Charles Webster Hawthorne, The Trousseau, 1910

Charles Webster Hawthorne

1872–1930 · United States

Researched by Daniel Bilmes, painter and educator.

Charles Hawthorne taught painting by making students see the world as a set of simple colour spots. At his Cape Cod School of Art, founded in 1899, students painted "mudheads": studies of a figure posed outdoors against the sun. Using a putty knife instead of a brush, they were kept from drawing detail and had to render the silhouetted form as one large flat mass of colour against the masses of sky and sand. The goal was not a finished portrait but to train the eye to see the true relationship between colours and values. Hawthorne held that if those colour spots were placed correctly, the drawing would take care of itself. The method, with its thick paint and direct observation, is set down in Hawthorne on Painting and was carried on by his student Henry Hensche.

ProcessDirect TemperamentObserver LineageAmerican

Signature moves

Paint "mudheads" with a putty knife

Posed a model outdoors, backlit by the sun, and had students paint the silhouetted form with nothing but a putty knife and thick paint.

Why it matters · The putty knife shuts down drawing and detail. It forces the student to see the figure as one simple mass of colour and value against the light. That exercise, the mudhead, was the base of his teaching: learn to see the big, simple colour spots first.

The documented "mudhead" exercise at the Cape Cod School of Art

See the world as colour spots

Taught that a painting is spots of colour put together in a beautiful way, and that correct drawing would come out of correctly related colours.

Why it matters · This reverses the academic order of draw first, colour later. For Hawthorne, seeing the true relationship of colour and value was the primary skill. Get the spots right and the form takes care of itself. It trains the eye to see like a painter, not a draughtsman.

Hawthorne on Painting, "If the tones and values are correctly placed, the drawing takes care of itself", 1938

Make a lot of starts, not a few finishes

Pushed students to make three or four studies a day, valuing the act of starting and seeing over the labour of finishing one picture.

Why it matters · The aim was to train the eye, not to turn out saleable work. Making many starts builds the power to catch the first effect of light and colour quickly and with confidence. It puts the process of seeing over the product.

Hawthorne's "make a lot of starts" teaching (three or four studies a day for the Saturday critique)

Run the long weekly critique

Built the teaching week around a long Saturday-morning critique of all the students' work, a practice he took from his own teacher William Merritt Chase.

Why it matters · The critique was the real moment of instruction. Reviewing dozens of mudhead studies at once, he could name the common failures of seeing and drive his core principles home for the whole group. It was a powerful, communal teaching event.

The Saturday-morning critique, a practice Hawthorne took from his teacher William Merritt Chase

Find the beauty in the paint, not the subject

Held that any subject, even a dishpan half-full of water, could be beautiful if the colour spots were seen and set down truly.

Why it matters · This splits the act of painting from the literary or sentimental pull of the subject. Beauty is in the visual world itself, in the relationships of light and colour, and the artist's job is to translate that into paint.

Hawthorne on Painting; the dishpan example (beauty from the treatment, not the subject), 1938

In the studio

Photograph of Charles Webster Hawthorne — Charles Webster Hawthorne, photograph, Smithsonian Institution collection

Studio

Light: Mostly the direct, bright sunlight of Provincetown, Massachusetts. He founded the first outdoor summer school for figure painting in America, posing models on the beach.
Position: Standing at an easel outdoors, facing the shadow side of a backlit model. He also gave weekly painting demonstrations on the waterfront for his students.
Session length: Daily painting through the summer, students expected to make several studies a day. The school ran from 1899 until his death in 1930.
Tools: Oil paint, applied thickly in "dollops" · A 2-inch putty knife, the main tool for the mudhead studies · Broad, firm brushes · Cheap supports like Upson board or insulation board for the studies
Notes: His studio was the beach and the waterfront of Provincetown. The Cape Cod School of Art, which he founded in 1899 (some sources say 1898), drew hundreds of students. His teaching was preserved by his wife in Hawthorne on Painting and carried on by his student and successor, Henry Hensche.

