EXPLORING EXTREMES
When Henri Matisse first visited Pierre-Auguste Renoir at his Les Collettes home outside Nice, he showed him some of his work. Renoir was a little taken aback by the younger artist’s style but told him that he thought he used black beautifully. The comment goes against the widely held belief that the Impressionists were somehow allergic to using black in their pastel-heavy paintings. Indeed, one need only look at works by Renoir, Monet and their contemporaries in order to see that they used a great deal of black paint, particularly in accents. The idea that pure black and white are taboo is a misconception.
In this masterclass, I consciously tried to use both extremes of tone to enhance and dramatise the colour of a
