Nelson Shanks at the Union League

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Nelson Shanks:
The blessing (and curse) of craftsmanship

ANDREW MANGRAVITE

Nelson Shanks is an artist of no mean ability. An unabashed admirer of John Singer Sargent, he carries on the grand Sargent tradition of portrait painting, which is both his blessing and his curse. He is liable to be easily dismissed by those who know nothing of draftsmanship and the art of painting, while those who understand painting may carp that he doesn’t do more with his formidable gifts. After all, his work is so life-like that one might as well substitute a color photograph and be done with it. Why doesn’t Shanks pursue “the finer sense of things unseen” (i.e.—abstraction)?

I don’t mind that Shanks paints “movers and shakers” in an academic manner likely to satisfy his sitters. Even in a four-square commission, Shanks brings an impressive technique to the table. True, he sometimes indulges in theatricality, but Shanks tends to create theatrical images for the appropriate sitters. (Thus the late Pope John Paul II, whose original chosen profession was actor, gets an almost operatic depiction, while the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher comes off looking more like a queen in her official robes than the queen herself.) Sometimes Shanks does confound expectations. His Ronald Reagan seems more sneering than avuncular, and his oil sketch of Princess Diana captures her in an unexpectedly pensive mood.

About half of the show consists of Shanks’s work as a portraitist; the remainder consists of what might be called allegorical paintings. In these works Shanks emerges as a modern Lord Leighton with a brighter palette and a greater flair for the theatrical. He seems to favor certain motifs. “Flora” (1994), “Woodsprite" (2001) and “Dragonlady” (2006) use the same image/idea executed in slightly different ways and with different models. The faces and accoutrements change, while the pose and the color scheme remain the same. All three of these works, so reminiscent of Rossetti’s decorative ladies, might be termed “pure art”; on the other hand, a work like “Hiroshima” (once apparently called “Japanese Doll”) or “What Have We Done to Angels?” show the artist in a more socially-engaged light.

The final portion of “Nelson Shanks: Mastery and Meaning” consists of the work of instructors at Shanks's Studio Incamminati here in Philadelphia, many of them current or former students of Shanks. Their works are quite independent in execution, though all of these students share their teacher’s concern for draftsmanship. Of these works, I especially like Lea Colie Wight’s small, impressionistic interior of the officers’ salon aboard the U.S.S. Olympia (also docked right here in Philadelphia) and Michael Grimaldi’s brooding self-portrait.

If you believe in representational art, this is your show.


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