rompedas

Frank Brangwyn

From brangwyn.net

Charity

From artclon.com

Sir Frank William Brangwyn RA RWS RBA (12 May 1867 – 11 June 1956) was an Anglo-Welsh artist, painter, water colourist, virtuoso engraver and illustrator, and progressive designer. He received some artistic training, probably from his father, and later from Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo and in the workshops of William Morris, but he was largely an autodidact without a formal artistic education. At the age of seventeen, one of his paintings was accepted at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, he was strengthened in his conviction to become an artist.

(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

After his family moved to England in 1875 Brangwyn entered the South Kensington Art Schools and from 1882 to 1884 worked for William Morris. Brangwyn's plein-air work in Cornwall from 1884 to 1888 resulted in a series of oils, exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of British Artists, London, in which the subdued tones indicate the influences of Whistler and the Newlyn school.

(tate.org.uk)

Funeral at Sea

From bbc.co.uk

Initially he painted traditional subjects about the sea and life on the seas. His canvas, Funeral At Sea (1890) won a medal of the 3rd class at the 1891 Paris Salon. The limited palette in this painting is typical of his Newlyn period (although he was not officially a Newlyn artist). By the late 19th century Orientalism had become a favoured theme for many painters. Soon Brangwyn was attracted by the light and the bright colours of these southern countries. He travelled to Istanbul and the Black Sea, working as a deck hand for his passage. He made many paintings and drawings, particularly of Spain, Morocco, Egypt, and Turkey. This lightened his palette, a change that initially did not find critical favor. He continued his travels to different parts of Africa, including South Africa.

(tate.org.uk)

The Swans

The Lower Reaches of the Thames

Fruits and Flagon

All Images from bbc.co.uk

The earthquake of 1910 in Messina, Sicily, inspired a notable series of watercolours, while in etching, which he had begun in 1904, he evolved a monumental style using strong chiaroscuro. Industry, shipping and contemporary London and Venice were favourite theme, lithographs, war posters, and pageant, scenery and architectural designs. From 1924 Brangwyn was occupied with what he regarded as the culmination of his life's work, for panels for the Royal Gallery in the House of Lords. These were rejected by the Lords as being too flamboyant. On completion in 1933 they were purchased for the Guildhall, Swansea: they are still in situ. After his murals of 1930–34 for the Rockefeller Center, New York, he devoted himself to religious art. Brangwyn paid little regard to contemporary developments in art and in his later years lived virtually as a recluse at Ditchling, where he had settled in 1918.

(tate.org.uk)

‘Making Sailors: Youthful Ambition’

From tate.org.uk

Brangwyn was an artistic jack-of-all-trades. As well as paintings and drawings, he produced designs for stained glass, furniture, ceramics, table glassware, buildings and interiors, was a lithographer and woodcutter and was an illustrator of books. In 1952 Clifford Musgrave estimated that Brangwyn had produced over 12,000 works. He collaborated with Japanese Urushibara Mokuchu on a series of woodblock prints. Brangwyn's mural commissions would cover over 22,000 sq ft (2,000 m2) of canvas, he painted over 1,000 oils, over 660 mixed media works (watercolours, gouache), over 500 etchings, about 400 wood engravings and woodcuts, 280 lithographs, 40 architectural and interior designs, 230 designs for furniture, and 20 stained glass panels and windows.

Towards the end of his life, Brangwyn donated many of his own and other artworks to museums and galleries in Britain and Europe. In 1944, he recovered and secured designs by Frederic Shields for the Chapel of the Ascension built by Herbert Horne, which was destroyed in 1940 during the London Blitz. In 1950, one of his last works provided illustrations for the book Sixty Years of Yachts by Herbert Julyan, a good friend.

(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Frank E. Schoonover

From oakknollbooks.files.wordpress.com

The Brandywine School was a style of illustration — as well as an artists colony in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, near Brandywine Creek — both founded by artist Howard Pyle (1853–1911) at the end of the 19th century. The works produced there were widely published in adventure novels, magazines and romances in the early 20th Century. Pyle was mentor to such successful artists as N. C. Wyeth, Frank E. Schoonover, Stanley M. Arthurs, W.J. Aylward, Thornton Oakley, Violet Oakley, Clifford Ashley, Anna Whelan Betts, Ethel Franklin Betts and Harvey Dunn.

(chetvergvecher.livejournal.com)

Golden Age Comic Book Stories

All images from chetvergvecher.livejournal

From childhood, Frank Schoonover was drawn to the outdoors and opportunities to explore the wonder of nature. As he put it, “I don’t know what I was looking for but I loved the water and the streams.” It’s no wonder then, that as his passion for both the outdoors and art grew, he began creating pen and ink drawings of streams, bridges, buildings, and barns. It wasn’t long before he realized that illustration was his true passion. This excerpt from Frank E. Schoonover Catalogue Raisonné by John Schoonover, Louise Schoonover Smith, and LeeAnn Dean describes Schoonover’s first experiences studying art under the famous Howard Pyle.

