The painting (above) as it was last touched by John, now on my easel here in Mystic.
Finishing a John Stobart Painting
I am deeply honored to have been asked by John Stobart’s widow (and head of the Stobart Foundation) to finish a painting of South Street (at his request) he was unable to complete before his passing early this year. I will be regularly chronicling my progress finishing the piece using John’s notes, research, methods and materials in a series of blog posts, below:
Chapter 1: An Introduction (previous post)
Chapter 2: John’s Methods & Materials (previous post)
Chapter 3: The Subject Matter Depicted (previous post)
Chapter 4: What Needs to Be Done (previous post)
Chapter 5: Starting the Painting Process (below):
Chapter 6: Finishing the Downeaster (link here)
Chapter 7: Finishing the Black Schooner (link here)
Chapter 8: My Other All Time Hero (link here)
Chapter 9: From Blob to Barge (link here):
Chapter 10: Nearly Finished, And Discovering An Earlier Version Of The Painting (link here)
Chapter 11: Finally Finished (link here)
Much of the painting as John left is is in the “underpainting” stage — areas roughed in with basic forms, hues and values, but lacking any finish or detail. This base layer would have been painted over, often more than once, by John as he refined and refined the scene and all its minute detail. This is a method many oil painters use, especially those whose works depict historic scenes with much accurate, researched detail. I am striving to leave intact as much of his brushwork as possible, while deciphering which areas are obvious to me he would have reworked, and sharpen and refine those in his style using his methods.
Anyone who studies John’s body of works, especially those crowded harbor scenes, know that his draftsmanship was unequalled. But that doesn’t mean he meticulously planned these complex works with precise master drawings beforehand, as I and many others do. Instead, he would dive in, painting on canvas vigorously after the simplest of outline with a brush, and repaint and refine over many sessions. He was also a stickler for detail and historical accuracy, and would certainly have refined the scene as needed as new information presented itself. Corrections in perspective, or additions or deletions of elements in the scene would be made as new references or inspirations developed. Also, as this particular scene is a tangle of overlaying ships and rigging, it only makes sense to work from background to foreground, painting over the most distant elements first and moving into the foreground as I go along. So, below are my first efforts to put paint on his canvas, channeling my inner Stobart as I go along:
Above are two scenes of the Brooklyn waterfront, on either side of the docked schooners, as John left them underpainted in the existing stage. As I wrote in the previous post, the tower shown inside the ship’s rigging is the Fulton Ferry terminal, though misplaced and out of scale, due to his relying on faulty reference and not having yet corrected the error. (Thanks to the fine ASMA artist Patrick O’Brien, himself a painter of thoroughly researched historic scenes, for alerting me to the discrepancy). Also, John’s available references were more limited than mine, as I can easily search the web and digital photo archives for more numerous images. In that respect, I will diverge from John’s methods to ensure the most accurate depiction of the waterfront. Here, then, are the two scenes as I have now refined them, below:
In the top scene, I’ve depicted the ferry building as it would have appeared in 1884, with a vessel just leaving the terminal, and refined the buildings and added ships on the docks in the bottom scene. As John would do, I will likely further refine them as my eye may eventually suggest.
I have also finished overpainting the Brooklyn Bridge itself, adding much of the cable supports he didn’t get to, and refining the perspective on the nearest tower. The three images below show John’s last efforts (top), an excellent period reference photo from virtually the identical viewpoint (center), and my almost finished layer (bottom). I can already see I need to further refine the perspective of the underside of the deck.
