American Artist March, 1976

Siegfried Hahn and

Howard Wexler:

Classical Principles

And the Maroger Medium

By MARY CARROLL NELSON

*read Siegfried Hahn's letter to the editor in response to Ralph Mayer's comments

Right: Siegfried Hahn and Howard Wexler in their studio.

The Gazebo, by Howard Wexler, 1974, oil, 24 x 32. Courtesy of Rust Children's Fund. Landscapes are painted in the studio from a composite of realistic topographical drawings.

"YOU WOULDN'T GIVE a Stradivarius to the latest bumpity boom thumper; you'd give it to Heifitz. You wouldn't give the Maroger medium to an unschooled painter either; he would have no use for it." Siegfried Hahn, in that statement, reveals his own parameters of taste and belief. For him, classical materials imply a classical training in art.

Hahn is the respected teacher of many zealous students in the unlikely city of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Far from the world's major museums, Hahn nonetheless bases his teaching on the masterpieces of art history in terms of technique as well as meaning. To do this he makes continuous use of reproductions for reference, both historical and contemporary.

An entering student, regardless of past experience, begins a structured sequence of classes. The first session is spent absorbing drawing precepts based on 19th century teachings of Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran. This eminent Parisian instructor had among his pupils some of the most notable '19th century European painters, including Degas, Fantin Latour, Whistler, Renoir, Rodin, and Monet. His teaching spread via his students throughout Europe, to England, and to the United States. The Slade School in London was formed by his students. The principles of Lecoq de Boisbaudran made an impact on Frank Vincent DuMond (American Artist, March, 1974), who influenced many artists at The Art Students League in New York.

Siegfried Hahn benefited from a partial exposure to Lecoq de Boisbaudran's classical training while a student at the Royal Academy in London. He is of the fourth generation removed from actual contact with the French master teacher-one generation later than Augustus John and Russell Flint. He says that with each succeeding generation of art students, less of the full body of Lecoq de Boisbaudran's teaching is passed on. Hahn's copy, in French, of Lecoq de Boisbaudran's The Training of Graphic Memory and the Forming of an Artist is well-thumbed, remembered, and honored. It is in this book that the principles of Lecoq de Boisbaudran's teaching are recorded.


>Drawing Principles of Lecoq De Boisbaudran

In The World of Rodin (Time-Life Library of Art, New York, page 39) the method taught by Lecoq de Boisbaudran is described: "Combining precise study of a subject with freedom from rote in reproducing it, the method required a pupil to observe a plaster cast or an old engraving, for example, with the utmost diligence. But when the time came to draw such an object, he had to do so from memory, sometimes days after it had been removed from his sight." Hahn feels that developing the memory is essential to an artist and uses a modification of this exercise in his class, alongside working from models.

From Lecoq de Boisbaudran, Hahn adapted the following list of drawing maxims that he presents in his introductory talk to new students (and in all subsequent work insists on their observance):

"1. Dimensions: Take any one part of the subject, which serves as a unit of measure to which a neighbor part(s) maybe compared in size.

2. Positions: Imagine some horizontals and verticals passing through some main points of the subject, which show their relative positions in the composition, and onto these points all the rest of the subject hinges.

3. Forms: Compare the parts of the subject to the basic forms-cube, sphere, cylinder, cone, and pyramid.

4. Modeling: By means of light and shade the parts of the subject are made to advance and recede. The measure: between the lightest light and the deepest dark, the in-between intensities of light and shade are graded.

5. Color: Between the most brilliant and the drabbest of any color, its intermediate intensities are graded."

In Hahn's instruction the greatest emphasis is on developing a personal vision through practicing Lecoq de Boisbaudran's maxims. Hahn often quotes Degas: "Drawing is not the form-it is a way of looking at the form." He tells his students to distill the form, analyze it, but not to trace it mechanically. What is sought is the greatest eye-hand coordination.

Adding to the above list is another directive: Lines are to be analyzed into segments. Curves are to be seen and recorded in a series of segments rather than a single, unarticulated line.

The second lesson is devoted to the study of color. Students make two color wheels with compasses and transparent watercolors, one of hues and the depths of them in the pure colors, the other of various intensities of color. The lecture in this lesson is an explanation of the laws of contrasts and harmonies of color, stressing the influence one color has on an adjacent color.