In early September, 1896, an advertisement in the Philadelphia Inquirer forever changed his course. Listed in the newspaper was the fall offering of classes at Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry in Philadelphia. He scoured the ad and “…it said that anyone with a desire for illustration could have the instruction in that kind of art under the tutelage of Howard Pyle, that if the work in hand would pass the judgment of Howard Pyle. Well that was it.”

(An Excerpt from Frank E. Schoonover Catalogue Raisonné at oakknollbooks.wordpress.com)

Schoonover (far left) with Drexel students

Pyle with favorites Stanley Arthurs (left) and Schoonover

Images from oakknollbooks.files.wordpress.com

He confronted his parents. “I really think that I’m not really material or fitted to be a Presbyterian minister. I think I’d like to go down and study with Mr. Pyle and be an illustrator. They didn’t seem to object very much to it.” With the goal of eventually studying under Pyle, a hopeful Schoonover submitted drawings for admission to Drexel to Clifford P. Grayson, director of the School of Drawing, Painting, and Modeling in the Department of Fine and Applied Art. He was accepted into that four-year program at a time when Philadelphia provided a compelling environment for artists, educators, and those interested in the arts. Significant among those in Philadelphia at the time was William Merritt Chase, who started teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1896. William Glackens had returned to the city, Cecelia Beaux critiqued Academy portrait classes, and Thomas Anshutz taught its antique classes. Sculptor Charles Grafly instructed at Drexel and the Academy, and Howard Pyle was a luminary at Drexel. “The training provided in these surroundings was grounded in sound academic curricula with an evolving specialization in illustration.” Concurrently, the swift development of photoengraving throughout the country during the nineteenth century’s last quarter favorably advanced American illustration as an art form.

(An Excerpt from Frank E. Schoonover Catalogue Raisonné at oakknollbooks.wordpress.com)

BLACKBEARD BUCCANEER cover Illustration

From pinterest.com

Schoonover went on to win one of the ten prestigious scholarships to the Chadds Ford Summer classes in 1898 and 1899 where Pyle tutored the most advanced students. Under Pyle's encouragement he was soon illustrating books, many of the themes heavily influenced by his love of the outdoors. When Pyle left Drexel to build his own school, Schoonover went with him.

In 1903, Schoonover spent four months exploring the Hudson Bay and James Bay areas of Quebec and Ontario on foot and by dogsled. This experience turned out to be the inspiration for some of his best work throughout his career, including a series of illustrated stories for Scribner's Magazine in 1905.

From then on he never missed an opportunity to travel from the studio in his quest to absorb atmosphere and local colour: Virginia, Colorado, Montana, Louisiana, Jamaica, etc. Also in 1905 he had his first fiction published and became a member of the Society of Illustrators.

In 1906, he left Pyle's school to open his own studio in Wilmington, Delaware at 1305 Franklin Street and later at 1616 Rodney Street, which was to become home base for the rest of his life. He married Martha Culbertson of Philadelphia in 1911. From 1903 to 1913 he did illustrations for all the major magazines of the day (Harpers, Ladies' Home Journal, Scribner's, Century, McClures), and soon became recognized as one of the country's premier illustrators.

He continued his association with Pyle until the master's death in 1911 - together they worked on the Hudson County Courthouse Murals. Besides doing magazine illustration, Schoonover wrote articles and stories and illustrated more than two hundred classics and children's books. Throughout his career he illustrated the works of many famous authors: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jack London, Rex Beach, Zane Grey, Robert W. Chambers, Gilbert Parker, Henry Van Dyke, Clarence Mulford, etc.

(ERB C.H.A.S.E.R. ENCYCLOPEDIA at erbzine.com)

Locksley Shoots before Prince John

From libraryarchives.standrews-de.org

The above painting was given by donors Frank E. Schoonover and J. Thompson Brown on January 15, 1936. It was created as an illustration for the book "Ivanhoe" published in 1929. A series of Frank Schoonover's Ivanhoe paintings was loaned to the School on May 25, 1931, and then presented to the Episcopal Church School Foundation to be shown at the School as a gift from the donors. (libraryarchives.standrews-de.org)

Frank Schoonover illustrated more than 150 classic books and hundreds of the great illustrated magazines of the day. More than five million readers every month saw his illustrations of the fiction of Jack London and Zane Grey. And he was the first to visualize the legendary western character Hopalong Cassidy. Dramatic reenactments shot in wilderness regions of Wyoming, the Canadian North and the Delaware River in eastern Pennsylvania are underscored with the music of Aaron Copeland Appalachian Spring to entertainingly recreate the subjects Frank Schoonover loved first - horses and dogsleds, buckskins and snowshoes, holsters and knives, prairie grass and ice.

Frank Schoonover’s creative vision transcended the pop culture mandates he and contemporaries such as Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth obliged. Schoonover’s moody monochromatic sketches of boys toiling in coal mines and girls laboring in textile mills are visionary social commentary that reinforces how art can be a catalyst of social change. Frank Schoonover’s rapture with life itself inspired his passion for authenticity, which envisioned both America’s wistful recollection of itself, and our relentless aspiration of a more perfect union.

