German realist Gundula Jacobs has U.S debut at Brigham
BY LAURA RASKIN

INDEPENDENT ARTS WRITER


The German painter Gundula Jacobs begs to differ

– a painting of a bowl of fruit so realistic

you can almost taste it is not like a photograph.

A photograph is resolute in its stillness.

Astill life painted in the classical style, with natural light and no preconceived notion of the image – a cracked egg bleeding its whites onto a tablecloth or the oily peel of a lemon – well, it vibrates.

“It’s a living thing really,” said Jacobs, who prefers the English “still life” to her current tongue’s translation, the French “nature morte,” or dead nature.

Jacobs resides in a town in the French countryside called Martigné-Briand. She has been successfully showing her work in Europe for about 10 years and will have her first solo show in the United States at the Brigham Galleries, opening this Friday, July 15 and running through Friday, July 28.

Speaking by telephone across the Atlantic, Jacobs said that part of her success in Europe has been because of the decline there of the kind of traditional painting she prefers. With the advent of Impressionism, the traditional techniques Jacobs was lucky enough to study have slowly faded into the background – the “painting of light,” she calls it, in the vein of Vermeer, Rembrandt and Caravaggio.

“There is practically none of that type in France,” said Jacobs, leaving art consumers hungry for it. “It’s much more alive and thriving in the U.S. It’s interesting because it originated in Europe.”

Now, students entering art schools in Europe are told to “express themselves,” said Jacobs.

This was much the message she received when, in her late 20s, she went on scholarship to the New York Academy of Art. She had been in California for a year, working as a nanny, landscaper and translator and taking a life drawing class at night as a hobby. “It was finally the thing I was made to do. It was a kind of enlightenment,” said Jacobs.

But she was initially disappointed in New York.

“It didn’t turn out to be what I was hoping to do, what they were teaching wasn’t what I was hoping to learn,” she said, calling it an “academic” and unnatural approach to capturing form.

Then Jacobs found Ted Seth Jacobs, a master painter who taught at the Art Students League of New York.

“Ted was teaching it, a very realistic style suggesting light on form. The painting of light isn’t academic,” she said.

Jacobs was an unusually talented student when she found Ted, he said, also speaking by transAtlantic telephone.

“She listened very carefully and applied what she heard. She had a feeling for form, which is rare these days. She has a very clear and good eye for the tones of things,” he said. Jacobs and Ted were subsequently married for eight years and had a son. Ted lives 20 minutes from Jacobs in another small town in the Loire Valley, Les Cerqueux-sous-Passavant. He runs an art school there and remains one of Jacobs’ most ardent advocates.

It is clear from talking with Ted why Jacobs was drawn to his teaching style.

“We live in a very mechanistic age. It’s not very humanistic. It puts (students) at a disadvantage. In our times, most of the representations of the body are in photographs or on TV,” he said. That Jacobs apprenticed with him, a method based in history and tradition, was also to her advantage.

“She was trained mostly with me. Her style is an offshoot of mine, but when someone gets the mastery of technique, they are able to express their inner style freely. (Jacobs’ work) has a freshness and delicacy.

My work is heavier, a little more solid.”

“Of all my students, and I’ve had hundreds, she would have to be among the top two or three,” said Ted. “I think in the future she’ll be known as a very important artist.”

Sara Boyce, owner of the Brigham Galleries, found Jacobs through the artist’s former teacher. Boyce has been working with internationally renowned portraitists who accept commissions, Ted being one of them. He sent her some of Jacobs’ images. “As soon as I saw them, I said, ‘Oh my god, that’s incredible,’” said Boyce. “They’ve both made such an impact on the realism movement.”

It was the quality of Jacobs’ images and their dry sense of humor that called to Boyce.

Jacobs’ work is not about a need to translate herself or her demons onto canvas. “I’m just painting the beauty of small things. It’s really about what I paint, as opposed to someone who externalizes something that needs to get out,” she said. “People love the natural beauty of things.”

The nourishing environment of the Loire Valley is home to Jacobs, with its fertile vineyards and its centuries-old lure as a holiday destination.

“Of the three countries I’ve lived in, I prefer France. Germany is really far in the past,” said Jacobs of the country she left for the United States when she was 19. “I feel a definite link to German artists, especially from the past, but that is the only connection, really.”

There will be an opening reception for Jacobs’ show on Friday, July 15, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Brigham Galleries, upstairs at 50 Main St.

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