Who painted this? #28

I was merrily starting this blog post when I noticed that the bottom right hand corner of the picture contained the artist's signature.  Whoops!  It doesn't any more!  Isn't Photoshop wonderful?

Who painted this? #28

How many times have artists painted peppers?  Is there a new way of painting peppers?  I'll be very interested to know how you get to this one.......

The answers will be posted in next week's Who painted this? #29

How to participate in "Who painted this? #27"

PLEASE make sure you read the rules before posting a comment - and ONLY POST ON THIS BLOG what you think is the answer.

POLL: Artists - Have you made provision for a pension?

The topic most people seem least keen to talk about apart from death is pensions.  Artists are no exception.

Katsushika Hokusai, in an 1839 self-portrait
age 79

In fact if anything they seem less likely to talk about it because, unless they are prompted to do something, they get few reminders.  At least when in employment you see a deduction going into a pension pot each month!

The vast majority of artists have no private pension plans

I suspect that reasons why artists don't get to grips with pensions are various:

• the gobblydygook which masquerades as advice about pensions is a big reason for a lot of people
• Another reason is affordability - when artists don't make a lot of money from their art and hence have few resources with which to create a pension.  
• a belief, erroneous or otherwise, that artists never retire and can continue to make good art into their old age - hence no need for a pencion (Hokusai created his great works and became famous after the age of 60)
• a total disinclination to even think about pensions!

I'm guessing that one of the reasons that a lot of UK artists teach within state funded education is so that they can earn themselves a pension pot as most other people in employment do.

Artists Interaction and Representation (AIR) provided an update on their work re artists' pensions in December 2012.  They concluded thus

Key findings so far include:

• The Pensions for Artists research commissioned by Arts Council England in 2007 showed that 70% of artists (across all artforms) didn’t have a private pension.

• In the UK working population as a whole, 44% don’t have a private pension. It also showed that affordability is the key factor in whether artists save for their pensions, and that artists are twice as likely as the working population as a whole to earn under £10,000 a year.

• It is common within performing arts unions to offer pension schemes. The combination of the employer contribution and tax relief are powerful incentives for these members to opt in.

• However, given that 50% of artists nowadays are self-employed they would be the sole contributor to their own savings. This presents a significant challenge in creating an affordable, well-adopted scheme for visual and applied artists.

Making A Mark Poll - Pension provision for Artists

The Making A Mark Poll for May is about pension provision for artists.

It aims to provide a guideline as to what proportion of artists make provision for a pension.  The question and options are as below.

Artists - Have you made provision for a pension?

• Yes - I make regular payments into an artists pension plan
• Yes - I make contributions when "in funds"
• Yes - I'm an art teacher with a pension
• Yes - I have a regular job with a pension (use this one if already retired with a pension)
• Yes - I'm relying on a state pension 
• No - no spare cash for pension contributions
• No - I shall keep selling paintings until I drop
• No - I've no idea where to start or what to do
• No - I'd rather not think about it

You can find the poll in the right hand column.  The deadline for voting is 00:10 on 31st May and I'll try and report the poll results as soon as possible after that.

Pensions for Artists

Here's one useful link - the UK Government's State Pension Calculator for those who are paying National Insurance in the UK.  This tells you how much pension you can get from the State when you become eligible.  The full State Pension is £110.15 a week (£5,727 p.a.)

One of the things I'm also going to do this month is research what information is available online in connection with pensions and will produce a website so I can share that with you (a bit like my Art after death - Resources for Artists & Art Collectors website)

Review: Royal Society of Portrait Painters - Annual Exhibition 2013

This is a belated posting of the rest of my review of the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.  It's essentially going to be a picture post as I'm having a few problems with vision and writing long posts right now. (I think I maybe overdid it a bit last week. I'm also beginning to wonder what it's going to be like after the second eye is done next Thursday!  Hopefully fewer headaches when using my eyes for close work!)

The key points I made a note of were:

• there seemed to be more of a mix this year between where the work by the RP members was located and where the work by artists from the open entry were hung

Private View of the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters
Main (West) Gallery

• I really liked the North Gallery.  It seemed to me to be very contemporary and where some of the more exciting and unusual portraits were hung.  It seemed to be very popular and very crowded - at least at the PV!  (I should add the exhibition in the Threadneedle Space was also decidedly very contemporary - you can see images of this in Jan Mikulka wins £20,000 SELF Portrait Prize) 

Portraits in the North Gallery

South Wall, Main Gallery

• By way of contrast, there were a few too many dull corporate portraits by RP members in the main West Gallery .  Maybe it was just that the subjects were a bit more of the grey suit brigade compared to some of the subjects in the North Galley.  (By its nature a lot of work done by portrait artists relates to commissions - find out more)

Which are the best books about Portraiture?

This is a post for all portrait artists and those who aspire to become one.

The idea is to crowdsource a perspective on which are the best art instruction books which cover portraiture:

• drawing and/or painting portraits 
• and/or portrait artists 
• and/or portraiture in general

In recent years round about this time I ask you about your views on your best art books

• 2009 - Your favourite art books - what you like
• 2010 - Which are the best art books about watercolour painting?
• 2011 - Which are the best books about oil painting?Last year I was going to ask you about portrait painting and for some reason forgot to publish the post!

I decided the next crowd sourcing enquiry one should be about drawing and painting people - and portraiture.  However ran into one or two problems.....

