Charles Ritchie

Charles Ritchie, Study after Starry Night by Jean-François Millet, 27 April 2008, watercolor and graphite on Arches paper in bound volume, sheet size: 4 x 6″

Millet’s Falling Star

The Painting:
What a thrill to finally see Jean-François Millet’s painting Starry Night. I had known it previously only through a poor black and white reproduction. When I discovered the work hanging with the In the Forest of Fontainebleau exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, I was stunned to see its boiling darkness.

But the more I looked at the subject the more something seemed out of place. In Millet’s picture, we stand in a dark road with fields on either side. Trees are silhouetted against a glowing horizon that bleeds upward into a dark sky of accurately observed constellations. To the right, the belt and sword Orion are prominent and Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky follows at upper left. What troubled me is that another star stands just to the right of Orion’s belt, challenging Sirius. No bright star is in this location nor do bright planets tread there. What a terrible inaccuracy for Millet, an artist who prides himself on truth to observation.

In the left center are two streaks of falling stars; one with a fiery head and another, a vaporous streak. It suddenly became clear to me, that by reading a right to left sequence, we see three stages of a single falling star: the bright flash of the meteor’s encounter with earth’s atmosphere (the misplaced star in question), the flaming rock’s descent (at center), and the vaporized trail still illuminated (at left). When we consider the image this way; the metaphor is clarified; individuals are no more than a single falling star in the night. The dark road where we stand is transient and solitary.

Copying Technique:
To make my copy I stood in front of the actual painting penciling out the composition in my journal and recording an inventory of the colors I saw. Returning to the studio I painted the image in watercolor based on my notes and a reproduction that I printed from the Yale University Art Gallery web site; an image that carried far more detail than any catalogue reproduction I could find. I began my watercolor with light application of three loosely blended yellows: Winsor, Indian, and Naples, the three give a warm underpainting for the stars and the glowing horizon. I then begin to work with darker colors moving from light to dark, never wetting the pinpoints where the stars are located. This allows the white of the paper to spark through in these areas. Other colors I used in the general order I introduced them: Cerulean Blue, Lapis Lazuli, Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine Blue, Winsor Yellow/Indigo (a color that I mix to get a transparent, versatile green), Alizarin Crimson, Prussian Blue, Raw Umber Violet, and Indigo. By the way, one should take this color study with a grain of salt. Millet’s painting needs to be cleaned. Who knows what will emerge when the old varnish is stripped away.

Other Notes:
It is not known for certain whether Van Gogh saw Millet’s painting before he painted his well-known masterpiece. Millet prefigured; he was a force from earlier in the 19th century and his works influenced Vincent. Both shared an interest in rendering subjects from everyday life with deep compassion.

Serendipity placed this painting in my path considering I’ve been involved with my current, unfinished Night with Orion drawing. I admit the influence of Millet’s painting on me, however, I don’t remember being conscious that Orion and Canis Major (Sirius is the prominent star of the latter constellation) were part of Millet’s Starry Night.

Much credit goes to the wonderful article, Millet’s Shooting Stars by Martin Beech, Royal Astronomical Society, Canada, 1988. Beech’s insightful study fueled some of my questioning. Beech, however suggests that these are several meteors belonging to the Orionids, an October shower emanating from the Orion region of the sky (actually the radiant is well above the core of Orion, see here). I believe that because Orion is leaning to the right in Millet’s Starry Night, the constellation is falling into the sunset (as it does in the mid-Northern latitudes). With plenty of foliage visible, I would say this is late spring when Orion sets just after the sun.

Charles Ritchie, Study after Starry Night by Jean-François Millet (first state), 24 April 2008, watercolor and graphite on Arches paper in bound volume, sheet size: 4 x 6″

Link to Jean-François Millet (French, 1814–1875), Starry Night (Nuit Étoilée), c. 1855-1867, oil on canvas, 25 3/4 x 32″, Yale University Art Gallery.

Photograph of artist Charles Ritchie in front of the home where Wallace Stevens lived in Hartford, Connecticut. The house remains a private residence. Photographer: Samantha Ritchie, August 2004.

Wallace Stevens Walking

Poet Wallace Stevens has influenced my creative practice.

In his early years, Stevens tried journalism and law in New York City but eventually settled in Connecticut to work for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company. Stevens was good at insurance; he spent thirty years in the company and rose to the position of vice-president. Stevens was also good at writing poetry.

Wallace Stevens didn’t drive; he walked the two mile stretch to the office and two miles back each working day. On those walks he composed in his head some of the most powerful and significant poetry of our age; perhaps any age. Stevens once said,” It gives a man character as a poet to have this daily contact with a job”. I certainly feel that having a career interpenetrate my artist life has benefited me.

I have had the good fortune to do curatorial work for a living. The position has fed my intellectual curiosity, provided high artistic models to follow, and offered financial security. I make the art I want to make; and keep the often-destructive pressure of selling my art for a living at bay. And I have flourished in the time constraints that accompany having two careers and have developed tools that complement the situation; I keep my journal with me at all times; I milk my early morning hours in the studio for all they are worth. And I have benefited from relationships with scores of interesting and wonderful people.

Stevens got up early and read; he composed on the streets as he walked (and sometimes at lunch). And when he arrived at his job something about the contact of the real world and real people and real life situations provided an added level of input and ferment. I think that is what Stevens may have meant by character. Cultivating the outside world in all its forms and contexts to use as grist for the mill in order to extract the broadest understandings of life.

By the way; walks are something that have buoyed many creative minds. According to psychologist and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “chick-SENT-me high”) who has studied the lives of creative people, walking is one of the activities where sensations of the highest levels of creativity are reported. Stevens alludes to the percolation of the walk; the regenerative inhale and fecund exhale at the beginning of section VII of his poem, Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction.

