Egon Schiele

Self-Portrait with Orange Cloak
1913
Watercolour, gouache, and pencil.
Signed and dated, lower right.
48 x 31.5 cm
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

The piece I am going to evaluate is a self-portrait by Egon Schiele. The painting, done using oil paint, shows himself, particularly thin, in the centre of the canvas, with a lifted hand holding his chin. His head is tilted to the right. Using acrylic paint Schiele shows a mixture of different strokes to create the overall image. The texture of the jacket has been created by bold brush stroke, whereas the face still uses bold strokes but just a lot thinner.

This piece shows the twisted, obscure and warped way in which Egon Schiele views himself. He created this piece when he was a young man, however the image portrayed to the viewer is completely different. His hands for instance, are extremely thin and aged, unlike the real life subject.

Egon Schiele either dislikes his actual face and is trying to hide it in this abstracted piece or he is trying to express more than just his facial features. In other words is he trying to capture his feelings, emotions and views instead of an accurate portrait? This would be backed up with the fact that the painting is so powerful and full of vigor. Schiele uses such harsh, bold outlines that it suggests he was trying to show the viewer more than an image of himself. Whichever Egon Schiele was actually trying to achieve this piece is still successful.

Graham Sutherland

Portrait of Sommerset Maugham

1953
Original lithograph in black ink.
Signed in ballpoint ink, and dated 'Dec 22nd '54'.
Also inscribed: Trial Proof (in ink) and No 4 in pencil.

I intend to look at a pencil study Graham Sutherland produced of the famous writer Somerset Maughan. The piece shows Maughan as an elderly man, with an expression that conveys wisdom, intelligence, and a touch of humour. There appear to be deep laughter lines around his eyes.

Sutherland has managed to capture Maughan so well due to an extraordinarily high quality of observation. Sutherland has paid close attention to the surface of the skin creating a face very much like a rugged landscape. This is an interesting link between old, worn faces and landscapes. I believe Sutherland has made this link so intense by using light. Maughan’s face is lit strongly from the left hand side (the sitter’s right). The shading on the right accentuates the wrinkles and the sculptural qualities of his face, making it look more 3D.

However, to keep the study looking like a face Sutherland has used a series of lines and strokes to define the muscles.

The pencil study is a sketch, which was part of his research towards a formal portrait of Maughan.

Jenny Saville

Plan
1993, oil on Canvas,
274.5 x 213.5cm
The Saatchi Collection, London

Closed Contact #10
1996

Jenny Saville is my first female artist I am going to look at. She was born in Cambridge, England, in 1970. She is a contemporary British painter and one of the Young British Artists (YBAs). She is known for her monumental images of obese women, usually using herself as the model.

She gained her degree at Glasgow School of Art and was then awarded a six month scholarship to the University of Cincinnati, where she says that she saw "Lots of big women. Big white flesh in shorts and T-shirts. It was good to see because they had the physicality that I was interested in." She studied at the Slade School Of Art 1992-1993. At the end of her postgraduate education at the Slade, the leading British art collector Charles Saatchi purchased her entire senior show and commissioned works for another two years. In 1994 she spent many hours observing plastic surgery operations in New York in 1994. Today, Saville works and lives in London and is a tutor of figure painting at the Slade School of Art.

Saville is unique amongst the YBAs for her dedication to the "traditional" art of oil painting. Her painterly style has been compared to that of Lucian Freud and Rubens. Her paintings are usually much larger than life size. They are strongly pigmented and give a highly sensual impression of the surface of the skin as well as the mass of the body. She sometimes adds marks onto the body, such as white "target" rings. Since her debut in 1992, her focus has remained on the body.

Her self-portraits are different from any other artists’ due to the obvious fact that she paints her body not her face. This will hopefully, give me a different perspective on artists developing their styles over time.

The two pieces I have picked were both painted within a time gap of 3 years. Therefore, it is harder to notice a significant difference. However, having said that there are differences which stand out. The first one shows her body and face looking down onto the viewer; and the second shows her body squashed against glass above the viewer. This shows she is experimenting with different angles and perspectives. She is testing out which angles create the most impact and impression.

Jenny Saville is an artist who is still experimenting with positions; light sources; and perspectives. Therefore, I do not believe Saville has established her style beyond knowing what her subject matter is; distorting her body. She is still evolving as an artist.

