Anthropology Ethnography and Naturalist

Draft
Paper for Presentation at The Representational Art Conference, Ventura, CA. October 2012
Published in ‘The Real Snake: Proceedings of The Representational Art Conference 2012’
Anthropology-‐Ethnography and Naturalist-‐Realist Painting:

parallels in ways of seeing and understanding the world
Zoe Bray, PhD
University of Nevada, Reno
zoebray@unr.edu

About the author:
Zoe Bray is a painter and anthropologist. She holds an MA in Social Anthropology and
Development Studies from Edinburgh University, Scotland, and a PhD in Social and Political
Science from the European University Institute, Italy. Zoe was trained as a painter at the
Florence Academy of Art and the Charles Cecil Studios in Italy, and briefly in Spain with
Antonio Lopez García and Guillermo Muñoz Vera. After several years of working as an
independent researcher and artist in Florence, the Basque Country, Paris, London and
Berlin, she is, since July 2011, assistant professor in Anthropology and Art in the Center for
Basque Studies, at the University of Nevada Reno (USA).

Abstract
In this paper, I explore the parallels between naturalist painting and ethnography. I argue
that at a meta, epistemological level, both activities have in common a concern with how to
apprehend the objective world by means of an emphatic and sensitive process of long-‐term
observation and contextual interaction. Both involve a process in which representation and
the tension between objectivity and subjectivity are central issues. I suggest that various
techniques in naturalist painting, such as the use of the mirror, squinting, distance, and
choice of focus, parallel ethnography’s methods of research that include full cultural
immersion, participant-‐observation, open-‐ended interviews and self-‐reflective selection and
interpretation. By discussing the common epistemological and methodological concerns of
these two activities, I hope that each can shed further light on the other.

1
Draft Paper for Presentation at The Representational Art Conference, Ventura, CA. October 2012
Naturalist Painting and Ethnography:

parallels in ways of seeing and understanding the world
Zoe Bray, PhD

Introduction
I discuss two methods and approaches of apprehending the world, pertaining to two
different and seemingly unrelated activities. One, in the Fine Arts, is the naturalist tradition
in painting, while the other, in the Social Sciences, is ethnography. I argue that both
activities have in common the epistemological concern with how to see and understand the
natural world. The epistemological assumptions common to both activities are that: 1.
Nature can be seen in a universal fashion; 2. This sight can be transcribed visually by human
beings, but through a subjective process based on deeply personal interpretation; 3.
Through careful application of methods, we can improve accurate observations and,
accordingly, representation; 4. The result of the painter’s work – as that of the
ethnographer’s – is still an interpretation, but one that negotiates itself through inter-‐
subjectively shared and commonly agreed upon methods. I describe the various techniques
used in naturalist painting, such as the use of the mirror, squinting, distance, and choice of
focus, and draw parallels with ethnography’s methods of research, which include full
cultural immersion, participant-‐observation, open-‐ended interviews and self-‐reflective
selection and interpretation.
Finally, some naturalist or realist painting carried out especially during the late nineteenth
century and early twentieth century have also been described as ethnographic. The artwork
of Joaquin Sorolla, Fernand Pelez and Jules Bastien-‐Lepage come to mind. I wish to bring
attention to naturalist painting from an additional anthropological perspective, where
portrait-‐painting serves as an ethnographic method and a text in its own right for
anthropological analysis. As both a social anthropologist and a painter, one of my data
collecting methods involves producing the portraits of people. I shall end my paper by
briefly discussing how portrait-‐painting provides an extraordinary opportunity to get to
know the individual -‐ an important aspect of ethnographic research -‐ as the subject poses
for long periods of time. At the same time, I reflect on some of the challenges involved in the
combination of these two activities, food for thought for a subsequent paper.
2
Naturalist Painting
In the Fine Arts, naturalist painting involves a specific way of understanding the visual
world. By naturalism, I mean the effort to depict nature as objectively as possible, being
‘true to nature’, all the while acknowleding the role of subjectivity by way of personal
human interpretation, emotion and artistry. Naturalist painting is an attempt to depict
nature as it is, as opposed to romantic stylisation and idealisation of subjects.1 This also
entails the depiction of subjects that are not conventionally considered beautiful or of social
significance, but rather to paint the ordinary, thereby emphasizing also their
extraordinariness (De Maupassant 1888). Classical examples of such work would be the
still-‐lives of the eigteenth century French painter Jean-‐Baptiste Siméon Chardin and the
landscapes of Jean-‐Baptiste Corot. In this essay, I extend the term naturalism to include
figurative and portrait-‐painting.
Generally, we can say naturalism in painting is an artistic attempt to produce accurate

