Today is the “Ides of March” or March 15th, the anniversary of the date in 44BC when a group of Roman senators assassinated Julius Caesar; whose lust for power had prompted him to declare himself absolute ruler for life (i.e. dictator), and thus threatened the senators’ power (more important, of course, than the welfare of the Roman citizenry, but it threatened that as well).

Personally, I think the Ides of March should be a worldwide holiday, in which power hungry leaders everywhere should be reminded to watch their step, perhaps with the circulation of images like Vincenzo Camuccini’s Death of Julius Caesar.

Camuccini was an Italian painter active in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, and was considered the foremost Italian academic painter of his time. He was a neoclassicist, like his French contemporary David, painting histories, such as the aforementioned demise of ol’ Julius, and portraits of eminent members of society.

Camuccini spent the early part of his career copying the masters, particularly Raphael. His own style, while considered more refined than original, eventually gained him popularity and made him rich enough to allow him to collect a large number of works by other artists, including Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks.

Camuccini’s Death of Julius Caesar is staged as a tableau rather than an intimate drama, but his portrayal of Caesar is reliably accurate, as it is based on an existing bust of Caesar from Caesar’s time, one of the first examples we have of direct realistic portrait sculpture of a known individual.

The death scene and Camuccini’s self-portrait are about the only paintings of his you’ll see widely reproduced, but his death scene is often used to illustrate the event, and/or mention of it in Shakespeare’s play.

Where most portraits of leaders are monuments to power, the Death of Julius Caesar is a monument to the limits and end of overreaching power, a far nobler subject in my estimation. So to all of the world’s leaders (and so-called leaders), I wish you a careful, thoughtful and warily observant Ides of March!

It’s always seemed to me that portraiture is a particularly demanding type of painting, at least the kind of portraiture in which the artist is commissioned to create the portrait, as opposed to an artist who paints someone simply because they find them an interesting subject.

Not only do you have the exacting demands of producing a likeness, which requires very careful observation and, depending on style, faithful reproduction of that likeness with careful draftsmanship and rendering; a commissioned portrait requires that the client, whether the individual themselves or someone related, be pleased with the result, which is an issue faced more often by illustrators than gallery artists.

If someone doesn’t like your landscape, they pass by in the gallery and you can sell it to someone else. A commissioned portrait has a very limited market.

Some artists thrive on the practice, though, and history’s great painters have included numerous portrait painters.

The modern practice doesn’t get as much attention as some other types of painting, but there are portraits artists who are at the top of the game and get a great deal of respect from other artists as well as their from their patrons.

Nelson Shanks is one of the latter. With a background in academic art training that he “pieced together” from various teachers and sources, both here and in Europe, Shanks has established himself not only as one one of the country’s premiere portrait painters, but also as one of the major proponents of classical realism.

Shanks, along with his wife Leona Shanks, is the founder of Studio Incamminati, an atelier style teaching program here in Philadelphia, which focuses on the principles of classical realism.

Shanks’ commissioned portraits include such notable figures as former presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Regan, Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Princess Diana, King Gustav and Queen Silvia of Sweden, Queen Julianna of the Netherlands, Luciano Pavarotti and numerous CEOs and chairmen of boards, including those of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Times.

His web site has a few of these portraits, as well as figure paintings and a few other subjects, but the images are frustratingly small. There is a selection of larger images on the Art Renewal Center, which also has a separate article on him as a “modern master”, Nelson Shanks, Humanist Realist.

Personally, I’m more interested in his figure painting, which is superb, and his portraits of non-famous individuals, in which you can more clearly see the painter as a painter, rather than as a painter in that particular role of portrait painter of notable figures. It is here, I think, and in those rare excursion into landscape, and particularly interior scenes, where Shanks shines.

About 55km (35 miles) Southeast of Paris is a stretch of forest that could be considered the cradle of the modern practice of painting “en plein air” (“in the plain air” or simply “outdoors”), as well as the approach to painting that came to be called the “Barbizon School” and the style derived from them that would develop into French Impressionism.

Here, artists like Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau, Jean-Francois Millet, Charles-François Daubigny and others gathered in the unofficial artists colony in the town of Barbizon, from which they could walk into the surrounding forrest, with their newly portable painting equipment in hand, and capture the drama and beauty of the still-wild landscape.

The practice of painting on location, while not entirely new, had not been practiced to such a degree or by such a large group of painters before, and the very choice these painters had made to make nature the center and subject of their paintings, rather than a backdrop for human activity, was radical; carrying forward the emphasis placed on landscape by English artist John Constable.

They were followed by the young Impressionist painters Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille and Auguste Renoir, who, at the urging of atelier master Charles Gleyre, traveled to the Fontainebleau Forest from nearby Paris to also exercise this new practice of painting directly from nature.

In the Forest of Fontainebleau: Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet is a newly opened show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., highlighting many of these painters, as well as artists in the new medium of photography, who found similar inspiration in the dramatic scenery of the forest.

Corot and Monet are the stars here, and Corot is the master; unsurprisingly as we are in his territory. Though most of the works here are large, finished studio works, you can see where they are informed by the open-air painting that they developed from, and many small location sketches are included as well. Here is not only the direct representation of nature and natural light, but the direct, open brushwork on which Impressionism, and many related schools of painting. would be based.

Corot is a favorite of mine, and will the subject of a dedicated future post, and he is at his finest here, with his remarkable presence for the individual “personalities” of trees in the midst of broader scenes.

Monet is presented as you rarely see him, as a mature painter, but prior to the development of the “Impressionist style”. Here is Monet in dark forest glades, painting directly and without the scattering of short brushstrokes, though obviously already fascinated with effect of dappled light and shade (image above, top). Sisley and Bazille are right at home with this style, and Renoir turns in terrific pieces as well. There are some famous works, like one of Monet’s preparatory panels for his abandoned attempt at Déjeunier sur l’Herbe, and Bazille’s Improvised Field Hospital, depicting Monet in bed nursing his banged-up leg.

Richard Parkes Bonington is represented by several pieces and Theodore Rousseau, who I was not that familiar with, impressed me with superb examples.

I was struck in particular by the work of other artists with whom I was only vaguely or not at all familiar, like Théodore d’Aligny, Robert-Leopold Leprince; wonderful work by Alexandre Desgoffe and a stunning landscape painting by Rosa Bonheur (image above, bottom); who I usually associate only with depictions of animals.

The exhibition is wonderful and quite extensive. It runs at the National Gallery in Washington until June 8, 2008. It then moves to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston for a run from July 13-October 29, 2008. There is a short slide-show of some of the works on the exhibition’s page. There is also a catalog accompanying the exhibit, In the Forest of Fontainebleau: Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet that has reasonably good reproductions (the Amazon link I give here is to the $60 hardback, there is also a $40 paperback).

If you get to the exhibition, don’t miss the permanent display of Small French Paintings, also in the East wing, which features many of the same painters; as well as more of their work still on display in the main galleries of the permanent collection (not to mention the NGA’s other amazing treasures, like the 3 [or 4, depending on your point of view] exquisite Vermeers…, but I digress).

I’ve come away from In the Forest of Fontainebleau not only renewed in my admiration for Corot, and with a fresh view of early Impressionism, but convinced more than ever that, with all due respect to Constable, the Forest of Fontainebleau is the birthplace of modern landscape painting.