It's Wednesday morning and Frank Mason is at his piano indulging in a little Moonlight Sonata, a skill he no doubt picked up from his mother who was both a violinist and pianist. Mason also dabbles with creating his own piano compositions, but he is certainly best known as a "classical" painter, whose portraits, landscapes and sacred art pay tribute to the likes of Michelangelo and Leonardo DaVinci, Rembrandt and Rubens.

A sanguine individual who often punctuates his sentences with a robust laugh, Mason studied with Frank Vincent Dumond at the Art Students League. After Dumond's death in 1951, Mason assumed his master's place on the teaching staff, where he continues today as students arduously compete for precious places in his classroom. Here Mason passes on Dumond's drawing system, emphasizing the importance of light and living action in painting.

Also in 1951, Mason began working with Jacques Maroger, who was the former President of the Louvre Laboratoire and author of The Secret Formulas and Techniques of the Old Masters. Inspired by Maroger, Mason has dedicated much of his life to rediscovering techniques of 17th and 18th century painters whose secret compositions of oils and mediums have been lost over the centuries. With marble slab and glass muller in hand, Mason practices his alchemy by grinding his own paints and preparing his own canvasses. He purports that "Art basically comes out of the kitchen," and laments that most artists have, "lost touch with what goes into color and what it is going to do. It's not something to be squeezed out from a tube and thrown away. Artists should have respect for materials. Did you know that in Holland in 1700, the Dutch Government was so interested in the quality of artists' materials, that they put a stamp of quality on the back of each oak panel sold for paintings? If you sold wood without the government seal, you went to prison. They sell kids any old garbage today. . .It's just too bad that the emphasis is on use it up and throw it away."

In addition to Mason's respect for history and materials, his philosophy on approaching art is quite to the point: Work hard and paint beauty. "If you're going to be a doctor, you work 18 hours a day through med school and your internships. My attitude towards art is that you can't spend any less time than that. In order to be a great artist, you have to put in at least 30 hours a day! Work hard, and if you paint beauty, someone will see it. And sure enough, when my students stay with it and paint up a storm, something wonderful usually happens. Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Beethoven, Mozart, Shakespeare left us beauty. They all had their own styles, but they all exalted God, nature and man."

While Mason's technique is grounded in the secrets of the Old Masters, his inspiration is rooted in his Christian upbringing: "My father was a minister in his youth, later he joined the theatre and was a great Shakespearean actor. My grandfather was a minister as well. There's no question that they had a tremendous influence on me, and from the time I was a kid, I was always inspired by the paintings I saw in churches. . .To this day, I get right up and read something out of the Bible. This morning I read out of Proverbs and got good advice about what not to do today. I often come across a verse and say, "I have to paint this!' You can't explain it, how you get the fire. It ignites in your head, and you think, wouldn't it be something to put that down. Then I throw myself into it. It's like building a fire under a pot and you see it bubble. Then you know you're getting somewhere."

This fire led to Mason's greatest commission. In 1962, the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta commissioned him to paint a series of eight large depictions of the life of Saint Anthony of Padua. Mason submitted small oil studies of the scenes before beginning work. The paintings are now hung alongside Bellini in the Church of San Giovanni di Malta. The Saint Anthony series includes The First Temptation, The Changing of the Robes, Storm at Sea, The Hermitage, The Miracle of the Severed Leg, The Miracle of the Donkey, The Meeting of Saint Anthony and Saint Francis, and The Tree House. The series earned him the honor of receiving the Cross of Merit, Prima Classe from the Order of Malta. In a rare shy moment, Mason acquiesced that the paintings are "a triumph of sorts. How many artists have had a chance to do something of such great importance. . .to have something in an 11th-century church with Bellini? God has taken care of us."

In addition to other sacred works such as Gloria In Excelsis Deo, Mason is about to complete a book offering a collection of paintings depicting the life of Jesus. This book has been a life-long labor for Mason, and the paintings go from the present back to his teenage years; a favorite piece being the depiction of Christ curing the man with a withered hand that Mason painted when he was just 19 years old. Mason is looking for a publisher, hoping to print the collection as "an art book, rather than a story book. I'm just scratching the surface of the life of Jesus, but in my own way, these moments were inspired. I want them to be seen as works of art in our time, rather than seen commercially. If you deliberately make a book that is commercially viable for story-telling, then the work becomes angled. I don't want to be angled. I want each painting to be an inspiration."