descriptions of the visible world. But the aim is neither to copy nature. Rather, the aim is to
engage with it directly and transmit its essence (McDowell 1918; see also Oscar Wilde’s ‘The
Critic as Artist’, and the writings of Emile Zola). As such, it involves a certain sensibility, a
quest for beauty and harmony that can only be achieved through long and attentive
observation and communion with nature (Speed 1987: 64-‐66 & 194; Cecil 2009).
In terms of methods, naturalist painters use different techniques, tools and approaches that
may change with the times, personal experience and preference. However, in this essay, I
wish to focus on a clear method that is taught most systematically in two atelier-‐style
schools in Florence, Italy: the Florence Academy of Art (FAA) and the Charles Cecil Studios.
These schools were founded in the late 1980s by painters Daniel Graves and Charles Cecil
respectively, each trained following a lineage that goes in one way or another back to the
nineteenth century academic French painter Jean-‐Léon Gérôme. While each school may be
very different in terms of taste, goals, and some aspects of the technique, and in how they

1 We could also talk about realist painting in this way. Both naturalism and realism to refer to painting have been
used and interpreted in so many different ways over time and across style. I choose to understand them both as
engaging with nature and the real. They are therefore, as far as I am concerned, interchangeable terms. However
to avoid constant hyphenation, I choose to just mention naturalism, because of its direct reference to nature.
3
define themselves (Cecil prefers to call his painting naturalist, while Graves is more inclined
towards realist),2 what they have in common – and what interests me in this paper -‐ is the
series of step by step exercises and tools taught to painter students to assist them in making
sense of what they see in nature and how to interpret it accurately on canvas. As FAA
student Sara-‐Margaret Gibson put it in a recent online art publication, “an artist can truly
learn to express her vision – no matter how abstract – by first coming to understand how it
is manifest in nature. How can we paint color harmony in itself if we cannot even identify
the rhythms found within an orchid or a cypress tree? It is in the process of studying these
concepts as they are found in nature that we learn to understand them, and indeed, how to
use them compositionally and expressively” (2012: 16).
In such training, the painter begins by looking at the object to be painted in its basic shapes.
By squinting, she can see the object broken down into simple big shapes of light and dark.
This requires the painter to stand back, at enough distance so as to also understand the
object in its space. With the help of a plomb line (a dark piece of string with a lead weight at
one end, used for measurement) held up at arm’s length and closing one eye, the painter
establishes the accurate proportions and relationships of the different shapes of light and
shade to each other. Thus, the painter has figured out the general structure and particular
gesture of the object.
Once these basic characteristics have been accurately interpreted, the painter proceeds to
break down the big shapes and values into smaller ones. The painter then zooms in to
observe the object from up close and work on its details. The painter is also encouraged to
‘feel’ the object, in the sense of being aware of its physical presence and mass. In the case of
figure or portrait-‐painting, knowledge of anatomy is also emphasized, reminding the
painter not to rely solely on a visual and physically detached interpretation of the model. At
the same time, the painter regularly stands back to retain a sense of the whole. The stages of
producing a picture in such a way have been clearly broken down and illustrated by Charles
Bargue in his 1866 drawing course (Bargue, 2003; see also Speed 1972 and 1987; Aristides
2006).

