


Le Jeune Frere [Little Brother] by William Bouguereau (1825-1905), Oil on Canvas, 1903, is stored at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It will be displayed when the new wing opens.
"William Bouguereau is unquestionably one of history's greatest artistic geniuses. Yet in the past century, his reputation and unparalleled accomplishments have undergone a libelous, dishonest, relentless and systematic assault of immense proportions. His name was stricken from most history texts and when included it was only to blindly, degrade and disparage him and his work. Yet, as we shall see, it was he who single handedly opened the French academies to women, and it was he who was arguably the greatest painter of the human figure in all of art history. His figures come to life like no previous artist has ever before or ever since achieved. He wasn’t just the best ever at painting human anatomy, more importantly he captured the tender and subtlest nuances of personality and mood. Bouguereau caught the very souls and spirits of his subjects much like Rembrandt. Rembrandt is said to have captured the soul of age. Bouguereau captured the soul of youth." -- Fred Ross, Art Renewal Center
Portraiture - Head and Hands
October 20-31, 2008
Toronto
Instructor: Juan Martinez
Alla Prima Portrait Painting: Capture the appearance of the live model with this direct approach
December 8-12, 2008
Toronto
Instructor: Juan Martinez
Visual Arts Center
Fridays
6:30 PM – 9:00 PM
Adult students may come and draw or paint from a model. No instruction. Bring all of your own materials. Easels provided.
$6 - pay in class
Uptown Gallery Open Figure Drawing
Tuesdays
6:30 PM - 9:30 PM
This group has met weekly for life drawing since 1987. Bring your own easel.
Fee varies based on attendance. $6 - $10.
Virginia Museum Studio School
Donald Schrader
1 session, Oct 11
Sat, 10 am-4 pm
Studio School, Conference Room
$85 (VMFA members $70)
Enrollment limit: 10
The great Baroque masters achieved dramatic effects using techniques quite different from those familiar to the oil painter of today. In this workshop students will discover through illustrated lectures and demonstration the craft-oriented procedures employed by the Old Masters. We will explore four critical subjects—the face, the figure, draperies, and the landscape—and cover canvas preparation, color types and sources, paint ingredients, and the uses of drawings in paintings.
"That is the man himself. I can almost realize he is going to move."
-- The Marquis de Lafayette
Tracy L. Kamerer and Scott W. Nolley have written an in-depth article about Houdon's George Washington, the magnificent portrait in marble dominating Richmond's Capitol rotunda. The article, with its excellent photographs, is available on the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation website.
Travelling between Richmond and Virginia's Northern Neck, one may see Spanish sculptor Mariano Bennliure's memorial to William Atkinson Jones, at historic St. John's Church in Warsaw. The sculpture was a gift to the town from the Phillipino people in appreciation of Jones' 1916 sponsorship of the bill for Phillipino independence.