the.com/easel
the silent partner that holds your masterpiece while you take all the credit
means A standing frame, usually three-legged, that props up a canvas or board at a comfortable angle while an artist paints.
from From the Dutch 'ezel,' meaning 'donkey' or 'ass' — the same beast-of-burden joke the English made with 'clotheshorse.' Dutch painters of the great workshop era looked at this patient wooden creature carrying their work and saw a humble pack animal, and the name stuck as it crossed into English.
- name origin
- From Dutch ezel, meaning donkey, the loyal load-bearer
- tripod logic
- Three legs never wobble on uneven studio floors
- H-frame muscle
- Heavy versions hold canvases taller than the painter
- display duty
- Now mostly props up menus and wedding seating charts
starry night easel — van gogh's original easel used to paint the starry night in 1889, housed in the van gogh museum in amsterdam
plein air easel — the french impressionists' preferred portable easel design, popularized by monet and renoir in the 1870s for outdoor painting