Tai-Shan Schierenberg

Glass
2004
Oil on copper

Tai-Shan Schierenberg is a painter of portraits, figures and landscapes. He studies at St.Martin’s College and The Slade Schools of Art (1981-87) and has subsequently had one-man shows at Flowers East in Hackney.



Schierenberg’s work generally consists of intimate portraits of family and friends. However, in 1989 he won first prize in the National Portrait Gallery’s John Player Portrait Award and as part of the price was commissioned to paint the portrait or playwright John Mortimer for the Gallery’s collection. He has also painted portraits of Lord Carrington (1994), Lord Sainsbury (2002) and most recently Seamus Heaney (2004). All of which are held at the National Portrait Gallery.



His subtle landscapes show remarkable insight into the content – psychological and aesthetic – of his work. Schierenberg sees the paint as not only a medium for expressing his ideas but he also uses the paint as flesh. His work is both abstract and realist; tense but sensitive; grand and inconclusive; violent and melancholic; physically intense and aesthetically detached.



He, like Richard Diebenkorn, uses bold colours and brush strokes to create light and dark areas on the object. This piece, called ‘glass’ highlights this use of stroke. The crisp markings really create a sense of the glass and the light reflecting off it. The simplicity of the composition adds to the impact of the confident stokes. There is also the straight line going down from the left to the right, this line can be seen in all three of the pictures shown here. It is a prominent feature in his work. It helps the viewers eye be drawn down to the reflection of the glass and the light shining through it. I also think the light reflections in the glass add to the whole piece, as they allow more of the glass’s detail to be picked up upon. I really enjoy this piece, as it is so simple and uncomplicated.



However, studying the piece in more detail, I believe, the simplicity of the piece is its secret; there is a deeper meaning/secret story in this piece, hidden in the glass. Where has the glass been? Why this glass? If you look at the piece in this way it develops beyond the ‘simple’ piece I first thought it was.

Lucian Freud

Self-portrait

1963, oil on canvas

National Portrait Gallery

Reflection (self-portrait)
1985, oil on canvas
51 x 56 cm
Private collection

Lucian Freud is a German-born British painter. He was born in 1922 in Berlin, came to England with his parents in 1931, and acquired British nationality in 1939. His work has taken many turns and different directions over the years. He is a very diverse artist who has stood the test off time.


His early work was meticulously painted, so he has sometimes been described as a ‘Realist’, but the subjectivity and intensity of his work has always set him apart from the traditional characteristic of most British figurative art since the Second World War. In his later work (from the late 1950s) his handling became much broader.


In the second piece Freud has created an image of impressive force and truth. The self-portrait is a good likeness, but, as all portraits must, it emphasises an aspect of the sitter – in this case, the effects of ageing, unflinchingly observed.


Like Rembrandt, Freud has painted himself continually throughout his life. This results in Freud documenting his facial changing features and his work as an artist over the years. During these years Freud has painted himself in all manner of ways: caught in a shaving-mirror; from below; and, memorably, wearing nothing but the old boots he wears for painting to avoid getting pigment on his shoes.


The two pieces I have picked show a sharp contrast. The first, ‘Self-portrait’, 1963, oil on canvas, is bold, with strong brush strokes capturing the essence of Freud’s face. In this piece Freud is more interested in form and how the piece works overall. However, with time his work developed into being more detailed and accurate. In the second piece, ‘Reflection’ produced in 1985 using oil on canvas, shows traces of the bold markings Freud used to use so much. However, they have moved into the background and detail and precision have taken over. The piece shows the eye is on he golden section; therefore aiding the viewer to be led around the piece.


Lucian Freud’s way of painting, the detail he creates, has changed over time as I have talked about however, the colour palette he uses is still the same; earthy browns, yellows, reds and greens. And yes, his age and changing face are shown clearly in his pieces. No one in art history has scrutinised his own appearance for more of his life than Lucian Freud. The truth is important to him.


Freud has one of the most powerful and unusual personalities in contemporary art, but – paradoxically, perhaps – he believes strongly that the only important thing is the picture itself. That is perhaps why his titles are often calculatedly general – Naked Portrait, Head of Girl, Man Smoking.