I personally arrived at portraiture via drawing people with no clothes on! I got back into art via a life class at Central St. Martins School of Art.  A lot of the first art books I bought were about drawing people - here's part of my portraiture (art instruction) shelf - except I look at it and can spot the ones which are missing!

Some of my books about drawing and painting figures and portraits

From there I then later did a class about Drawing the Head at the Princes Drawing School - and you can see my efforts on my website - Drawing A Head and Drawing Artists
The thing is when I first came to tackle the topic of portraiture for this Enquiry I got well and truly entangled.

There are just so many sub-topics and so many books!  So I started trying to sort them out and ended up creating two websites (which I've almost finished)

The first one I decided should be about art instruction relating to:

• drawing the figure / anatomy for artists
• drawing key features - the head, face and hands
• painting portraits (in different media)

My second website is about the history of portraiture and individual portrait artists.  It focuses more on books which show you the artwork produced by individual portrait artists and those who liked drawing figures.

This is my Lucian Freud stash!

Which books about portraiture do you recommend?

Portraits are the most difficult subjects to paint

45% of you think that people and portraits are the most difficult subjects to paint while a further 15% think painting groups of people is really difficult.

That makes 60% who agree painting people is the most difficult thing ever!

Unfortunately that's 60% of only 20 votes as not a lot of people wanted to 'fess up about what they found difficult to paint!  Not quite sure why this happened - it's a very low turnout for my regular monthly poll.

The Tarporley Hunt Club by Andrew Festing MBE PPRP
oil; 127 x 178cm (50" x 70")
NFS
(see note at end)

What is the most difficult subject to paint?

people - portraits	45%
people - groups of figures	15%
anything and everything	10%
abstract (no recognisable subject)	5%
metaphorical / symbolic	5%
narrative - story is main focus	5%
landscape / cityscape	5%
botanical / floral	5%
animals / wildlife	5%
still life	0%

What evidence do we have for this conclusion from other sources?

• Portrait painting was historically second after history painting in the hierarchy of the genres.  One might be tempted to describe this another way e.g. painting big groups of figures is more difficult than painting a single person and both are infinitely more difficult than painting anything else.  However the theory behind the hierarchy was slightly different - see quote below. (Interestingly still life which nobody seemed to have a problem in my poll has historically come bottom of the genre hierarchy - must be something to do with the few problems presented by things which don't move or answer back!)

The hierarchy was based on a distinction between art that made an intellectual effort to "render visible the universal essence of things" (imitare in Italian) and that which merely consisted of "mechanical copying of particular appearances" (ritrarre).Wikipedia - Hierarchy of genres

• People tend to have a view about what they want their portrait to look like - and how well you're doing! Small wonder many portrait artists won't allow a sitter to view the portrait until it's nearly finished or finished.  The Wall Street Journal comments on the type of challenges presented by painting people in Picture, Picture on the Wall - For people who want their portrait painted, they often want to be seen as the fairest of all
• It's particularly difficult on those who are painting well known figures.  The Telegraph this week highlighted Why is it so hard to paint a portrait fit for a Queen?

He has become the 133rd person to paint the Queen for an official portrait. And Dan Llywelyn Hall has become about the 132nd to be met with a bucket of slop from both professional critics and the public.

• The recent furore over the Duchess of Cambridge's portrait highlights the vitriol which can be targeted at portrait artists by those who know little about portraiture but "know what they like" - see 
• Paul Emsley and the Duchess of Cambridge - two videos and a drawing
• HRH The Duchess of Cambridge official portrait - my verdict
• Some artists think they're not proper artists until they can master painting a portrait.  I think there's some truth in that - in terms of perception.  See Do You Have to Paint Portraits To Be A True Artist? for a discussion of this proposition.
• At the end of the day, portraiture often highlights whether or not you can draw.  So maybe drawing is the most difficult artistic skill to do well?  

I think my conclusion is that portraiture involves the technical aspects of drawing and painting - but it is also about rendering a person and something of the character and sometimes the status of that individual - and that can be very difficult.  

For me successful portraiture is something which goes way beyond a successful rendering of a likeness - and yet for so many, they would be delighted if they could do just that!

My personal mission at the moment is to persuade somebody that it's about time we had a prestigious prize for Group Portraiture.  

Think about how many paintings we see in art galleries and museums involve large groups of people - and then think how many we see today in exhibitions by contemporary artists.  It's not a lot.

I'm beginning to think group portraiture is in danger of rapidly becoming a lost art.  It's nice to see it when it's done well - and I recommend anybody who can to go and visit the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters to see the group painting featured in this - I regard it as an education in group portraiture in one painting!

Note:  The image in this post is an absolutely splendid painting of The Tarporley Hunt Club by Andrew Festing - a Past President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.  It can currently be seen (in truth it can hardly be missed!) in the North Gallery of their Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries until Friday 24 May.  My first reaction when I saw it was that he was going to earn an awful lot of commissions from that one painting.  Every individual in it is just that - a clear individual.  The painting is well composed and yet very animated and it makes you want to study it.  Festing's portraits can be found in the Royal Collections, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery of Ireland, The Palace of Westminster and many of the major private and public collections in Britain.  He's one of the most popular portrait painters working today - and this is a 'Telegraph' article about him - Andrew Festing.