Source: Hawthorne on Painting; records of the Cape Cod School of Art.

Palette

Ground: Cheap, rigid surfaces, Upson board, insulation board, or a pressed cardboard-like material, for the daily studies.
Medium: Oil, laid on thick. He told students "Don't paint thinly," holding that freedom with thick paint builds mastery. His teaching did not prescribe a set of pigments; it trained the eye to see and mix the true relationship between colour spots in nature's light, so the honest palette here is the method, not a colour list.
Quantity: Thick, in "dollops," set down with a putty knife as simple flat masses of colour.

Source: Hawthorne on Painting; records of the Cape Cod School of Art.

Workflow, from blank canvas

1. Set the model against the light
Pose a figure outdoors in bright sun, the sun behind them, and set your easel to face the shadow side of the model.
Why: This gives a strong, simple silhouette and forces you to see the figure as one large mass against the brilliant light of sky and ground. It simplifies the problem.
2. See the big colour spots
Squint, and reduce the whole scene to a few large simple shapes of colour: the figure, the sky, the sand. Forget features, forget detail, forget what the thing is.
Why: The painting begins in the relationship between the largest masses. Seeing those right is the foundation. Detail is beside the point if the big relationships are wrong.
3. Place the spots with a putty knife
Mix large piles of paint and lay them in as flat, simple spots with a putty knife. Do not draw. The spot for the sky, the spot for the sand, the spot for the figure.
Why: The putty knife keeps you from fussing with detail and makes you think in mass and colour. It is a tool for seeing, not for rendering.
4. Judge each spot against the others
With every new spot, compare it to what is already down. Lighter or darker? Warmer or cooler? Adjust until the spots read true against each other.
Why: A colour is never right on its own, only in relation to its neighbours. That is the whole method: painting relationships, not things.
5. Stop before the detail
The goal is a start, a study in colour relationships. Once the big spots read true and the light is caught, the exercise is done. Leave it as a mudhead.
Why: Finishing is a different skill. This exercise is to train the eye to see the fundamental music of colour, and stopping early keeps that lesson intact.

Refusals — what they would not do

Refused to start from a line or a drawing, insisting on starting from spots of colour.
Refused to let students paint thinly, demanding a thick, free application of paint.
Refused detail and features in the teaching exercises, forcing the eye onto the mass.
Refused to privilege "interesting" subjects, teaching that beauty comes from the artist's treatment of colour and light.

Reference

Primary source: The living model, posed outdoors in the bright Provincetown sun. The models were often local residents, including children from Portuguese fishing families.
Photography: No evidence of photographic use. His method was a discipline of direct, intense observation of the live effect of light on form.

Exceptions

His own finished studio portraits and genre scenes were more conventionally rendered; the teaching method, the focus here, was the mudhead study from life.

Lineage

Every teacher and student below sits on the site-wide teacher-student map.

Teachers

William Merritt Chase · at the Art Students League — The American master from whom Hawthorne took the weekly class critique and a commitment to direct, vigorous painting.

Influences

The American Impressionist tradition of painting en plein air, joined to a uniquely systematic, almost abstract approach to teaching colour through direct observation.

Students

Henry Hensche, his student for eight years and his successor, who carried and evolved the colour-spot method at the Cape School of Art for over fifty years.
Edwin Dickinson, who studied with Hawthorne from 1913 and became a major American painter and teacher.
William H. Johnson, the African American artist whose talent Hawthorne recognised, raising funds to send him to study in Europe.
Norman Rockwell, who studied with Hawthorne for one summer.
Other notable students and associates include Richard E. Miller, Max Bohm, John Noble, Gifford and Reynolds Beal, and William Paxton.

In their own words

“If the tones and values are correctly placed, the drawing takes care of itself.”

— Charles Hawthorne, Hawthorne on Painting, 1938

The core of his teaching: get the colour relationships right and the form will come out of them.

“Don't paint thinly as a student...Paint with freedom, it gives you more mastery of the nature of paint.”

