Two painters that Isabel mentioned in my final tutorial. I am familiar and fond of them. I made copies, with permission of course while studying for my Diploma in Portraiture. These paintings are important to me as they both show daily life, which is what I wanted to paint, although possibly only moments. All these years later they still resonate. Both were painted with respect and I would hazard a guess from life and measured. The method of application was not a hundred miles away from the way I liked to apply my paint and the scale was intimate.

I would turn up to collect my canvas, and my easel would be waiting by my chosen picture, along with a stool.

The class would start, it’s extraordinary the voices from the past would start you were transported.

The composition and impasto application were very apparent to me in both these paintings.

Two figures/objects both “alive” with a very considered surface. The artist had not come upon either scene by chance. They were staged which usually indicates a conversation piece and a language that both the artist and audience would have understood.

The Young School Mistress by Jean-Siméon Chardin 1699 – 1779 is all about a young woman teaching a young child, a virtuous and charming scene.

It was a favourite of the painter Lucian Freud.

A cup of water and a rose by Francisco de Zurbarán
1598 – 1664 is about the Virgin Mary and her virtuous purity. It once belonged to Kenneth Clark who gave us one of my favourite art quotes,

“Art…must do something more than give pleasure: it should relate to our own life so as to increase our energy of spirit.”

Just looking at the pictures, I’m remembering all the fun we had, ignoring people breathing down our necks dying to ask what we were doing. The school children giving you very constructive criticism and the occasional Garrick Club member asking you to lunch. I remember directing a partially persistent gentleman to one of the galleries where one of my rather attractive and single student friends had expressed a desire to go out to lunch. It worked out well but I fear the word got out and we all used to hide for an hour or two every week in the lunchtime concerts across the road at St Martin in the fields to avoid the attention. Happy days. Virtuous actions may be the paintings had more of an effect on us than we realised.