Larisa Golovko

ART H 112
Locke
4 April 2013


Comparing American Works of Opposing Styles

To compare two works of varying American art Ive chosen Rembrandt
Peales Portrait of a Baltimore Gentleman (1815) and John Sloans Self-Portrait
(1924). Both paintings are in the style of portraiture; but Sloans differs in that it is a
self-portrait. The gap of over a century between the works allows for the natural
change in American art styles to become particularly prominent, and while it may
not identically reflect the changes noticed in European art of its respectable time
periods, there do indeed share parallel characteristics.

Color plays a distinguishing role in the two pieces; It serves to highlight areas
of light and dark and add a life-like quality to the works. In Sloans work, the color is
kept at quite a muted palette, as seen by the very fleshy skin tone, neutral
background, brown pipe, and beige tone of his clothing. When comparing the two
pieces, its important to note that Sloan makes use of warmer notes in his work,
while Peale chooses to have a much cooler black and white themed portrait. Peales
work has largely no earth tones that resemble Sloans, but rather keep to the
dichromatic palette of black and white. He does not stray from the two main colors
with the exception some red and gold for the bannister. Neither artist make color
the most important aspect of their pieces, but rather place importance on other
aspects of painting such as style of brushstroke.

Interestingly as well, both artists seem to exclusively use the color red to
break up patterns of neutrals, blacks, and whites. The red tie in Self Portrait and the
red furniture in Portrait of a Baltimore Gentleman both serve to mix up . This shows
us that both artists felt the need for at least a small pop of bright color in otherwise
heavily mono-tone works.

Dimensionality is addressed in both pieces in different ways. For
example, Peales piece tends to be on the flatter side regarding the subjects body
and the background. But when it comes to the face, there is a stark attempt to create
volume through the high contrast of light versus dark. The subjects forehead, nose,
and cheeks display the highest amount of light concentration throughout the entire
piece, with the exception of the subjects pure white shirt beneath his jacket. A nice
touch that is another example of dimension is the small light shining off of the
spherical shape of the wooden furniture. The small dots, when placed strategically,
create the illusion of a 3-dimensional space in an otherwise quite 2-dimensional
atmosphere. Peales piece has an overall stronger use of contrast between light and
dark, which keeps to the traditional techniques of its time, such as dark and
nondescript, nearly black subject backgrounds. Sloans light come out much less
dramatically than Peales, preferring to have more of an array of tones in the middle
of the color spectrum rather than creating polarity between the darkness and
lightness.

While Sloans work is not naturalistic in the way the Peales is, he does
manage to create levels of contrast by choosing not to blend his colors in as
thoroughly as Peale does, in fact the blending is almost non-existent. He instead
chooses to overlap his brushstrokes in a manner reflecting impressionistic
techniques of the time in Europe in order to create a more spontaneous emotion in
the piece, and stray from the very traditional manner of valuing realism/naturalism
above all else.

Opposingly, Sloans work creates a contrast through its use of varying neutral
lights and darks piled on top of one another in a more painterly manner than
Peales. In terms of shading, there is not a significant amount of shading that is done
with the intent of creating volume. The shading is done for mainly stylistic purposes
rather than technical ones. For example, the shading of the background doesnt
really do much to give the viewer a more accurate understanding of where the
subject is located. Varying shades of medium to dark gray dont hint at a particular
location other than a blank wall in a sparsely decorated room, but one could say the
same for Peales equally nonspecific background of dark tones.

If analyzing how each piece adheres to traditional versus non-traditional
representations of space, its easy to continue on in discussion of the background.
Since no specific background is divulged, we can rule out the possibility of defining
space through the analysis of atmospheric perspective, especially since we know
that the location, while vague, is obviously indoors. There arent really any more
valid methods of figuring out space within the pieces since the backgrounds are so
nondescript and give no hint as to how far away the subject is in relation to it. So,
this means we must conclude that we have no definite knowledge of how
traditionally or non-traditionally the space itself is represented.

The key elements of difference between John Sloans Self-Portrait and
Rembrandt Peales Portrait of a Baltimore Gentleman are the stylistic ones related to
naturalism versus impressionistic techniques and color palette. Their main
similarities involve subject matter (portraiture) and lack of variety of bold colors.
Conclusively, it can be said that each respective piece is a typical representation of
artistic style of the time, if compared to their European counterparts.