Sophie Ploeg

Alathea Talbot I recently came across this portrait that usually hangs in Ingestre Hall in Staffordshire but which is currently on exhibition at Wednesbury Museum, near Birmingham, as part of a small exhibition. I was interested in the portrait as soon as I saw it online and soon after decided to visit it in Wednesbury to have a closer look. What struck me immediately was the beauty of the painting, it certainly deserves to be let out a bit more often! It was also immediately apparent that this painting belonged in the Jacobean period, as it fits in perfectly with the portraits by Larkin, Gheeraerts and others which I have looked at in the past year. The lady in the portrait is wearing typical dress of the period, with an abundance of lace, jewels, silk and feathers.

Johannes Verspronck, A Young Lady, 1637 National Trust, Tyntesfield, The Gibbs Collection, North Somersert On a recent visit to Tyntesfield House (owned by the National Trust) I came across a painting by the Dutch 17th century master Johannes Verspronck (ca. 1600-1662). If you have read my blog before you might well know I admire Verspronck’s paintings enormously. I have hope that his delicate and subtle paintings will perhaps one day come together in an exhibition and book as there is little literature on him or his work. Only as recent as 2011 did the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem acquire a number of paintings by this Haarlem master - they now own a proud 10 pieces. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam owns a further 8. Many, many other pieces are scattered all over the globe. According to the brilliant website BBC Your Paintings there are 5 paintings by his hand in the UK, including the Tyntesfield one. Not all are convincingly by Verspronck, however, although the Ashmolean Museum piec...

Portrait of my son in the style of Robert Peake the Elder (Study) Oil, 20x30cm

John de Critz, Portrait of Queen Anne of Denmark, 1605-10. National Portrait Gallery, London Anne of Denmark (queen consort of James I), (born 1574- died 1619), daughter of the King of Denmark, who loved fashion, extravagance, fought for custody over her children, was a Lutheran and had a troublesome marriage with the king. Portrait by John de Critz (1551-1642), Flemish born, but living and working in England most of his life and 'Serjeant Painter' to James I (chief painting job in court)In 1619 Anne of Denmark died and in the same year a whole generation of artists such as Hilliard, Robert Peake and William Larkin, paving the way for new style in portraiture. Her silk dress shows the 'pinks'; little decorative cuts in the fabric. It is decorated with embroidered bands. She wears an Elizabethan wheel farthingale under her skirt and in her wire- supported collar there is some very detailed and expensive cutwork lace.

Frans Hals, Seated Woman (detail), 1633. National Gallery of Art, Washington The large ruffs you find in Dutch early seventeenth-century portraits are the results of the time consuming efforts of linen bleaching, sewing, starching and setting. A ruff is constructed from a long strip of fabric, usually very fine linen lawn ( Holland lawn was the finest around, made, obviously, in The Netherlands), gathered into cartridge pleats. The length of fabric ranged from a few meters up to nearly 20 meters and ruffs could have anything from 30 all the way up to hundreds of pleats! The famous Dutch portraits often show ruffs of around 200 pleats and we can assume that the painter painted the ruffs fairly accurately. The laundress had the responsibility to starch and set the ruff in the shape required with the aide of a hot poking stick to set the pleats. Rain and wear would 'melt' the starch and would make the ruff go floppy and the work would have to start all over again. In Jonson...

Detail of Johannes Verspronck, Portrait of Willemina van Braeckel, 1637. Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem My recent trip to the Netherlands included a visit to the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem. This lovely museum in a seemingly quiet small 17th century street just outside the centre of town is just a delight to walk to. The town of Haarlem still shows an abundance in 17th century - Golden Age - streets and houses and so when you enter the little street where the Frans Hals Museum is you are already in proper 17th century mood. Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem

A quickie to break the series of long posts....it is a late night,  I am reading on Rembrandt and Johannes Verspronck. Here is a detail from Verspronck's ' Regentesses of the Haarlem Orphanage ', 1642. Frans Hals Museum , Haarlem, The Netherlands. She looks so calm, almost regal, yet so lifelike. Her collar is the brightest white yet her stare is what grabs you. Perhaps it is the only colour in the black and white composition that makes you focus on rosy cheeks' liveliness. She is young, but not so young as to be naive and has a steadfast maternal glance. Her collar is perfect and fine, neatly painted but finished with soft edges. Her gown sober and neat. She doesn't smile yet looks friendly. The brush strokes seem to echo this in their neat but soft approach. Johannes Verspronck, detail of "Regentesses of the Haarlem Orphanage" 1642 Frans Hals Museum Haarlem, The Netherlands