The remaining eight three-hour sessions of the first term are spent drawing objects "sight size." This means rendering the subject as it is seen from varying distances within the studio not according to the size we know an object to be as it might be interpreted, but as it is. If the object is seen from up close, it will be closer to its actual size. From one or two objects the still-life groupings are gradually made more complex. Though children can be trained early to draw from memory, Hahn finds it more efficient to train adults to draw from the objects directly.

Drawings of these compositions are practiced on computer paper (a heavier grade paper used by computers that on the reverse side, makes a good opaque drawing paper). The aim is exactness; shapes and spaces are analyzed, and perfected drawings are redrawn on watercolor paper. They are shadowed in transparent gray watercolor washes and then colored in appropriate washes of transparent watercolor, which results in three dimensional, solid objects in space.

Varying lengths of time are spent at these watercolor drawings. Some students become so enthusiastic with the lightweight, clean medium that they do not move on to the goal of the program: oils. Hahn believes, "You must be an able artist with pencil and watercolor in order to handle the more elaborate medium of oil." He feels most students need a year or so working in pencil and watercolor before they attempt oils. By the third term, half of his students are trying oils for the first time.

Continued on page 44

Sunflowers and Cosmos

#Sunflowers and Cosmos, by Howard Wexler, 1974, oil, 24 x 1 8. Courtesy Griegos Gallery, Albuquerque. Painted directly from the subject-part by part- completed entirely alla prima.

With the introduction of oils, Hahn also introduces the Maroger mediums: the Venetian, based on beeswax, and the Flemish, based on mastic, a resin from the Greek lentisk tree. With his longtime colleague Howard Wexler, Hahn prepares the mediums. Each year they have two cookings. At one time they prepare the Venetian medium and another time they cook the Flemish one. They prepare about seven quarts of each and store it in 4 ounce baby food jars (also freely contributed by students). This supply is ample for the use of the artist-professors, the students, and former students who rely on the school for their mediums. Four ounces of the material is sufficient for at least a dozen paintings 16" x 20"--a good gauge of how little is required. (For recipes, see Pages 42 and 43.)

The cooking of each medium requires care, time, and attention. "The task is so onerous that we tell people they have to be able to make it themselves. We have no desire to supply large quantities of it," they say. Students are invited to watch at the cookings in order to learn the procedure for themselves. The Maroger medium, once it is ready, is more than just a commodity for Hahn and Wexler. It is a philosophy, a dedication, and a discipleship.

Tall, white-haired, with clear blue eyes, Siegfried Hahn was born in the Transvaal, South Africa. After four years of studying architecture, drawing, and painting in Johannesburg and Cape Town, he went to Europe to study drawing and painting from the live model at the Royal Academy under Sir Waiter Russell, Sir William Russell Flint, Dame Laura Knight, and other eminent. British artists of the time. He won a bronze, a silver, and the Turner gold medals and the study scholarships attached during his three years of study. Then followed two years at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Atelier Sabatti, in Paris. World War II put an end to his studies. He returned to South Africa and became a professor of art and worked as a War Records Artist.

After the war he traveled for eleven years throughout Europe, painting, exhibiting, and studying. (He is fluent in English, Spanish, French, German, and Dutch, and can speak Italian and Portuguese as well.) In 1957 he settled at last in Normandy to become a private instructor in art and continue his professional career. Shortly he was discovered by the American Colony in Evreux, and for the next decade he trained numbers of American adults and children in a classical approach to drawing and painting. He was also in demand as a portrait and landscape artist.

The program he directed became too large for one man to handle. Knowing he was in need of an assistant, a young journalist introduced Howard Wexler to Hahn. Wexler, a native of Washington, D.C., where he studied at the Corcoran Art School and the Abbott Academy of Art, had graduated from Pratt Institute in New York, served in the army in Europe, and was in Paris studying further at the Academie Andre Lhote and exhibiting his contemporary work. Wexler has worked with Hahn since 1961, His work has been exhibited widely in Europe and the USA. He is known for his floral still lifes and landscapes.

It was during these twelve years in France that Siegfried Hahn wrote to Jacques Maroger and learned from him directly Maroger's theories regarding the mediums used by the Old Masters, how Maroger reconstituted these mediums, and how he recommended their contemporary use. Their warm, extensive, and mutually supportive correspondence continued until Maroger's death in June, 1962.

