Tone-on-tone painting
The tone-on-tone painting is a Technique that is not to be confused with the monochrome painting . It is part of surface painting and is an achievement of the late 19th century that was first practiced by painters in France before it was also adopted by artists in Germany and countries further east.
Louis Anquetin's invention of surface painting
The tone-on-tone painting of the French Louis Anquetin is still little known today, although it spread very quickly across Europe and once many artistic personalities worked with it. It is one of the most important additions to early cloisonism and, unfortunately, was never properly anchored in art history.
Since 1884 Anquetin studied together with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Émile Bernard in the studio of Fernand Cormon in Paris, who consider him a master student. All three worked closely together. From 1886 van Gogh was also a member of the circle of friends. Under the influence of Japanese woodcut art, all four turned away from impressionism and pointillism and successfully looked for new ways of expression in painting. If Bernard came to the invention of cloisonism of painting in contours, it was Anquetin who made a special contribution to surface painting, namely tone-on-tone painting. It made school and was once widespread. His most famous painting today, which enriched and supplemented the basic concerns about the flatness of cloisonism, dates from 1887 and is entitled "Avenue de Clichy: Five o'clock in the evening" .
In his urge to create something that had never been seen before, Anquetin remembered experiences in his youth. In the veranda of the parents 'house in Étrépagny in Normandy , colored glasses green, red, yellow and blue were set, through which one could see the landscape surrounding the parents' house. That installation was a pleasure that was equally popular in town houses and princely palaces around the middle of the 19th century. It served, depending on the perspective, to convey a different "season mood" to the viewer in the sequence of spring, summer, autumn or winter. In Anquetin's time it was common knowledge that the general tone of a color can evoke certain ideas, moods and emotions. He transferred this gimmick of observing a scene through a colored glass onto the canvas by subordinating all color tones, no matter how different from each other, to a dominant. The prerequisite for this painting were Bernard's “Cloisons”, with which he could differentiate between the individual nuances of a color with the same basic tone. In order to achieve an overall mood, he used the traditional heraldic symbolism of the colors. A yellow overall tone e.g. B. conveyed the impression of summer, sun and heat, a blue one of cold, loneliness or melancholy.
Anquetin's discovery was immediately recognized
When van Gogh saw Anquetin's first “tone-on-tone” painting, “The reaper at noon” , he was immediately so enthusiastic about his invention that he saw the painting, which was kept in yellow uniform tone and mowed a grain in the blazing summer heat Field worker shows repeated in motif and style. When van Gogh got to know another picture by Anquetin in the new style, "Avenue de Clichy: Five o'clock in the evening" this time in the basic tenor of blue, he also repeated it. It served as a foil for his famous “Night Café on the Place du Forum” , built in Arles in 1888 .
Bernard also adopted Anquetin's new technique several times. Particularly interesting is a “self-portrait” which he dedicated to Van Gogh with the words: “Emile Bernard 1888 a son compaing Vincent”. At the same time, he added the portrait of Gauguin to his “self-portrait” and placed the arrangement on a pale blue canvas with a blue background.
Anquetin quickly made school with the Nabis
A number of painters from the Nabis artist group spontaneously appreciated Anquetin's new painting culture and made various use of his tone-on-tone painting style. They include u. a. following painters: Pierre Bonnard , le Nabi japonard; Maurice Denis , le Nabi of beautiful icons; Henri-Gabriel Ibels , le Nabi journalist; Georges Lacombe , le Nabi sculpteur; Paul Ranson , le Nabi plus japonard; József Rippl-Rónai , le Nabi hongrois; or Jan Verkade , le Nabi obéliscal.
The Neue Künstlervereinigung München was interested in French art imports
This is demonstrated in particular by the second exhibition of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM) in 1910. An early member of the NKVM, the Munich Charles Johann Palmié , seems to have been one of the first in the Bavarian metropolis to use Anquetin's style of painting. Although still cultivating a style between Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in brush technique , he was delighted by Anquetin's recipe. By German standards he painted very early - in 1906, various pictures of sailing boats in the harbor of Honfleur , a seaside resort at the mouth of the Seine , as if observed through a blue glass. He continued this painting in Munich in 1907, e. B. with his "Marienplatz pictures" , which in ignorance of his role model Anquetin 1911 characterized as "strangely luministically treated", were described.
Similar to the Nabis, several painters from the NKVM were enthusiastic about tone-on-tone painting. Marianne von Werefkin , who returned from France with Jawlensky and son Andreas in 1907 , made her first painting tone-on-tone. Jawlensky, on the other hand, only became interested in tone-on-tone painting when he saw that Gabriele Münter was also using it. But the finely graduated nuances from blue to violet to represent melancholy moods were not his thing. He, who, as Verkade put it, “had a healthy sense of the joys in life” preferred to go straight for the color of full life, red, to portray various women.
Similar to Jawlensky, Adolf Erbslöh also liked to paint with strong colors. However, when he was employed as a war painter in France during the First World War , his oil paintings lost their life-affirming earlier colourfulness. In order to express the evils of war through colors, he decided to paint tone-on-tone. His paintings of shot-up cities and landscapes of ruins now appear strikingly dull and pale. Dirty and lackluster green and blue base tones predominate.
