Terence R Smith

Copying paintings created by the masters is perhaps the most powerful technique for learning to paint. If you can produce a good copy of a masterpiece, then in principle you have sufficient technical skills in handling pigment to have painted the masterpiece. That, of course, is very far from sufficient for creating the masterpiece.

Sometimes, artists may produce a version of a masterpiece to which they have added their own stylistic stamp, and they have, in a sense, “made the piece theirs.” Picasso spent the latter part of his career doing this. The results of such “riffing” may represent an artistic step up from a straightforward copy, and may well occur when, for example, the artist employs a different medium from the master in creating a copy, such as in making a watercolour copy of an oil-painting. This is exemplified in two of the watercolour versions of oil-paintings shown in Gallery 1.

Some of the other galleries contain a few pictures that incorporate important aspects of a masterpiece that the artist has so changed, in a creative manner, as to have produced a new work of art. An example is Last Sunrise Over Boulogne in Gallery 3 that takes its inspiration from a wonderful painting by Richard Parkes Bonington. Many other paintings in the portfolio contain references to passages from the work of great artists. As noted by Newton, there is no shame in standing on the shoulders of giants.