Throughout his protracted years of study, Siegfried Hahn had constantly sought to learn the methods of the Old Masters. They were not available. Modern (post-18th Century) oil painting tends to be more of an opaque art. The fresh, brilliant-looking translucent brushwork employed by the greats such as Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Rubens were not obtainable by any of the methods in use. By applying oil paint with a medium alla prima, these artists were able to obtain a richness in the surface of their paintings. And these paintings, particularly those of Rubens, have survived to this day in a state of remarkably fine preservation. But how did they find a medium that was so effective and so permanent? Maroger felt he had successfully reconstituted a medium, that corresponds in the essential principles to that of Rubens.

Of Rubens, Siegfried Hahn points out, "He was the sans pareil of all painters, able to extract, paradoxically, from the simplest means of the artist's palette, its widest range of expression, (Whether you like his fat bodies or not is beside the point.)" Maroger discovered that Rubens painted alla prima: directly, quickly, undertaken and completed in one session whenever possible. Maroger refuted the idea they built up their paintings laboriously over many sessions upon a monochrome underpainting.

Maroger refuted the notion that this grisaille-a monochrome underpainting-lies beneath all the great paintings. Not so, he claimed. The panels of wood or canvases were prepared with care, and the work then was carried out in an economical fashion with bravado and dexterity. According to Maroger, they painted a passage complete in one session and did not generally rework the painting. But this knowledge was lost, and later painters sought to achieve the transparency by the more laborious method of glazing.

Hahn explains, "Maroger, while respecting the indirect methods of preliminary monochrome grisaille over which color was glazed-used by Van Eyck and Memling, for example-set above all the goal of reconstituting the material and methods of the High Renaissance that captured the direct methods of Rubens, Rembrandt, and Velasquez."

According to Maroger's theory, a quality of the work of the past now duplicable with the Maroger medium is that of superimposing wet paint on wet paint in such a manner that the superimposed stroke retains its integrity without sinking into the underlayer. The rich, full-bodied impasto that artists can achieve with the Maroger medium is based on the use of lead white; but, with the mastery of perspective, color, and form, the contemporary artist can paint truly transparent darks, real impastoed opaque lights and highlights, and graded midtones, all retaining a clear impression of the brush. More than with other mediums, the Maroger medium allows the artist to record his own "handwriting" with his brush.

In teaching oil painting with the Maroger medium, Hahn and Wexler again have a stratified approach, from easier to harder, in a gradual sequence. The first oil painting is done on a small, shop-bought canvas board that comes prepared with a white ground. As its surface is very absorbent, the student paints it with a feeder coat of white lead tinted with a trace of Venetian red and black (making a warm, pale gray) to which a trace of Maroger Venetian medium is added and thinned to an even, creamy consistency with turpentine. (The first lesson includes instruction in preparing this non-absorbent ground.) Later, when more adept, students work on better painting supports, such as pure flax canvas or Masonite panels, soundly prepared.

Juan Abeyte, by Siegfried Hahn

#Juan Abeyte, by Siegfried Hahn, 1 969, 24 x 21. Courtesy La Royale Gallery, Albuquerque. Painted from the live model. Only the face was repainted in the final sitting.

Procedure For Using The Maroger Medium

The students by now can draw and suggest roundness by tonal control. "If your tonal (value) depths are right, color can be more arbitrary," is one of his reminders. For the first painting exercise the student paints a set of five small spheres using a very basic oil palette of umber, ochre, white, and black. Following the paint viscosity rule of applying "fat over lean," the student paints each stage in the complete build-up of creating a three-dimensional form. The first stage is painted on all five spheres, the second stage is painted on the second and subsequent spheres and so on, so that by the fifth sphere all five stages are complete. (Details of the procedure are given later in this article.)

Below this exercise the student draws a simple grouping: two circular objects, perhaps two tangerines and a mug. He paints them with his normal artist's quality tube oil colors that are ground in raw oil, to which he adds Maroger medium at the ratio of one third or less medium to the amount of paint on the palette, mixing it in evenly with a spatula.

Having mastered the simple still life, the student now begins a long period of work with formal still-life compositions that leads to portraiture and lastly to landscape, which Hahn believes makes the fullest demands on an artist's ability and independence. "Landscape is not for a fledgling," he says, and points out that the great landscape painters were all "object, figure, and portrait trained-awkward fact!"

Hahn's own landscapes are panoramas: deep distances veiled in atmosphere. His paintings are often large, but details within them can be quite precise. His effort is to capture the recession of space and the sense of a whole environment, not just a single rock or tree. He begins a work with careful drawings on location, which he enlarges on canvas, following the traditional squaring-up method to scale. From this step he goes on to the full painting, as described below in the paragraph beginning, The procedure ...