“…Perhaps
The truth depends on a walk around a lake,
A composing as the body tires, a stop
To see hepatica, a stop to watch
A definition growing certain and
A wait within that certainty, a rest
In the swags of pine-trees bordering the lake.”

If I were to introduce the poems of Wallace Stevens to a newcomer, I would probably select one of his still life pieces. Here we feel the complex and incremental walk of the eye:

Link to Study of Two Pears by Wallace Stevens.

Charles Ritchie, two Polaroid photographs of a star magnolia, (both images taken approximately 1:15 pm, 11 April 2000)

The Star Magnolia

As daffodils flooded the front yard, forsythia glowed, and the star magnolia exploded white across the street, I sat at my window dazed. We had just put our cat to sleep. Cancer took him; far too young. The day’s beauty heightened the sadness. April is the cruelest month.

I gazed into the star magnolia and suddenly I realized my loss would always be tied to this flowering. Nothing new about this kind of association. A year after Lincoln died, Walt Whitman remembered his hero in a poem, When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d. Likewise for me, the significance of blossoms had changed.

Looking down at my worktable, I saw my tiny drawing, Self-Portrait with Blossoming Star Magnolia; one of my problem children; a drawing that I had been working on for years. I’ve been trotting it out for the few weeks of peak blossoms and then putting it away, always dissatisfied; perennially hopeful for a recovery during next year’s session.

I’ve worked and reworked the tiny sheet; erased it, scrubbed the paper with large flat, synthetic bristle brushes pulling out the watercolor (see images below). I’ve redrawn and repainted, and then scrubbed and erased again. I’m not sure what is so hard about this piece. Perhaps it is finding the right twilight atmosphere. Perhaps it is coaxing nuances of color that don’t overpower. Perhaps it is the composition.

During the current session, I removed two subjects from the foreground of the drawing: a postcard and a dried orange. Scrubbed them away, and replaced them with an image of one of my own larger drawings; another of my trouble children: Night with Orion. This felt better. The new shape punctured the window’s rectangle and pulled the grid of panes into the border. I liked the minimal articulation of the depicted drawing; I used watercolor to mimic the graphite of the original. This new gray panel or wall seemed right. I also liked the idea of inserting a troubled drawing into another troubled drawing; trouble mirroring trouble. And through the window, the depiction of the star magnolia now represented trouble on another plane for me.

These kinds of personal associations drive my drawing, but the viewer doesn’t need to know the connections to appreciate the work. I believe if I respond to my intuition and feelings, work intensely, and stay honest, there’s a good chance something will be there for an audience.

The drawing, I feel, is complete now; consummated in meditation and loss. In one of my favorite short stories The Haunted House by Virginia Woolf, a couple re-lives through remembrances found in the various settings of a house; personal reflections lead them to their treasure and essence.

(above left) Charles Ritchie, Self-Portrait with Blossoming Star Magnolia (work in progress) 7 February 2008.
(above right) Self-Portrait with Blossoming Star Magnolia (work completed) 10 April 2008.
both: watercolor, graphite, and gouache on Fabriano paper, sheet/image: 4 x 3″, collection of the artist

For Pokey.

Charles Ritchie, trial proof for Accordion Print, 2008, etching on wove paper, sheet size: 13 x 10 1/4″. A trial proof is a test printing that reveals the artist’s work on a printing plate.

Part 2: Trial proof created from drawings on Mylar transfered to a printing plate

I have just received a first proof that shows the results from the test I started a few weeks ago (see online journal entry for 24 March 2008) Printer Jim Stroud transferred the pen and ink writing/drawing I did on Mylar to a printing plate. The clear Mylar was placed face down on photo sensitized plates and a bright light exposed the plates. The areas not blocked by my writing/drawing were changed, hardened so that acid cannot eat away at them. The other areas remained open and when the plates were placed in a bath of acid the open areas allowed acid to eat into the copper printing plate. When the plates are removed from the acid and cleaned, these recessions are the areas that hold printing ink.

Two plates were prepared, one showed the drawing and the other the writing. Jim inked these plates and juxtaposed them on the press bed. He placed a sheet of dampened paper over the plates and ran them through the printing press (see image above). The writing transferred very well with very precise detail in the script. Jim used a graphite ink to print; a dark silvery-gray, echoing the pencil writing that often accompanies many of my drawings. While we will probably want to incorporate some of this graphite ink, most of my inscriptions will probably be in black, in the fashion of most of my notebook/journals, thus in the next proof we will probably want to use a black ink. Another more challenging obstacle is that there are very fine scratches all through the handwritten areas. These are slight abrasions that probably occurred while I was writing on the Mylar. If I am to continue working in this direction, I will have to be particularly careful not to allow scratching on the clear Mylar surface.

The transfer of the drawing went well, fairly detailed; however I probably went too far with the crosshatching. The black lines really filled in too much, effacing more detail than I would have liked. However, I am not really concerned with this as I will probably want to only create outlines of drawings for photographic transfer to the plate. I really prefer to work directly into the plate in etching and drypoint. The lines will be crisper and fresher and retain the nuances of hand-working than if they were photographically translated.

After seeing this trial proof I will set the Mylar transfer idea aside and try another approach. I will write and draw on a long sheet of Arches 90 pound hot press paper (which is my preferred drawing paper for my handmade journals). On this paper I will inscribe my texts and draw the outlines of my images in order to arrange the compositions of my pages. When complete I will send these drawings on paper to Jim who will have them photographically transfered to printing plates. I will then draw in etching, drypoint, and possibly mezzotint directly on the plates (to be continued).

Photograph of Printer James Stroud removing ink from copper printing plates, Center Street Studio, in the workshop’s previous location, Boston, April 1996.