Mason is as well known for his portrait and landscape work as he is for his sacred art. True to the Masters, Mason paints strictly from models, insisting that photography removes a delicate relationship of light and movement, offering only "freeze-dried realism." He also complains that, "Since Sargent, portrait painting has gone right down into the abyss!" Mason, of course is referring to the last 60 or 70 years, where the art world has focused on experimentation, a state not conducive to traditional portrait painting. "We've had two terrifying wars and they influenced all art. Art became a reflection of man's misery. Now we have to go back up the mountain, but we're not dead yet. We're a school of thought, but we're a minority. I think we can have another Renaissance or Baroque period."

Mason's portraiture credentials boast such impressive clientele as Prince Giacchino Colonna of Venice, Governor Averell Harriman, author Thomas Wolfe, and Doctor Christian J. Lambertsen, founding director of the Institute of Environmental Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Mason has just completed a portrait of Mrs. Denise Miller Gottlieb, originally from South Africa with Dutch roots, who sought out Frank Mason because she has an affinity for the Dutch Masters. "I just completed a portrait of her. It's quite stunning. She's on a chez-lounge with a black, snaky dress, sitting back resting on cushions." Mason made a special effort to work Mrs. Miller's background into the canvas by "putting in two lions on the chair posts of the chez-lounge to show off her African roots. She was thrilled! There's also one pillow showing a monkey riding an elephant on the bottom of the painting, and I used a lot of beautiful salmon pink color that looks like an African sunset."

Besides Mason's passion for painting, he also has a personal crusade. For years, Mason has fought to raise awareness concerning the improper and irreparably damaging cleaning of precious masterpieces. Mason asserts that most of the Renaissance and Baroque master works were composed of several thin layers of paint, the top layer being a glaze designed to bind color pigments as well as offer texture, depth and richness. Mason contends that while attempting to correct discoloration, many restorers have wiped off the top layer, essentially destroying the painting; the one exception being the Hermitage in Russia. Perhaps the most shocking example in recent years is the Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo's figures now look "flat" after restorers "cleaned" the surface of his work. In 1960, Mason organized a group of artists which petitioned to seek a moratorium on all restoration practices at New York's Metropolitan Museum. This highly publicized movement and Mason's continued vigilance to the cause, has unilaterally raised awareness with museum conservators and the public.

Art restoration is a subject that brings a weary tone to Mason's voice, but thanks to a new article by Raymond White and Jo Kirby published in the National Gallery Technical Bulletin and entitled Rembrandt and His Circle: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting Media Re-Examined, Mason is particularly optimistic: "White and Kirby state that they have located the possible use of amber in Ferdinand Bol's paintings. He was a pupil of Rembrandt's. If he used it, they all used it!" Amber is a yellow to brown fossil resin exuded by now extinct coniferous trees. Highly polished amber is used to make small decorative objects such as beads or amulets. Mason believes that the Renaissance and Baroque masters used amber glaze in their finishing layers. "I believe museums are full of golden amber paint and the conservationists are going to have to accept the fact sooner or later that if they see a yellowing varnish, that they can't just wipe it off and say it's dirt!"

Over his career, Frank Mason has been duly recognized for his talent and passion. His most recent honors include an Arthur Ross Award from Classical America in recognition of his major contribution to mural painting in the classical tradition, and the Second Annual Newington-Cropsey Award for Excellence in the Arts. This award was created by the foundation to recognize Americans who through their work have made a meaningful contribution to the cultural enrichment of our nation. But whether Frank Mason is teaching class, creating a masterpiece, or relaxing at the piano, he always is striving to create something beautiful: "I'm in pursuit of making a beautiful statement about something. I'm not always aware that's what I'm searching for, but it's in my subconscious. I always ask, "How can I bring excitement to the art form as the Old Masters did?"


Return to publications index _________________________________________________________________
Jennifer Hebblethwaite is the literary manager for the Horizon Theatre Company in Atlanta, Georgia, and a freelance writer and dramaturg.