MAROGER (from page 66 AMERICAN ARTIST MARCH, 1976

While painting, the student discovers his stroke registers as a striated impression. When another brushstroke is superposed upon it, wet on wet, the already congealed stroke beneath does not collapse or absorb the superposed stroke due to the presence and action of the medium. This quality is known as "thixotropic," the property of becoming fluid when disturbed and of setting again when allowed to stand.

It was for this secret that Maroger searched from 1920 until 1962, ever perfecting upon his findings. Before him Louis Anquetin, his master, had researched for 40 years, but his research had been for a lost method rather than a lost material. Maroger's genius was in his directing the line of research to the materials themselves- the vehicle in particular. Maroger felt the vehicle employed by the Old Masters was different from our modern oil painting vehicle of linseed oil mixed with turpentine. Members of Maroger's family had made significant contributions in the fields of horticulture and viticulture, particularly in Algeria. His great-grandfather on his mother's side had discovered analine dye colors. It was a natural step for him to pursue research. For many years he was Technical Director of the Laboratory of the Louvre Museum and President of the Restorers of France and came to the U.S. in 1939 as an advisor on painting matters. He was here when World War II started, and he stayed. He was also an accomplished painter who conducted a professional career of his own during his lifetime.

A harsh judge of current art, Maroger saw it as deprived in all ways by its loss of the mediums used in the past eras of great oil painting. He deplored the fact that academies no longer were teaching drawing and painting, and he credited the lack of sure standards to the loss of technical means. For Maroger, great art required an ability to create an illusion of reality with structural draftsmanship, aerial perspective, richness of color and tone, and the fresh lively vibrance of the oil painting material and its handling of the Old Masters. It was not the Old Master style, however, that he hoped to encourage. He had the idea that, were the artist able to achieve the rich, rapid brushstrokes such as Rubens had access to, then the unlimited options for a contemporary artist once more were open.

Siegfried Hahn is a modest man. "l'm not clever enough," he says, "to have contributed to all these researches. All I could do was to put to the best use what was handed to me on a tray." Despite his close correspondence with Maroger, Hahn found it difficult to grasp the full possibilities of the Maroger medium on his own in France, while Maroger himself was in Baltimore, Maryland.

The recipes included in this article are the last ones Maroger shared with Hahn. Maroger's searches led him to continuously correct and perfect his medium almost until his death.

In order to give Hahn a more direct contact with his methods, in 1956 Maroger asked Joseph Sheppard (American Artist, March, 1974), who had studied with him, to call on Siegfried Hahn in France, where Sheppard was to be on a Guggenheim Fellowship. Sheppard taught Hahn how to cook the medium and how to use it, as Hahn says, "palette in hand." Hahn remembers Sheppard's help with appreciation and gratitude.

As a result of his own struggles, Siegfried Hahn now includes in his teaching "everything vital and apparent in [the] convincing works [of art] that was negligently left out of my own instruction," he says. He believes in the atelier system in which the professional passes on his knowledge directly, also palette-in-hand. In this ancient way art has always grown from art.

In 1968 Hahn and Wexler moved to New Mexico. They came at the invitation of Colonel and Mrs. Russell Thomas, who were then living in Albuquerque after retirement. Doris Thomas, a former pupil, had introduced Hahn and Wexler to the American colony in Paris in the early '50s and had remained in touch with them. The artists at first stayed with the Thomases, but they now own a house on a nice lot, well-known for its rose garden, in a settled area of the city, which provides a residence for them and their apprentice, Victor Cox. (The second passion of the artists is gardening, a diversion that yields bountiful subject matter for their paintings.

Their studio, a separate building not part of their home, is 40 by 25 feet. It roomily houses 18 students in a class: they teach seven sessions per week. The room is lit by north windows and a bank of ordinary, well spaced, white lightbulbs. Sink, bookshelves, a hot water kettle noisily boiling on the hotplate, exact placement of chairs and easels, storage space, and large numbers of still-life setups of a varying difficulty dot the room. The teachers wear long, gray lab coats. They are both remarkably courtly and articulate. All the students are at work on separate problems, though there are some small groups working together. The two instructors move about, encouraging each student.

