3: Bonheur's "Own Parthenon Frieze"
[Click image to go to larger version]
Rosa Bonheur
The Horse Fair, c. 1852-1855
Oil on canvas, w506.7 cm x h244.5 cm (199.5" x 96.25")
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY USA
So I've said the last few days that one of the problems I run into depicting animal subjects is this: they invite you to paint so much detail and depth (with a lot of great color as a result), but going this way can also take away from the more drawing-based aspects (line and value, rather than color) that I tend to prefer to emphasize.
Bonheur1 presents a possible solution via composition. The work above is obviously in the realistic tradition, each animal depicted with cleanly subtle colors, true-to-life detail and a sense of 3D. BUT, the animals' silhouettes (and the various light-dark contrasts) are carefully arranged to keep emphasis on line and shape, which helps to reinforce a sense of 2D flatness despite the realism.
You can see this flatness really well by comparing The Horse Fair to one of Bonheur's direct inspirations, the Parthenon Frieze:
'Cavalry' excerpt from the Parthenon Frieze, British Museum, London
The frieze is an example of bas-relief, basically a shallow version of 3D sculpture emerging from a flat background. Bonheur, by placing black horses behind white, by making the ground light against dark shadowed feet and picking out specific highlights along necks, by showing the horses in varied, dramatic poses that emphasis the lines of their movement, very much echoes the shallow-depth effect of bas-relief that keeps focus front-and-center on outline.
So what this suggests as an option for me: Continue to explore more detailed, fully-rounded animal painting, but when doing so pay extra close attention to the shapes made by the animal(s) and any surrounding objects in the overall composition. If these shapes and the lines/value contrasts that contribute to them can be kept simple and dynamic, it may open up room to lean into realism without tipping over.
NOTES:
1. Bonheur, may I just say, is one of those utterly hardcore artists who give meaning to the name. For this painting, she attended the Paris horse market for sketching twice a week for a year and a half, getting permission from the Paris police to dress as a man so as to not draw attention to herself (she'd had previous problems with harassment). The animals here are based on the draft horses at the market, as well as from the horses that drew Paris' proto-buses, and the Met museum points out influences for the painting as a whole from George Stubbs, Theodore Gericault, Eugene Delacroix, and ancient Greek sculpture. This is something that may become apparent, but I'm a fan of artistic super-intention.