2 Based on conversations with Daniel Graves (2009) and Charles Cecil (2004) in Florence, Italy.
4
A fundamental tool in naturalist painting is the mirror which, held next to the painter’s eye,
allows her to see both her painting and the object she is depicting in reverse. Such a ‘new’
view of her painting and the object permits the painter to see with refreshed eye and
thereby better spot errors in proportions, shapes and tonal values. The technique of sight-‐
sizing, which involves placing the painting alongside the object being painted and at the
same height in relation to the painter’s eye, permits direct comparison between the painting
and the object (for more on the history of sight-‐size, see Beer 2005).
For many painter students who have undergone this naturalist training, including myself,
the process of learning to observe nature and to understand what one is seeing is akin to a
gradual ‘shedding of scales from the eyes’. The painter learns to perceive correct
proportions and relations between shapes, and be sensitive to the subtle transitions of light
on the surface of objects. The challenge then is to transmit this new understanding and
sensitivity through the hand and onto the canvas. In a classroom setting, such as at the FAA
or the Cecil studios, it is then fascinating to observe how painter students, whilst all going
through this same basic training, nonetheless achieve different results. This is of course due
to the differing ability, sensibility and extense of training of each student. But it also reveals
the subjectivity involved in such a personal striving at objectivity. This is where the
personality and artistry of the painter is revealed.
Commonalities and Complementarities with Ethnographic Research
In the Social Sciences, ethnography, which is typically the method and approach to social
inquiry of social and cultural anthropologists but which has also been partially used by
researchers in other disciplines, I argue involves a similar sensibility with some comparable
techniques. Like the naturalist painter with nature, the ethnographer attempts to observe
society as it is, without trying to influence or control it as in a scientific experiment (Bray
2008: 300). The ethnographer is “an instrument of observation’ (Kearney 2004: 2; Denzin
and Lincoln 2000: 3) whose goal is to understand social behavior in context and holistically,
appreciating, that is, the complex and inter-‐related facets to social phenomena, rather than
focusing on just one or a few aspects in a categorical fashion, as is the case in other Social
Science disciplines. For instance, in her research on the impact of immigration and US law
on Mexican families, Deborah Boehm confirms that anthropology “has enhanced
5
understandings of relatedness” (2012: 11) and “ethnographic research is one of the few
ways (_) to understand nuanced interactions” (2012: 26). This is similar, I argue, to the
intention of the naturalist painter, seeking to observe nature as it is, breaking it down into
its related and characteristic parts in space to then present it as a harmonious whole on
canvas.
Ethnography attempts to accurately interpret how people give meaning to their lived
experiences. It is carried out with a humanist emphasis, delving empathetically into the
complexity of the culture and social and political world of human beings (Bray 2008; Willis
and Trondman 2002). In this way, ethnography acknowledges the tension between the emic
view, the experience and perspective of the people being studied, and the etic view, the
experience and perspective of the ethnographer. It attempts to account for the constant
tension between objectivity and subjectivity. Again, the same can be said about naturalist
painting, as the painter seeks to understand nature before her as it is and to render it as
accurately and sensitively as possible. Just as the ethnographer is encouraged to take breaks
from the fieldwork to enable fair reflection on the society she is studying and reassses her
personal involvement with it which might taint her ability to be impartial and effectively
analytical, so the painter regularly uses techniques to refresh her eyes and thereby ensure
that she is not become excessively familiar with the nature before her which would prevent
her from rendering it truthfully. A main technique involves include using the mirror and the
sight-‐size technique to refresh her eye and to compare nature with her interpretation of it
on canvas. By spending “slow time” (Cecil 2009) in such observation, the painter achieves a
deeper connection with her object.
Methodologically, ethnography involves participant-‐observation over long periods of time

