The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (448 page)

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1839–99).
French
Impressionist
painter of English parentage. He was intended by his parents to have a commercial career, but he turned to painting. In 1862 he entered the studio of
Gleyre
and there met
Renoir
,
Monet
, and
Bazille
, his friendship with Monet providing particularly important. Like Monet, Sisley devoted himself almost exclusively to landscape, but his work was much less varied. He made several visits to England, but otherwise rarely travelled, and most of his pictures are of scenes in and around Paris. The best are among the most lyrical and gently harmonious works of Impressionism, delicate in touch and with a beautiful feeling for tone. Sisley was given a generous allowance by his wealthy father and his early life was happy: Renoir described him as ‘a delightful human being’ and said he ‘could never resist a petticoat’. However, after the family business failed in 1871 because of the Franco-Prussian War, his father was unable to support him and thereafter he spent much of his life in poverty, never winning the success or renown of his former colleagues. He still remains something of a Cinderella among the Impressionists, claimed as their own by neither the French nor the English. His work is in many public collections, including the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery, and the Courtauld Institute in London.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

size
.

Glue made from animal skins, or, more loosely, any fairly weak glue. It is used in art mainly for filling the porous surface of wooden
panels
or
canvases
to provide a suitable foundation for the
priming
(see
GROUND
). Size is also used as a
medium
—paint mixed with it is called
distemper
.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Skeaping , John
.

See
HEPWORTH
.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

sketch
.

‘A rough drawing or delineation of something, giving the outlines or prominent features without the detail, especially one intended to serve as the basis of a more finished picture, or to be used in its composition …’ (
OED
). This was the original meaning of the word, and it was not until the latter part of the 18th cent. that it acquired the additional sense of ‘a drawing or painting of a slight or unpretentious nature’. A sketch should be distinguished from a ‘study’, which is a representation of a detail to be used in a large composition and may be highly finished. A
modello
is more elaborate than an ordinary sketch.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1790–1868).
English art collector and philanthropist. He left a great part of his collection, notable particularly for glass, to the
British Museum
and in his will endowed chairs of fine art at the universities of London (University College), Oxford, and Cambridge. The professorships at Oxford and Cambridge involve only the giving of lectures, intended for a general audience, but in London the Slade School of Fine Art, opened in 1871, is an institution giving practical instruction in painting, sculpture, and the graphic arts. The first professor was Sir Edward
Poynter
, who founded the Slade tradition of emphasis on drawing from the nude. Rapidly taking over from the
Royal Academy
(where the teaching methods were considered arid and academic) as the most important art school in the country, the Slade had its heyday in the period from about 1895 to the First World War. Its students then included some of the most illustrious names in 20th-cent. British art—Augustus and Gwen
John
, Wyndham
Lewis
, Paul
Nash
, Ben
Nicholson
, Stanley
Spencer
, and so on. After Poynter, the Slade Professors in London have included
Legros
, Frederick Brown (1851–1941), who was Professor from 1892 to 1917, presiding over the School's golden age,
Tonks
,
Coldstream
, and
Gowing
. The first Slade Professors at Oxford and Cambridge respectively were
Ruskin
and the architect Matthew Digby Wyatt . Their successors have included many eminent art historians.