The Man Painter (The Painter Series Book 2)

Rothko layered zone over zone over zone of paint.

The Painting Techniques of Mark Rothko (video) | Khan Academy

Here we can a very bright blue, almost totally overpainted by a dark burgundy. It appears that Rothko often flared out paint, one layer over another and as we look at the edges, we realize that there's kind of a buzzing sensation as these two colors compete for our attention and almost vibrate against one another.

To further allow these forms to float off and away from the surface of the canvas, Rothko often softened the corners of these forms and here we see something called a "turpentine burn", where the artist likely took some solvent on the rag and scrubbed back into the surface of the canvas, blending all of those colors together meanwhile erasing a hard corner, which would visually locate that form in space.

In addition to leaving hints of these colors around the edges of forms, crucially, Rothko allows you to see through veils of paint because he painted so thinly. Now let me show you exactly how Rothko painted so thinly. Rothko would add so much turpentine to his paint, that he would stain the canvas, less painting on the canvas, but really pushing his paint into it as a stain.

Because these stains are so thin, you're able to read one color quite literally through another. In thicker areas of paint, you see the over layer.

The Lost Painting

In thinner areas of that over layer, you begin to see the under layer. And because Rothko layered color over color over color, any given zone is infinitely complex. Rothko thought that if the viewer properly experienced his paintings, that he or she would very often cry. We're quite literally talking about a painter who wanted his viewers to experience the kind of emotions that he very likely did himself. It's not uncommon for people to be emotionally moved, perhaps even to cry when listening to music.

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However, it's very rare that visual art can evoke those same emotions. Rothko, if you will, is competing on the territory of music, trying to evoke very, very strong emotions through paint. The experience of viewing his painting is a very somber one. Although it's very quiet, although it's a quite beautiful painting, it's a painting that never has a finality to it.

The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece

It's one that almost unravels in time. The young king is desperate for an heir to secure the line; the queen produces daughters, or sickly boys, or nothing at all.

Cardinals, secretaries and visiting royalty attend the court; princes are sent to battle; the borders of Spain are never safe. Summer palaces are built, extended and extended again; poets gossip, and leave spiteful notes for the Count-Duke.

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The painter is a rare fixed point and the king favours him; sometimes he stands mutely in the studio and watches his own face appear on the canvas. He works and reworks over it … dip, swipe, dip, swipe: The leg of the horse curves up into the belly here, like —— Here, the top of the leg rounding into the socket like —— The curve of the belly barrel-like —. Occasionally details of paintings are reproduced on the page — a gloved hand holding a letter, a single eye.

The novel is not propulsive in the ordinary sense. Not only does Sackville deploy adverbs whenever she chooses, she coins them: She is especially alert to language as sound as much as symbol, and often phrases ring like melodies: Novels about art and artistry are plentiful; many are very good.

Painter to the King by Amy Sackville review – a virtuoso portrait of Velázquez

But in Painter to the King Sackville has written not only by far the finest novel of its kind that I have ever read, but one of the finest historical novels of recent years. Painter to the King is published by Granta.

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