PORTRAIT FIGURE Artists magazine 3 min read

How Did She Do That?

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Unlock artistic lessons from a 19th-century portrait by Cecilia Beaux.

by Jean Liebowitz

Being a self-taught painter, I often feel as if I haven’t quite “got it”—so I love perusing art books and finding a masterpiece that speaks to an issue I’m struggling with. My goal is to figure out how a great artist addressed the same problem. I get comfortable, enjoy a few minutes of passive admiration and then get to work.

Dorothea and Francesca (1898; oil on canvas, 80⅛ x46) by Cecilia Beaux.
Art Institute of Chicago. A.A. Munger Collection.

Frustration with my compositions led me to the painting Ernesta (Child With Nurse) by Cecilia Beaux (1855– 1942). The artist grew up in Philadelphia, studied in Paris and became a sought-after portraitist. She sometimes depicted her subjects in dynamic positions, using unusual compositions that look as if they were cropped from a snapshot. At the same time, the paintings display an unmistakably formal quality; they’re visually balanced and completely resolved. To top it off, Beaux’s drawing and brushwork lend themselves to representations that are idealized yet highly believable.

Ernesta (Child With Nurse) (1894; oil on canvas, 50½x38⅛) by Cecilia Beaux.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Maria DeWitt Jesup Fund, 1965

The Study

I’ve loved Ernesta (Child With Nurse) from the moment I first saw it. Then I became curious as to how Beaux managed to make the painting seem both formal and spontaneous. This life-sized work shows the artist’s niece and her nurse, maybe going for a walk. Ernesta’s face is the focal point, framed by her pink hat. But look at the nurse; it’s odd to see a painting with only half of a person in it, and I wondered why Beaux chose such a truncated view of the adult figure. It almost looks as if the artist knelt down and snapped the picture with an iPhone—but of course she didn’t. Following are a few ideas of what Beaux might have done:

Internal Framework: Looking at important lines and edges in the finished painting, I worked backwards to figure out how Beaux might have approached the composition. I discovered the presence of some simple, classic divisions based on the dimensions of the canvas. It would appear that Beaux left nothing about her composition to chance. Instead, every form is in a specific place for the purpose of building a strong design. To understand the composition as I had begun to view it, see Lining Up (below).

Simple Values: A life-sized figural painting is a complicated project, so I was interested in how Beaux might have simplified the process. If you squint your eyes at the image, you’ll see the painting has just three major value shapes. The light shape includes the figures; the mid-value shape is the foreground, and the dark-value shape is the background. Beaux might have blocked these values in first to test—and then lock in—her composition.

Focus: I imagine that once Beaux had worked out her big value shapes, she turned her attention to building a focal point and adding details. To keep our attention on Ernesta, she used the girl’s hat and arms to create a dynamic figure eight that keeps the viewer’s eyes circling the child’s face. Beaux strengthened this effect through color and value. She created strong value contrasts between the hat, hair, and background. She also painted the hat pink—the only significant color note in a largely monochromatic painting. Though softly painted, without excruciating detail, the face, figures, and clothes are realistic and believable.

Strokes: Beaux’s painterly brushwork softens and enlivens the painting. The floor and background add perspective, depth, and interest by means of the direction and values of the unblended strokes. Her loose brushwork in the draped fabrics enlivens the figures with a feeling of movement.

Lining Up

As I studied the composition of Ernesta (Child With Nurse), I imagined grid lines dividing the picture plane along tried-and-true design principles. I started by dividing the plane into quarters (green lines). Then, starting at the top midpoint, I added diagonals to the lower corners (pink lines). Next, I added a 3×3 grid (yellow lines). Here’s what those lines revealed:

Ernesta’s head and hands are beautifully balanced around the midline and the one-third line.

Ernesta’s body echoes the triangle created by the diagonals dropped from the top midpoint.

The nurse’s arm starts at the top midpoint and follows one of the diagonals. Beaux’s placement of that arm is essential to the overall design.

The horizontal thirds roughly divide the setting into the very dark background, a less dark midground and a somewhat lighter foreground.

What about those skirts? Notice that the line indicating the bottom third of the canvas marks the high point of Ernesta’s skirt hem and the low point of the nurse’s skirt. If you trace the diagonals that approximate the skirts’ hems (blue lines), you’ll see they cross on the midline and land in the bottom corners. It’s as if Beaux drew an X and then sketched the skirts inside it.

The Takeaways

My study of Ernesta (Child With Nurse) left me with three helpful nuggets to apply to my own work: Build strong. Draw tight. Paint loose. Beaux used a formal compositional framework to structure an original, lively arrangement of figures. Such frameworks are a useful legacy of the classical “armature” of the rectangle.

Further, Beaux combined accurate drawing with loose, confident painting. A deep dive into this and other works by Beaux has led me to re-examine my own painting practice. I’m now bringing more intention into my compositions and simplifying my big shapes. As a result, after years of tight painting, I’m finally loosening my brushwork.

Now it’s your turn. Examine one of your favorite paintings for clues about what makes it so appealing. What will you take away?

About the Artist

Jean Leibowitz is an artist based in Portland, Maine. Her book, Discover Her Art: Women Artists and Their Masterpieces (Chicago Review Press), co-authored with writer Lisa LaBanca Rogers, is available wherever books are sold.


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