Isaack Luttichuys, Portrait of Young Woman with Ostrich Feather in her hand, 1656 I just found this lovely painting by Isaack Luttichuys, (1616, London – 1673, Amsterdam), in the collection of the the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. I am off to The Netherlands next week and will be visiting the Rijksmuseum a few times. I hope this painting will be on display. It is by a fairly unknown 'society' painter, Isaak Luttichuys who came to The Netherlands in the early seventeenth century. He was the son of Dutch parents, born in London, but moved to Holland at an early age. Very little is known about his life, training or career.

It is fascinating to see how art historians shy away from talking about 'style' (as that has been considered as too much 'labelling' recently) when discussing Jacobean art and nearly always write about the sitter, the costume and the artist only. Catalogues and books describe into much detail how the political landscape of the time was formed, who married who and what they wore. The Jacobean period (1603-1625) is a bit of an 'in-between' period as its 'late Renaissance' and 'early Baroque' (or we can call it all 'early modern' to avoid this boxing in). In most older art history books no artists from this era get a mention (the Baroque starts with Van Dyck and the Renaissance ends with the end of Elizabeth's reign). The few historians that do explore Jacobean and early Stuart art can do very little than refer to Holbein and Elizabethan portraits and label everything that looks a bit like it 'old fashioned' and everything that s...

A few recent news items.... * UK art magazine Artists & Illustrators Magazine decided to publish my article on how to paint fabrics (which was published in the magazine last year) online in a 4-part series.  See here for part one and come back tomorrow for the next instalment: http://www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk/how-to/Acrylic/913/how-to-paint-fabric-part-one-inspiration * A recent sketch of a Rembrandt Self Portrait in my sketchbook:

The time since my Open Studio I have filled with a trip to London and more research into the history of fashion and lace. I went to see the new exhibition at the Queens Gallery at Buckingham Palace called 'In Fine Style' which explores Tudor and Stuart fashion in art. It brings together some real highlights of the royal collection including Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Bronzino, Marcus Gheeraerts and many others combined with some real historic pieces of clothing that have miraculously survived the ages. Embroidered waistcoat, 1610-20, Fashion Museum Bath  The detail in the paintings from this era is astounding and enough to make you gush over the sheer richness and indulgence of colour, detail, jewels and luxurious fabrics. I doubt any (wo)man can resist. Besides just enjoying the stunning paintings and glorious royal clothes and lace it is fascinating to see how the artists excelled themselves in painting every detail of the clothes, the jewels and the lace.

Elizabeth's Dress, oil on canvas, 30x25cm

A sketch I did at the exhbition in Bath A while ago I went to the Bath Fashion Museum to see the 'Dressing the Monarchy on Stage and Screen' exhibition, which features the royal costumes made for films and theatre. It was fabulous to admire the sheer craftmanship, the bling and richness of it all and I came back inspired to paint more fabrics.  ****** On the internet a learned a bit about the amazing Elizabethan painter  Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (Bruges, c. 1561/62 – 19 January 1636) http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Marcus_Gheeraerts_the_Younger He gives an amazing lesson in how to paint fabrics. *********** These are some pages from a 'Ladies Magazine' from 1863, something my late grandmother left me. It is so lovely, nearly falling apart though, and full of sewing patterns and coloured images of the latest fashion from Paris. I hope to paint more lace and fabrics soon, so stay tuned.

This is something about a realist art show in Australia...not something I’ll be visiting any time soon, but I really like how Jim has described contemporary realism and the role of the internet. Have a read on his blog: Cube Contemporary Art Projects: More Real Than Real; Realism from the USA and Cana... : More Real Than Real; Realism from the USA and Canada is an exhibition curated by Jim Thalassoudis for Peter Walker Fine Art and is on durin... A little extract: In the last decade there has been a proliferation of “atelier” art schools teaching the methods, the knowledge and the revival of the skills of the past. Coupled with this is the use of the Internet allowing literally thousands of like-minded painters to find each other, to form social collectives, to teach, to learn and to pass on information. Graydon Parrish,   Susanna looking to the right     oil on panel  50.8 x 45.5 cm