in the ‘field’ in order that the researcher may fully immerse herself in the culture under
study and familiarise herself with its inhabitants (Bray 2008: 305-‐308). The ethnographer
also carries out interviews that are semi-‐structured and open-‐ended, enabling informants to
express themselves freely and to define what is important to them (Bray 2008: 309-‐312). In
this context, the researcher regularly reflects on her initial presumptions and
understanding of basic analytical concepts, and attempts to refine them to better reflect the
reality of the people she is studying. The equivalent to this in naturalist-‐realist painting
would be for example the basic knowledge of anatomy versus a deeper and more intimate
6
understanding of what lies beneath the visual surface of the actual object being painted. Just
as ethnographers may be guilty of ethnocentricity in spite of their best efforts and their
unconscious imposition of preconceptions, a painter may be guilty of an unconscious over-‐
emphasis on anatomy and other pictoral formulas that render an artificial depiction of
nature. An example of such an artist is the Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti
who applied mainly his knowledge of male anatomy when depicting the female nude in the
Medici chapel and so, in this particular case, was not striving for a truly naturalist rendering
of his subject.
Part and parcel with this effort is the necessity of a constant awareness of one’s subjectivity,
active in the attempt at objectivity. Subjectivity may at times be so flagrant in painting that
one can even find the painter’s own self-‐portrait in her depiction of the model. As a
naturalist painting student, it is important to be aware of this, just as in ethnography there
is the constant risk of ethnocentricisim, of unconsciously projecting one’s self in an analysis
of another culture or people, and therefore of being guilty of bias.
Permanently self-‐critical and reflexive research close to nature are therefore the constant
mantras of both the ethnographer and the naturalist painting student. At the Cecil Studios
and the FAA, a critique I often heard made by painting teachers to students in their work
(including mine) was the tendency to generalise on canvas the information they saw in
nature. That is, we tended to indiscriminately simplify form and uniformize the diverse
quality of lines and edges, which the teachers said had the result of depriving our work of its
humanity. It necessitated that we get more specific and make a more concerted effort to
look and really undertand what was going on in nature. This did not mean going into more
detail, but having an accurate understanding of the different parts and how they uniquely
produce the whole. This is also required of ethnographers in their endeavor to understand
the worldview and experience of the people they are studying and, so to say, place
themselves in their shoes, in order to accurately and empathetically analyse who they are
and why.
At regular intervals, the ethnographer will also take breaks from the field, and return to her
academic base or home in order to reflect with more retrospection on what she has
witnessed and experienced in the field, and how to best make sense of it (Bray 2008: 309). A
7
similar technique is employed in naturalist painting with its emphasis on both closeness
and distance to the object being painted and the actual painting. Alberti, the Florentine
Renaissance artist, also insisted on this in his treatise Della Pittura, that “a painted thing can
never appear truthful where there is not a definite distance for seeing it”.3
The use of the mirror and the sight-‐size method, also help the painter to constantly re-‐
assess her visual interpretation. At the same time, as the painter spends a long period with
the model, typically sessions of a couple of hours during several days, and sometimes even
weeks, a close relationship may be developed between the two which has an effect on the
essence being transmitted in the painting. Similarly, the ethnographer aims to familiarise
herself with the people she is studying, developing an empathy with them, while all the time
attempting to preserve a degree of detachment, necessary for producing an un-‐biased
analysis in her final writing (writing, an academic book or journal article, usually being the
anthropologist’s ultimate opus).
Choice of focus, harmony and composition in naturalist painting also parallel ethnography’s
concern with accurate presentation, interpretation and analysis. The painter aims to
achieve a certain balance and harmony in the framing of her picture that can capture and
showcase the essence inspired in nature. This is traditionally known as the ‘golden mean’. In
such a painting, the issue of focus is central: where should the viewer’s eye wander and
rest? Following the methods taught at the FAA and Cecil Studios, and also clearly explicated
by Speed (1972 and 1987), the importance is to bear in mind the natural approach of the
eye, which is to focus on one thing and whereby everything else around that thing is
blurred. In portraiture, as it is generally considered that the eyes are the ‘windows to a
person’s soul’ and the prinicipal point of contact in visual and social communication, these
are the main focus of the painting. The eyes will therefore be the most defined part of the
picture, with everything else around painted less sharply so as to not detract the viewer
onto secondary or ‘unnecessary’ details. These concerns also echo the ethnographer’s
preoccupation with how best to focus and frame her study of a people or culture: what does
she wish to look at? Why? How to bring the reader’s attention to her focus? By making a
choice of focus, is she neglecting another fundamental aspect of a people or culture’s
reality? How can she effectively evoke the issue and engage the reader in her analysis?

