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DUTCH ROEMER
While researching the Dutch heritage, I stumbled on to the sheer beauty of this diamond engraved Roemer glasses. I also learned that diamond tip engraving flourished as an art form in the later 16th century throughout Germany, Venice, and Austria and it was popular in the Netherlands during the 17th and 18th centuries. It was during this period that Anna Roemers Visscher (1584-1651) produced a variety of glasses that illustrate poems, insects, flowers, portraits, a map, and coats of arms. as they are beautiful, they truly resonate the dutch culture.
The story behind this particular Roemer wine glass is that:
“Constantijn Huygens wrote an ode to Anna Roemer’s skill as an engraver - entitled: ‘To the diamond-tipped pen of Miss Anna Roemers’. Anna’s answer to Huygens was this Roemer, accompanied by a poem.
This painting was a challenge I set myself to test my skills at painting as well as color mixing. I knew that this beautiful nitrogen blue diamond glass color was not readily available in shops, and that I could spend hours poured over my palette trying to mix it, which of course, just added to the excitement.
My original plan was to follow my everyday procession of approach, but whilst drawing out the glass, I realized that I had too many elements that could failed. To solve a few of the daunting problems that lay before me I took a gamble and reached for my masking fluid (a water color medium) . I needed to block out a few very minute and fine details (co-ordinates) that would help keep the proportions in my painting. To my surprise, it worked.
I knew it was a gamble to continue adding days of painstaking details without knowing weather or not the masking fluid would hold. It kept me on the edge of my seat. When I finally got to the glazing process, the masking fluid came off easily and everything fell into place. Needless to say I have been using masking fluid ever since. It is in these moments of experimentation that I feel alive as an artist.
This painting feels more like an ode to those great Masters who had to discover all that have gone before and I am extremely pleased that I was able to capture such a magnificent piece of Dutch history at the same time.
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