Twenty years after Anquetin's creative idea, people no longer adhered to his strict rule that all color tones were inevitably subordinate to one dominant. This makes Erma Bossi's "moon" of 1910 significantly. Like Anquetin, it shows a nocturnal scene. Green spread it over the entire picture. As a general tone, Bossi unusually chose a complementary color and this is where her image differs significantly from that of Anquetin.
Looking at the French painters of the NKVM, it is revealing that when Alexander Kanoldt got to know works by Pablo Picasso , Georges Braque , André Derain and other French at the second exhibition of the NKVM in 1910 , he not only turned to their cubist design principles, but rather the tone-on-tone painting was also bound into this at the same time. Particularly striking examples "he presented in 1911 in the third exhibition of the association in pictures such as in " Im Eisacktal " , " Weide " or " Eisacklandschaft " ."
Brücke artists also followed Anquetin
Various Brücke painters also used tone-on-tone painting. However, it is not specifically named in the literature. However, when leafing through the Brücke literature, one comes across them again and again. Obviously, the Swiss Cuno Amiet got to know Aquetin's invention in Paris or Brittany . Since 1892 he painted pictures entirely in the spirit of Anquetin - blue-in-blue - e.g. B. the "moonlit night on the sea" . Obviously he was also the one who transported tone-on-tone painting to the Brücke painters in Dresden . He himself continued to practice it occasionally, such as B. his two representations - green in green of the biblical theme " Paradise " from 1894/95 and 1958 attest. He emphasized his intention to have chosen the color green as dominate for the earlier picture by "even painting a decorative green frame."
Anquetin returned to realistic art
Anquetin has probably not overlooked how important Anquetin's chromatic investigations were for future painting, which was at the beginning of an epoch-making process of renewal towards Expressionism . Certainly he was not fully aware that a large number of artists were emulating him between Paris, Oslo, Moscow and elsewhere. Otherwise, just a few years later, he would hardly have given up his avant-garde concern and turned back to the classical art of Rubens , Titian and Poussin from 1890 onwards .
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Louis Anquetin and tone-on-tone painting. In: WELTKUNST No. 22, November 15, 1996, p. 2977 ff
- ↑ Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharow: Vincent van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism. In: exhib. Cat .: Art Galery of Ontario Toronto 1981, p. 228
- ↑ Hans Hellmut Hofstätter: The emergence of the "New Style" in French painting around 1890. Diss. Freiburg 1954, p. 45
- ↑ Wolfgang Einsingbach: Weilburg, castle and garden. Bad Homburg vd H. 1988, p. 56. Four colored panes from around 1850 have been preserved in the bay window of Duke Adolf von Nassau's billiard room in Weilburg Castle .
- ↑ Mary Anne Stevens: Introduction to the paintings and drawings In: Exh. Cat .: Emile Bernard 1868-1941, a pioneer of modernity. Städtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim 1990, p. 198 f
- ↑ Claire Frèches-Thory and Ursula Perucchi-Petri (eds.): The Nabis, prophets of modernity. In: exhib. Cat .: Kunsthaus, Zurich 1993, p. 10 ff
- ↑ Rosel Gollek: The Blue Rider in the Lenbachhaus Munich. Catalog of the collection in the municipal gallery. Munich 1974, p. 266 ff
- ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Louis Anquetin and tone-on-tone painting. WELTKUNST, No. 22, November 15, 1996, ill. P. 2977
- ^ GJW: Personal-Nachrichten. In: Die Kunst (“Art for All”) , vol. XXI., Munich1911
- ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin. Munich 2001, p. 86 ff, Fig. 95
- ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Louis Anquetin and tone-on-tone painting. WELTKUNST, No. 22, November 15, 1996, ill. P. 2977
- ↑ Willibrord Verkade: The drive towards perfection, memories of a painter monk. Freiburg 1931, p. 170
- ↑ Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky (eds.): Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalog Raisonné of the oil-paintings. Vol. 1, Munich 1991, No. 312 and No. 318
- ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Bossi, their Munich colleagues and their role models. In: Erma Bossi. A search for clues. Exhibition catalog, Murnau Castle Museum 2013, ISBN 978-3-932276-44-6 , p. 83 ff
- ↑ Angelika Müller-Scherf: Classicism and Realism in the Work of Edmund and Alexander Kanoldt. In: exhib. Cat .: Alexander Kanoldt, 1881–1939, paintings, drawings, and lithographs. Museum for New Art, Freiburg im Breisgau 1987, p. 18, cat. Nos. 16, 17 and 19
- ↑ George Mauner: The trying - variety of possibilities. In: exhib. Cat .: Cuno Amiet, From Pont-Aven to the “Bridge”. Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern 1999, p. 110, cat.no.17
- ↑ George Mauner: The trying - variety of possibilities. In: exhib. Cat .: Cuno Amiet, From Pont-Aven to the “Bridge”. Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern 1999, p. 134, cat. No. 154 and p. 135, cat. No. 31
- ↑ Eberhard Roters: European Expressionists. Gütersloh-Berlin-Munich-Vienna 1971, p. 26
- ↑ Marie El Caidi: The group of Pont-Aven and Le Pouldu, the decisive encounters from 1886 to 1894. In: exh. Cat .: The artists of Pont Aven and le Pouldu. Große Kunstschau, Worpswede 1990, p. 28