While many University of Wisconsin students were gaily and haphazardly painting the town red at the football team's last home game of the season, the Chazen Museum of Art was unveiling a more calculated use of paint Saturday.
This weekend saw the opening of "Drawing with a Brush: British Watercolors," an exhibition on display in the Mayer Gallery of the Chazen until Jan. 6.
The 23 works on display trace the development of British watercolors through the 1800s. Early in the period, the artistic community praised watercolor for its portability and used the medium to record factually accurate landscapes and portraits. Over the course of the century, watercolor gained respect as a medium for creative expression. Late 19th- and early 20th-century British watercolors began to show a greater interest in fantastical subject matter rather than the more prosaic landscapes and portraits of the early 19th century. Most of the works of "Drawing with a Brush" represent this later, more imaginative school of thought, but paintings from throughout the century are included.
George Pierce Bryce's "Godstow Nunnery, Oxfordshire" (1862) is an excellent example of the early concern with accurate representation, in spite of the fact that it is from the second half of the century. John White Abbot's "Sharper Tor and Sheep Tor, Village" (1831), although it shows an interest in color that extends beyond mere representation, still fits the mold of the earlier, more realistic watercolor paintings characteristic of the early 19th century.
One work that represents an interesting compromise between the two styles is Marie Spartali Stillman's "La Pensierosa" (1879). What initially appears to be a portrait of a rich young girl turns out to be much more after close examination. Her gray-streaked hair betrays her youthful features and suggests there may be a somber soul behind the subject's upper-class finery. In this light, the girl's expression may be seen as one of deep regret rather than the vapid stare of an insensitive child. The ambiguity of the painting reflects British watercolors' transition from a medium of documentation to one of fancy.
Edward Reginald Frampton's "Spring" (1911) marks the completion of this transition by the early 20th century. Like "La Pensierosa," the image depicts a young girl, but it does so in a much different setting. Frampton's girl is representative of a season, and all gray hairs aside, she is a much less realistic illustration than "La Pensierosa." Her indistinguishable body features and elongated form place her somewhere in between an accurately depicted human being and a creatively rendered abstract idea.
Frampton's fantastical interpretation of his subject matter becomes even clearer when one looks beyond the girl to the beach she stands on. The coastline, rather than running smoothly down to the water, consists of an abrupt, unrealistic drop-off, dramatically separating land from sea. Additionally, the butterflies in front of the girl show a wide range of colors unlikely to appear in nature, where butterflies, like birds of a feather, generally flock together. Thus, Frampton exemplifies the later school of British watercolors, where factual accuracy began to matter less than the imaginative ideas the artwork conveyed.
Perhaps the most fascinating work of the exhibition, however, is not fantastical at all. Arthur Melville's "Pilgrims on the Way to Mecca" (1882) depicts a group of Muslims about to make a trip to the holy city of Mecca, the birthplace of Muhammad. Rather than kowtowing to the widespread 19th-century orientalist view of the Arab world and portraying his subjects as exotic, Melville chose to paint the figures realistically. Melville showed admirable vision in choosing to show pious individuals debating and studying rather than implying, as many of his colleagues surely would have, that Arabs were a decadent people.
"Drawing with a Brush" has something to offer every kind of art lover. For people interested in realistic representation, to those who look for more creativity, and even those who look to art to convey an idea that may not agree with the conventional thought of the time, the latest exhibition at the Chazen is a great way to spend an afternoon.
