Art and Eye

  Evelyn De Morgan constructed her chalk and pencil study from a richly coloured, highly detailed oil on canvas she called  Earthbound. Here, a grasping king swathed in orange and pinpricks of gold attempts to desperately claw at the last of his coins, whilst an angelic being swoops over him. In the distance, a lone figure bathed in light gestures up towards the ombre heavens, in an indication of the underlying religiosity of De Morgan's oil painting. None of this becomes evident, however, from her chalk and pencil study of two reclining figures. What is the purpose of exploring these preparatory sketches? Why are they important or useful? In the oil painting, De Morgan's miserly king is noticeably male, from his bushy grey hair and beard. In the chalk study, the artist has chosen a female figure in both instances, to work out her final composition, firstly in the nude before layering the draperies onto the figure. It highlights the constraints of the nineteenth century female...

  The amount of detail contained in the small panel of St Thomas Aquinas is hard for the eye to quantify. It is even more staggering when a viewer realises that this is but one section of the so-called Demidoff Altarpiece, produced by Crivelli in 1476 for the church of Ascoli Piceno. As a whole, the altarpiece includes complex tracery and gold work in the International Gothic style, the latter of which is repeated on the gold leaf backgrounds that saints sit upon, through both tooling and gilding methods. The figure of Thomas Aquinas, ageing and dressed in a Dominican habit, is positioned on the right-hand side of the altarpiece's upper tier. He looks to the left, betraying his position on the edge of the panel, as he gazes towards the figure of St Stephen. Although he does not open his mouth, his eyeline suggests dialogue. Directional gazes, coupled with illusionistic detail, are constantly employed by Crivelli to bridge the gap between reality and the divine.  Aquinas' inqui...

  The simple act of reading is depicted by Lasar Segall, blurred and reconstructed through a messy palette of mixed, merging colours. The subject is his first wife, Margarete, who the artist had met in Dresden in the year this work was created. It is not an idealised, intimate depiction and the foreshortened table creates gaps and distances between viewer, artist and subject. Equally, the figure is not interested in our presence as we unexpectedly enter this private, domestic scene - she remains engrossed in the mundane activity of reading. She leans forward, her shoulders hunched, with one arm propped up on the table in a casual position. The edge of the book is pulled up towards her features, suggesting her interest in her reading material, dragging the words closer to her as if to read with further intensity. Dressed in a simple white shirt with her hair pulled back away from her face, her depiction is as humble as the action she undertakes. Despite the large expanse of the tabl...

  It is fitting that Turner would create a depiction of Venice so focused on colour, through his blending and manipulating of a complex palette. One of the most deeply ingrained, longstanding paragoni,  or debates, in the history of art originated between Venice and Florence, and specifically between the Venetian colore (colour) and Florentine disegno  (drawing) during the Renaissance. Turner continues that tradition through his own Venetian landscapes, firmly sitting on the colore side of the artistic fence. Usually seen as a man able to master even the most sublime, all-encompassing, over-powering forces of nature in his artworks, here Turner demonstrates that he can do the opposite, portraying Venice as an Elysian Fields of idyllic peace, where man and nature work perfectly together.  The last gasp of disegno  in Turner's view of Venice is seen only when the eye zooms in on the man-made forces evident in the work. Including the campanile of San Marco's s...

  The open mouth is not normally featured in art. Yet, it seems to be the very epicentre of the canvas here. Domenichino uses the faintest dots of white lead to pick out the teeth of John the Baptist within the dark abyss of the mouth. Meanwhile, the lips are grey and sickly as life swiftly leaves the decapitated head, with the colours serving to contrast the bright red blood seeping from the severed neck. Sitting centrally on the plate, the open mouth is at odds to the heavily closed, sunken eyes. Although the saint is now unseeing, his mouth seems to suggest a final breath exiting his body, the last gasp of life which produces an almost sensory, audible quality to the painting, or even a death rattle. The singular, central crease in the pristine, white tablecloth sitting directly below the gaping darkness equally serves to draw the viewer’s eye to the open mouth. Perhaps Domenichino is even suggesting that the last breath of John the Baptist is just strong enough to flutter the t...

  So often is John Singer Sargent defined by his society portraits which from the late 1870s, gave him international fame, a distinct style and elite client opportunities. The recent exhibition at Tate Britain successfully defined the artist through 'fashion' and his upper-class portraits with their quick, confident brushwork and equally commanding figural depictions. Studied less often, however, are the mural works by Sargent at Boston's public library which took the artist three decades to accomplish. The allegorical figure of the  Synagogue,  a particularly controversial design, seems to have been produced by a different artist entirely. Gone is the elegant pose of  Madame X,  or the sumptuous clothing of Madame Subercaseaux reclining at her pianoforte, or even the engaging, demur stare of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw. Sargent instead portrays an allegory turned in on itself and away from the viewer, swaddled in orientalising, claustrophobic folds.  Sargent's s...