Imaginative color in 19th century fantasy art - Part 1

Here are a few of the images previously posted in my “Victorian Fantasy Art” album on Facebook, but with new comments:

This is a painting by Benes Knupfer who has pushed the colors in a lyrical direction.

Before color photography began limiting the imagination of artist by “dumbing down” the color range that they were used to seeing (remember that the photographic process compresses the millions of color shades of nature into a mechanically limited few thousand) fantasy artists felt free to stretch the colors in their paintings in lyrical and dramatic directions, though always taking care to maintain a naturalistic proportional relationship among the colors.

A mysterious beauty of a painting by Maximilian Pirner who has made some unexpected color choices

This made sure that even as the colors were exaggerated the image still gave the impression of being a believably real representation. When these proportional relationships between colors and values are lost the image begins to look cartoony and the main goal of good fantasy art: “To make the unreal seem real” is lost as well.

"Pharaoh's Army Engulfed By The Red Sea" by Frederick Arthur Bridgman.

Gaston Bussiere's painting of "The Rhine Maidens"

Another Bussiere painting of sirens.  He always paints with highly saturated colors.

19th Century Fantasy Art

This is a continuation and expansion of the “Victorian Fantasy Painting” album that I have been posting on Facebook.  Along with new posts here, I plan to meld over the images and insights from that gallery so that all the images can be found and appreciated in one location.

My primary goal in creating these posts is to re-introduce many forgotten fantasy paintings and artists to modern day followers of that genre, whether practicing artists themselves or fans of fantasy art.  The great defect with most art history books is that they continually reprint the same “Important” paintings over and over again while ignoring the wider world of the entire movement.  As a result, most contemporary artists have a very limited view of the thought processes practiced back then in the act of creativity.  The world of fantasy art today is bound by unnecessary habits and restrictions that leave the genre all the poorer.

"The Cloud" by Arthur Hacker

The nude form has long been a staple of almost all art.  In fantasy art it has a rich place because of the various conceptual uses it can be applied to.  My favorite is “Allegory” in which the human form is used to symbolize an abstract concept or condition, or an aspect of nature.  Arthur Hacker uses it beautifully in “The Cloud”.  The human form enhances the connection of the viewer and therefore the emotional communication.

Hermann Behrens depicts a woman whose vanity (the mirror symbol) is associated with Death.

 Another use of the nude is to serve as an anchor for a philosophical statement about such concepts as the danger of the female of the species.  Symbolist art of this period is rife with allusions to death and decadence in relation to the “Femme Fatale”

"Lilith" by John Collier

Finally the nude was popular in depicting specific characters from mythology.  In fact this genre was popular because it provided an excuse (for those who needed one) to paint a beautiful nude.

Using Costumes

Over the years I have made extensive use of costumes in my illustration work.  The better the costume, the more help it is in creating a good illustration.  Sometimes I have raided the thrift stores and resorted to re cutting and resewing my own creations.  But while I lived near Hollywood and did work for film advertising, I was able to make use of a great resource: Western Costume.  That warehouse contained many thousands of beautiful costumes created for and rented to motion picture production companies.

In a single large room dedicated solely to medieval male tunics I would paw through hundreds on triple story racks to find just the one I wanted for a book cover. Not cheap to rent, but worth it.

Below is a picture of one I chose which is being worn by "Rocketeer" artist and pal Dave Stevens for a book cover illustration.

The same tunic in the 1980's and 40 years earlier.

Some years later while watching Errol Flynn's "The Adventures of Robin Hood" I realized that from the myriad of tunics I had picked one from that film.  They kept them in good repair through the decades.

What I'm up to

For my first post I thought I would tell you about my current project.

I am working with George R R Martin and Subterranean Press on the massively illustrated, limited edition of “A Clash of Kings” book two of George’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. This will contain (when I finish!!) around 70 black and white illustrations of various sizes and formats and 6 full color images including two wrap around covers.

Here is a shot of the first cover painting in progress.

And the second cover painting.

Working with George (when I can tear time away from his hectic schedule) is stimulating and challenging. Like any proud father he is very protective of his creations and especially their appearance. Some of my sketches have hit the mark right away while others have needed numerous sketches to work out.

A drawing of Catelyn that George liked right off.

George is quite forthcoming with information from his fertile brain about what things should look like, and this sometimes includes details that he has thought of, but never actually written down in his books. (More on that in a future post). That is what makes the work so fascinating. I get the chance to learn things that others don’t know yet, until I illustrate them or George writes them down.

As the project develops check in here for more comments and images of the work in progress.