prophet
by Andrea Mantegna
Brunaille

Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877
by Gustave Caillebotte
Repoussoir is an object along the right or left foreground that directs the viewer's eye into the composition by bracketing (framing) the edge.
The rear-facing man on the right with the tilted umbrella is an example of repoussoir figure leading the viewer's gaze into the composition.

A celebration plate with rosemåling
Rune Nesher
Rosemåling, Norwegian for "rose painting," a decorative folk art that originated in the rural valleys of Norway.


2 comments:

Susan Bruck said...

Thanks for sharing all these different kinds of paintings. The only one I'd heard of before is the last one. I love all these different kinds of paintings--and learning that there are special words for them. I like your quote at the beginning, too.

Pop said...

Fascinating to see all these painting techniques.

The grattage painting (Apotheosis) was particularly interesting...and I liked it a lot.

The repoussoir (Paris Street) was quite interesting, too. When I first looked at the painting I was drawn to the triangular building in the background before moving to the three figures on the right. Thinking about the technique I thought that the two figures on the left, then the figure just to the right of them, then to the small figure behind those...which formed a triangle. And thus was I drawn to the building. Maybe this is a form of repoussoir, too?