Points, large and small, are made by reference to a fine library of reproductions that both teachers seem to know by heart. "Ask questions, "says Hahn. "There's no such thing as a stupid question." Answers are specific. No vague references are made. There are methods for doing the tasks assigned, and these are taught precisely. There is a formally informal atmosphere, a friendly ease couched in gentlemanly terms. All ages, walks of life-men, women, and children-come to learn; and learn they do.

The only thing not tolerated in the classes is half-heartedness. The assumption is made by the instructors and the students that what there is to learn is serious and involves a commitment. One of the students has remarked that "Art is a teachable science," as he has discovered in these classes. Another student comments that "the word discipline sums it all up." The students like and want the directions and the discipline. They especially like the results as the program leads to more and more competence.

The culmination of what is taught in the Siegfried Hahn-Howard Wexler classes is the painting of oils with the Maroger medium. There is a methodical system in painting with the medium. Below are some of the specifications for its use.

Using these masters' materials presupposes an ability to draw in three dimensions with light and shade. The palette Hahn uses includes raw umber, alizarin crimson or rose madder, Prussian or monastral blue, burnt sienna, viridian, black (combined with white for mixtures of grays or beiges), yellow ochre, cadmium yellows, cadmium reds, the earth reds, and white. It is important to note that the white used is lead white (flakewhite or blanc d'argent).

The procedure is the same for the beeswax (Venetian) medium and the more brilliant mastic (Flemish) medium: Lay out the palette Before beginning to paint, mix the medium evenly-by means of a palette knife into all colors put on the palette, including the white. Use one-third or less medium per volume of each color. On a prepared painting surface spread a thin film of the medium over the area to be painted. (A complicated drawing may be done in advance with turpentine thinned oil paint and a fine brush and allowed to dry before proceeding to color. Transparent colors [no opaques] are used for drawing-in the foreground objects; progressively paler and more opaque paint-obtained by the addition of a little white--is used on objects as they recede in the distance.)

Stages of Maroger Oil Paint Application

Double-click the images to enlarge them
and click once to make them thumbnail size again.

Transparent Shadow
Opaque Lights
Reflected Light, Background, And Demitint

The actual painting is developed in five stages. First, broadly indicate the shadow masses with a clean brush much as a wash drawing would be done. Use transparent colors (no opaques) with a little medium as the thinner. Work the medium down into the bristles of the brush and then pick up the color. Absolute shadows are indicated with heaped touches of pure transparent color in warm earth or madder colors.

Next, the light parts of the subject are painted. For this, use a clean brush. Transparent colors for the shadowed areas are kept on one part of the palette while the mixtures of white plus various colors (for the opaque, lighted areas) are placed on another part of the palette. Apply lights thickly. Place highlights on these areas. It is recommended that pure white not be used alone for making the highlights, as it has no luminosity. ("Pure white equals dead white.") Slightly tinting it in accordance with the color of the source of light increases its luminosity.

page 68 American Artist Magazine

Now three of the five tones have been completed: the cavity (absolute shadow), the light, and the highlight. The initial transparent shadow that has been laid-in now needs to be refined.

Again, clean brushes are needed. Shadows contain reflected light: reflected lights should be thinly painted upon these fresh (still wet), shadowed, transparent first lay-ins. Use breathlike strokes, with a scant amount of white in the mixture. This mixture is opalescent, halfway between transparent and opaque, and of a veil-like (velatura), half-paste consistency. The Maroger medium is vital in providing this thinned but non-running consistency essential for painting this stage.

The final tone is that of the demitint. This is an opaque gray made with black and white, It is leanly applied and of a value slightly deeper than the light Zone it ends. It occurs in the areas where lights and shadows merge. "This gray takes on the illusion of being subtly colored by the law of simultaneous contrast, i.e., the complementary of whatever color it is seen beside," Hahn stresses proper understanding of the demi-tint is an important part of understanding the mother of pearl beauty of the coloring in paintings of Rubens, Titian, and Velasquez,

Once the foreground objects are completed, it is necessary to work on the background. Regardless of the subject, be it still-life, portrait, or landscape, the background differs from the foreground applications. To create distance the artist uses more opaque mixtures, often adding a little white to the colors used for backgrounds and distant shadows. Hahn explains, "This convention gives the sensation of recession by aerial perspective, as if an actual veil of atmosphere occurs between the more distant and near objects."

