MANET PAINTING DAY

The class related to the 'Block Buster', "Manet - Portraying Life", at the Royal Academy of Arts (26 January-14 April 2013).

The day concentrated on 'Black' as a force in painting.

Ivory black, lamp black, peach black, mars black, blue black, bitumen, bone black and carbon, just some of the blacks used by Manet and his followers.

It is recorded that Cezanne would arrange his black hat and white gloves close to the model in order to gauge his tonal equivalents.

Matisse claimed that black generated 'light' in his painting the 'Moroccans'..."The Orientals made use of black as a colour, notably the Japanese in their prints. Closer to us, I recall a painting by Manet in which the velvet jacket of a young man with a straw hat is painted in a blunt and lucid black. In the portrait of Zacharie Astruc by Manet, a new velvet jacket is also expressed by a blunt luminous black. Doesn't my painting of Moroccans use a grand black which is as luminous as the other colours in the painting" - Quote from Black is a colour, Matisse on Art.