— Charles Hawthorne, Hawthorne on Painting, 1938

His instruction on the physical handling of paint: thick, direct, and confident.

“As his teacher, Charles Hawthorne would say, 'beauty in painting comes from putting spots of color together in a beautiful way'.”

— Henry Hensche, quoting Hawthorne, The Cape School of Art

Hawthorne's successor summarising the central idea: the power of a painting lies in the abstract harmony of its colours.

Techniques and practices

color-spot-painting

mudhead-figure-studies

putty-knife-painting

plein-air-figure-painting

seeing-color-relationships

painting-light-not-form

Questions and answers

What is a "mudhead" painting?

A mudhead is a teaching exercise Charles Hawthorne invented. It is a quick oil study of a figure posed against the sun, painted with a putty knife so the head and body read as one simple mass of colour, with no facial features or detail.

Why did Charles Hawthorne use a putty knife?

To keep students from drawing or adding detail. The knife makes you lay in broad, flat masses of thick paint, so the student is forced to think only in large colour spots and their relationships.

What was the Cape Cod School of Art?

It was the first outdoor summer school for figure painting in America, founded by Charles Hawthorne in 1899 in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It was known for his mudhead exercises and for teaching students to see and paint colour and light.

Who was Henry Hensche?

Henry Hensche was a dedicated student of Charles Hawthorne. After Hawthorne's death in 1930, Hensche took over the school, renamed it the Cape School of Art, and taught and evolved the colour-spot method for over fifty years.

Did Norman Rockwell study with Charles Hawthorne?

Yes. Norman Rockwell studied with Charles Hawthorne for one summer in Provincetown. He was one of many notable artists, including Edwin Dickinson and William H. Johnson, who trained under Hawthorne.

What is the main idea in the book "Hawthorne on Painting"?

That painting is the art of putting spots of colour together in a beautiful way. The book, compiled from students' notes, teaches that an artist must learn to see the world as colour relationships, and that correct form and drawing will come out of that practice.

If this painter is your match

You believe seeing is a discipline. You make yourself see the world as simple spots of colour, knowing that if you get the relationships between the big masses right, the drawing will take care of itself. You would rather make ten honest starts than one overworked finish.

Borrow this: Take your easel to the beach. Pose a friend with the sun at their back. Grab a putty knife. Now paint the scene in three to five big flat spots of colour. No drawing. No face. Just the spot of the figure against the spot of the sky and the spot of the sand. That is the mudhead. Do it again tomorrow.

Adjacent painters

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio1571–1610

A painter who blacked out every window but one, refused preparatory drawing entirely, and built each canvas back to front, painting foreground figures over backgrounds that were still wet.

Carolus-Duran1837–1917

A bravura portrait painter who threw out academic underdrawing, taught his students to attack the canvas with a loaded brush in the first sitting, and built a face from flat tones of matched value set side by side like a mosaic.

Carel Fabritius1622–1654

Rembrandt's most independent pupil, who reversed his master by laying cool, light-toned grounds, setting a sharply lit figure against a pale wall, and who died young when the Delft gunpowder store exploded.

Frans Hals1582–1666

A Haarlem master who "drew with the brush" — no preparatory drawings on paper, wet-into-wet handling of unblended daubs, and a paint surface so visibly made that contemporaries said his portraits "seemed to live and breathe."

Primary sources

Mrs. Charles W. Hawthorne, Hawthorne on Painting (Dover Publications), 1960. The essential text: his critiques and teaching compiled from student notes, the source of the colour-spot doctrine. The Dover edition adds an introduction by his student Edwin Dickinson.
Edwin Dickinson, "What Is An Artist?", oral history interview, 1965. A firsthand account of studying with Hawthorne at the Cape Cod School of Art, on his teaching and his formidable presence. [link]
The Cape School of Art (founded by Henry Hensche). The school of Hawthorne's successor, a primary source for the continuation and interpretation of his method. [link]
Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM). Co-founded by Hawthorne in 1914, PAAM holds the record of the Provincetown art colony and works by Hawthorne and his many students. [link]

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