The ideal is the necessity of achieving a completed passage of painting in one session, wet in wet, attending systematically to all five tones. However, if it is necessary to rework a passage of the painting, the passage to be repainted is covered with the thin film of medium before repainting, Beeswax (Venetian medium) is recommended as the first Maroger medium to use because the ingredients are easier to obtain than the mastic. This is the medium, reconstituted by Maroger, as used by Titian and El Greco. It has a sheen resembling whipped eggwhite while the mastic medium is more jewel-like and brilliant. In either case the appearance of the finished work when dried remains as it was when freshly painted.

There is, of course, a similarity in the work of Hahn's students-similar to each other's and to Hahn's. This is as it should be, he feels. He quotes Degas, who said, "When we were students, we all painted alike. We were unable in later years to distinguish our paintings from those of our comrades of student days." Hahn says, "Don't worry about your individuality. You can't disguise it anyway."

In a recent show of 54 paintings by students of Hahn and Wexler, the teaching methods proved themselves. The works in watercolor and oil mostly still-lifes, several portraits, and only one landscape-had qualities in common: Space was clearly described and illuminated showing the lighting of the subject. Objects were three-dimensional, well-drawn and modeled in color, capturing texture as well as form. The oils had a brilliant looking freshness. Harmony of color and scale relationships were apparent in each piece. The artists had been taught to paint classically. They had framed their work correctly and tastefully, too, so the show had a highly professional polish. Yet these artists still consider themselves students. It is doubtful that 48 artists picked from similar exhibitions would display the level of competence in the basics that these artists did.

Hahn hopes that each accomplished artist will go on to use the Maroger medium in his own expressive way, but respectfully, as the regained tool of the Old Masters. He envisions a disciplined art, one which attempts to portray a three-dimensional form with classically trained ability. It is not a style he teaches, as much as a competence in the basic academic requirements of the professional artist.

Esther Sutin, a professional artist,well-known in New Mexico as a contemporary painter, has studied with Hahn and Wexler for nearly five years. She says, "It occurred to me, when I first was introduced to this method of oil painting, that an artist sufficiently adept in its use could combine the durability and beauty of the medium with the knowledge and precepts of contemporary painting. I've made several attempts to use the medium in abstract paintings, contrasting areas of thin umber glazes with areas of opaque paint. The painting surface is very luminous and offers possibilities, but I believe the medium would be more advantageously used in a contemporary painting that utilized a three-dimensional approach.

page 69, American Artist Magizine

Hahn and Wexler's students are outspoken in their support of their teachers' methods. Although their reasons for choosing a classic academy are varied, they share a strong desire for basic art instruction. An articulate student made three observations about the training she was getting: (1)Students learn to draw as the "eye sees" in proportion. (2) Students learn tone relations, which is to a painting what a melody is to a song. (3) Students receive continuous guidance. Those who had studied elsewhere first made such comments as Victor Cox expressed about his courses in a university. He said the emphasis was "to just do it." Now, he believes, he has been "made conscious of a basic understanding of his trade." Eventually he hopes to teach with Hahn and Wexler.

The loyalty of the students for their teachers endures: some have studied for the full seven years the school has been available in Albuquerque. They are amazed to find these two polished, classic teacher-painters on the high mesa of New Mexico. Hahn explains their being in the Southwest. "The Southwest is known worldwide as a center for the arts and for painters such as those of the Taos School. From all the people we'd met who knew the Southwest, we'd never heard an adverse word. We were naturally drawn here."

The success of the Hahn-Wexler classes is a sign of the times-a yearning for a return to standards. The masterpieces of the past offer a sure standard against which to compare one's work. Dedication to spreading the technical means to achieve such paintings is a part of Siegfried Hahn's and Howard Wexler's careers. They are curtailing their teaching in order to fill commissions for their work.

Primarily, they are painters. It was through seeing their work that most of their original students found them and began studying with them. The Old Master quality of their landscapes-broad vistas showing deep distances by Hahn, nearer scenes in somewhat larger scale, though in smaller format by Wexler; portraits by Hahn, florals by Wexler; still lifes by both-these attract a following appreciating the excellence of technique and the delicacy of color. Still, the men feel an obligation to pass on their experience and their knowledge. Hahn asks, with unflagging dedication, "Of rewards without inconveniencing oneself, where's the logic?"

Go back to the home page for Recipes and Instructions For Making The Maroger Medium

>Drawing Principles of Lecoq De Boisbaudran

Sunflowers and Cosmos

Juan Abeyte, by Siegfried Hahn

Procedure For Using The Maroger Medium

Stages of Maroger Oil Paint Application

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