Paint Technique: Bravura vs. Patience

Painting Atelier in the École des Beaux Arts

American mural painter Edwin Blashfield (1848-1936) recalled that when he was an art student in Paris, all the students on Léon Bonnat's atelier wanted to use a lot of paint and to make sure their paintings looked vigorous and not labored.

Leon Bonnat, Roman Girl at a Fountain

One day Monsieur Bonnat arrived to survey the student work, he said: "Gentlemen, why do you use so much paint? You are only tripping yourselves up. I do not use a great quantity of paint for its own sake, but because my temperament is such that I can get my effect better in that way."

The comments quenched the students' enthusiasm for obsessing with thick paint and technique in general. According to Bonnat, the technique didn't matter so much as effort and patience.

Bonnat said: "It has often been told us that Michelangelo said, 'Genius is eternal patience,' and there is no doubt that Michelangelo was an expert in the definition of genius if ever a man was. Thomas Carlyle, too, defined genius as a 'transcending capacity for taking trouble.'"

"Students may remember then, when they wish to work vigorously and powerfully, and when they disdain what they call labored painting — may remember, I say, that two of the most rugged and original personalities that ever existed, the one in literature, the other in art, have averred that patience — careful, painstaking patience — is the crowning virtue which shall furnish the basis to the brilliant and captivating vigor which is so desirable an achievement."

"And do not mistake my intention. I am with the student. I sympathize in his wish. The skillful manipulation of pigment is a capacity to be struggled for and to be proud of when obtained; it makes the surface of the canvas attract at once. But if the canvas is to be made vital-looking and lastingly solid as well as attractive, behind and under the lively manipulation of pigment there must be construction and knowledge, the fruit of hard work."

Edwin Blashfield, Trumpets of Missouri

"Idolatry of mere dexterity is peculiarly dangerous in America because it assails us along the lines of the least resistance. Dexterousness comes naturally to the American, and in its favor he is sometimes only too ready to suppress hard thinking, which is the one invaluable kind of hard work and discipline in any profession. Technical excellence is at its very best only a means to an end, and art stands for something much finer, greater, and deeper than even the very skilfullest and most brilliant handling of one’s tools." 

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Read more:

Wikipedia on Edwin Blashfield (1848-1936) and Léon Bonnat (1833-1922) 

Books:
• Edwin Howland Blashfield: Master American Muralist 
• Mural Painting in America: The Scammon Lectures by Edwin Howland Blashfield
• Léon Bonnat : Le portraitiste de la IIIe République
Archive.org: Mural Painting in America