Ingres
Holbein
Schiele
Line and its masterful use to explain, evoke, and create pictorial ideas is well demonstrated by these three very different artists.
In early to mid 1800s France, Jean August Dominique Ingres was considered the most prominent artist of his day. His powerful visual ideas continue to influence artists. Similar to music counterpoint, he brilliantly used line to turn form, establish rhythms, focal points, weight, light, volume, and flatness. Many of his drawings explore the identity of a specific person or group within the context of society and social position. At the same time, the example reveals the delicate interaction of love and family.
In the England of King Henry the VIII, Holbein held the powerful and very political position of Court painter. His remarkable portraits still strongly resonate with the human condition. Complex content generated with only line, he used his considerable technical prowess to communicate thoughts and feelings clearly with this most basic visual element. His drawings sharply reveal what his sitters think about themselves.
Active in the early 1900s, Austrian painter Egon Schiele immerses us in gesture, provoking and stirring basic instincts with his use of line and figure. His understanding of gesture is related to mime and dance. Like the example, many of Schiele's drawing are seductive, highly emotional, and sexually charged.
Link Igres, Wikipedia
Link Holbein the Younger, Wikipedia
Link Egon Schiele, Wikipedia