3 http://www.noteaccess.com/Texts/Alberti/1a.htm [Accessed October 16 2012]
8
There is also then the challenge in both naturalist portrait-‐painting and ethnography of how
to represent a person. As already mentioned, in ethnography the aim is to represent the
person or people in a way that is fair and accurate to them. However this also implies the
researcher making certain choices of how to describe a person and what to highlight as
significant (Bray 2008: 313), similarly to the concerns expressed by Maupassant in his
preface to his novel Pierre et Jean (1888):
“Un choix s'impose donc, -‐ ce qui est une première atteinte à la théorie de toute la
vérité._ Voilà pourquoi l'artiste, ayant choisi son thème, ne prendra dans cette vie
encombrée de hasards et de futilités que les détails caractéristiques utiles à son
sujet, et il rejettera tout le reste, tout l'à-‐côté.”
In painting, the artist will work with the model to find a pose that fits them both practically.
How the artist wants to portray the model will be confronted with how the model wishes to
be portrayed. Standing? Sitting? In action or in contemplation? Looking away or directly at
the painter? Holding significant objects or symbols, or nothing? And in what kind of space?
Deliberately revealing of something, or neutral?
In both ethnography and naturalist painting, there takes place a collaboration and even
negotiation process between the ethnographer/painter with the informant/model that adds
a further dimension to the tension between subjectivity and objectivity.
Finally, a successful ethnography is one that provides an accurate and thick description of
social phenomena in a clear and accessible form of writing (Erikssen 2006; Bray 2008) and
can draw analytical conclusions that contribute to theory. Similarly, a successful naturalist
painting is one that has effectively captured the essence of the object, and revealed its
unique beauty and psychology through a dexterous, sincere and harmonoius handling of
brushstroke, color, value and composition.
Conclusion
This paper is a first attempt at exploring a philosophical and methodological link between
naturalist painting as an artistic way of seeing and understanding the visual world, and
ethnography as a scientific attempt at making sense of human social interaction and culture.
I have argued that at a meta, epistemological level, both activities have in common a
concern with how to apprehend the objective world by means of an emphatic and sensitive
9
process of long-‐term observation and contextual interaction. Both involve a process in

which representation and the tension between objectivity and subjectivity are central
issues.
I explored parallels between them and reflected on how they may inform each other when it
comes to the challenge of understanding and depicting the world accurately. I suggested
that various techniques in naturalist painting, such as the use of the mirror, squinting,
distance, and choice of focus, parallel ethnography’s methods of research that include full
cultural immersion, participant-‐observation, open-‐ended interviews and self-‐reflective
selection and interpretation. By discussing the common epistemological and methodological
concerns of these two activities, I hope to have shed further light on each of them.
Reflecting on the commonalities of these two activities has helped me in my own work as
both a painter and researcher. Recently, doing research on identity politics in the rather
conflictive area of the Basque Country in France and Spain, I have discovered the extra
benefits of my work as a naturalist painter and started to employ portrait-‐painting as an
additional data-‐gathering technique: in addition to being a unique moment for
contemplation and a medium for the quest of beauty, painting people in a naturalist
tradition provides an extraordinary opportunity to delve further in the individual. As the
person poses for long periods of time, it is a singular moment for bonding and a frank face-‐
to-‐face. Both the painter and the model work together, painting and posing, possibly even
witnessing each other’s highs and lows over an extended period of time. It is a moment
when the two can share the same world, conversing together at times, and at other times
remaining silent, each in contemplation, in their separate thoughts, though still together
united by the common task of producing a work of art. In such a setting, there is no
embarrassed silence and rarely a necessity to keep the conversation going, rather it
happens more spontaneously, and thereby provides a unique opportunity for a greater
degree of complicity, which is also one of the goals of ethnography as part of its endeavor to
get to know the other (Bray 208: 305). In this way, portrait-‐painting is an ideal
ethnographic method, as well as as an analytical text in its own right.
However, portrait-‐painting as part of ethnographic research also presents further

challenges and obstacles, and even existential questions. For instance, isn’t the expectation
10
that the model stay posing, without moving, for long periods of time akin to a laboratory
settting, which is precisely the opposite of what ethnography stands for? How to consolidate
this contradiction? In my personal work, I have sought to do so by producing a series of
drawings and oil sketches that may better capture the active side and the different moods of
the individual. It has also been revealing to paint the individual in different settings, be it
their home, or my studio or a space neutral to both of us. In each of these different spaces, I
have come to observe how the individual relaxes and opens up in different ways, and
reveals much about how the presence – or absence – of familiar objects and identity
markers play in the construction and presentation of personal and collective self.
Bibliography

Aristides, Juliette (2006) Classical Drawing Atelier. NY: Watson-‐Guptill Publications
Bargue, Charles (2003) Drawing Course. Paris: ACR Edition.
Beer, Nicholas (2005) The Sight-‐Size Portrait Tradition. Studio Essay.

http://www.charlescecilstudios.com/html/philosophy/essays.html [Accessed Oct.10 2012]
Boehm, D. (2012) Intimate Migrations: Gender, Family, and Illegality among Transnational
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Bray, Zoe (2008) ‘Ethnographic approaches’, in Donatella della Porta and Michael Keating
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