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The October 2024 issue of PORTRAIT PAINTER features a duel, a scuffle to the death, between Jean-Léon Gérôme and your's truly.

Utilizing Gérôme's The Bacchante, 1853 as a foil I deliver a resounding smack of my snot streaked mitten to wipe the smirk off of the face of Classical Realism.

Perchance you might ask why am I prosecuting Gérôme? Gérôme was an affable fellow, I would have enjoyed a frothy beverage or several with him, but he was out-of-step even in his time, the late 19th Century.

It is Gérôme's pedagogy and aesthetic, namely, the Bargue method developed in 1866/1877 for Gérôme's students, that today's Academies are predicated.

We live in a time that cries out for giants of painting. Our age of alienation and loneliness is fecund ground for expression. And illustrative, academic painting modes will not cut it.

I might also have hoisted myself with my own petard.

Pushing Boundaries: A four session Zoom course

My upcoming Portrait Painting Zoom Class begins Tuesday, October 15 to November 5, 2024 at 18:30 PST for four sessions. $320

Using Jean-Léon Gérôme's tondo (a circular canvas) Portrait of a Child as a foil we begin with striking the arabesque, fixing the gesture and blocking-in with the brush followed by the dead coloring-in, the Ébauche.

As we proceed through the passages of the Pentimento your paint handling and brushwork will strive to be more authoritative, more expressive, more powerful than the illustrative, academic approach of Gérôme.

In addition to the Zoom recording the workshop is filmed in ultra-resolution 4K and edited to 2K. There is little visual difference between 4K and 2K other than the much more manageable file size of the latter.

Write: michael-britton-workshops@artacademy.com for the full syllabus, supply list and to register.