Katy Thompson, Associate Director of Education
What is the subject of this print from the FWMoA permanent collection?
It’s wash day! We can see three figures, two women and a child, standing in front of steel basins of varying sizes with an assortment of clothing hung to dry on the line outside their home. Currently on view in From Their Indiana Home: Artists of the Hoosier Salon from the Permanent Collection, this scene mimics the effect of a watercolor wash. A rather similar technique to separating your lights and darks, the use of a wash can soften the contrast between the lighter and darker areas in an artwork. A wash is both a medium on it’s own, seen in the ink wash drawing below, and a technique used by watercolorists and painters.
Thon’s ink wash, above, is an example of a wash applied in combination with a drawing as its own medium, known as a pen and wash, wash drawing, or ink and wash. The areas of wash are evident by their blurry, watery texture which lends itself to the subject matter: three boats docked in the harbor with a lighthouse in the background. By washing the drawing, Thon better illustrates the feel of the watery scene before him. Particularly suitable to landscapes, the technique was popular with topographical painters in the 18th and 19th century who built up areas by superimposing thin washes. Similar to an oil painter laying down glazes, the preliminary layer of monochrome allowed additional layers of color to delineate lower and higher altitudes. Can you spot the use of wash in the landscape, below, by John Elwood Bundy?
In place of pen and black ink, Bundy opted for color! Here, we see the gradient wash (a wash that gets lighter with every stroke) in the background creating a setting (or rising?) sun. By washing the background with lighter colors, Bundy shows us both a beautiful sky and where the light is coming from: behind the trees. To achieve this, a fine layer of color, diluted in water, is spread evenly to ensure no brushstrokes are present. Semi-transparent, it results in smooth and uniform areas, like we see here in Landscape. With a wash, usually one or two colors are used; otherwise, we classify it as a watercolor painting.
Applied to landscapes in traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean paintings, the use of a wash isn’t confined to depicting land and sea. A linocut portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe, below, is washed in a gradient of color from red to yellow. The warm colors contrast against the bold, black lines of the portrait to provide a three-dimensionality to the artwork.
In other versions of this method, artists like Helen Frankenthaler and Friedel Dzubas pioneered the creation of washy, watercolor-like effects using acrylic paints. These “stained” paintings pushed the definition of what a painting can be. Contemporary artist Heather Day’s paintings showcase the soak stain technique, using watered-down paint to soak and stain the canvas with broad swaths of color.
Stop by FWMoA during normal visiting hours or make an appointment with our Curator of Prints & Drawings to see more artworks and processes.