(shop.wvia.org)

Schoonover's subject matter included cowboys, Indians, and Canadian trappers. His forms were simple and well defined and his moods powerful. Later in his career, his style became less rigid and more impressionistic. He was also an accomplished watercolorist and muralist and an avid photographer. He used photographs as references for his illustrations to remind himself of the mood and character of the models. Besides doing magazine illustration, Schoonover wrote articles and stories and illustrated more than two hundred classics and children's books. He and Gayle Hoskins organized the Wilmington Sketch Club in 1925, and in 1931 lectured at the School of Illustration for the John Herron Art Institute of Indianapolis. In 1942 he began his own school in Wilmington, where he taught art classes until 1968, when he was ninety-one years of age. After a series of paralyzing strokes, which ended his artistic career in 1968, Schoonover died at the age of ninety-five in 1972.

(schoonoverstudios.com)

Self-portrait

From francisvallejoinspiration.blogspot.com

NIKOLAI FECHIN

Portrait Painter Brian Neher

From brianneher.com

Elfilosofo-litografia

From francisvallejoinspiration.blogspot.com

Nicolai Fechin was born in 1881 in the city of Kazan, Russia, the son of Ivan Alexandrovitch Fechin, an accomplished icon maker, woodcarver, and gilder. At the age of thirteen Fechin was ready to begin his life's work, attending the Kazan School of Art (1895-1901) and then the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts, where he was taught by the great Russian master, Ilya Repin. His work appeared in America for the first time at the 1910 International Exhibit of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh.

In both western Europe and America, Fechin was greeted with instant acclaim. Among such distinguished contemporaries as Claude Monet, Pisarro, Gaston Latouche, Sisley and John Sargent, he won his first prizes and medals. He was called a "Moujik in art", the "Tartar painter."

(fechin.com)

Laughing Man with Mustache

From flickriver.com

Manicure Lady

From onokart.wordpress.com

Girl holding peaches

From fechin.com

Portrait of Varya Adoratskaya, 1914

Source artsait.ru/art/f/feshin/art1.php

State Art Museum of Tatarstan, Kazan

From Wikimedia Commons

He was already well known in the States from canvases at American and European exhibitions, as well as sales. His patron Stimmel and John Burnham, the notable architect and a major collector of his work, helped Fechin and his family leave Russia. He soon was commissioned for new portraits and started teaching at the New York Academy of Art. He exhibited at the National Academy of Design, where in 1924 he won the first prize; in 1926 he won a medal at the 1926 International Exposition in Philadelphia. He became well-known for his powerful portraits, which observers said seemed to radiate from the eyes of the subject. Some of his more renowned subjects are Nikolai Lenin, Karl Marx, Frieda Lawrence and Lillian Gish.

(en.wikipedia.org)

Portrait of a Young Woman

Portrait of my father

Frye Art Museum

Images frommedia.oregonlive.com

Hardships following the Bolshevik Revolution eventually led Fechin to take his wife Alexandra and daughter Eya to the United States in 1923. The family first settled in New York but not for long.

Since a child, he had loved the somber forests and peoples near the Tartar border in his homeland. He found their equal in the high pine forests of the Colorado Plateau, the old adobe villages, and the Pueblo, Apache and Navajo tribes of the American Southwest. In 1926 he moved his family to Taos, where a small community of artists also made their home.

(fechin.com)

The Fechins purchased a two-story adobe house, and spent several years enlarging and modifying it according to designs by Fechin. Changes included adding and enlarging windows, enlarging the porch and making the rooms more open. He also carved doors according to Russian style, created triptych windows, and carved furniture for use in the house, which reflects a combination of modernist, Russian and Native American sensibility.

(en.wikipedia.org)

Fechin seems to have had little in common with the other artists in Taos and almost never socialized with them, though he and John Young-Hunter, who maintained a studio in Taos, remained good friends. Training as well as temperament tended to separate Fechin from his peers. He found it difficult to express himself in English and in particular to talk about art; he believed that what he had to say was nonverbal and best described in his pictures. When he took time off from work, more often than not it was to try his luck at fishing. At such times he preferred solitude to the company of others. Fechin's sojourn in Taos came to an end in 1933 when Alexandra filed for divorce.

(taosartmuseum.org)

Eya in Peasant Blouse, 1933

From artcontrarian.blogspot.com

Fechin stopped working on the house when he and his wife Alexandra divorced in 1933. She lived at the house until her death in 1983. Fechin returned to New York with their daughter Eya for the winter, and she lived mostly with him until her own marriage. After New York, he traveled to Southern California, Mexico, Japan, and the Pacific Islands of Java and Bali. Soon he bought a spacious house in Hollywood, but in 1948 sold it and moved into a studio in Rustic Canyon in Santa Monica. There he taught small groups of students, painted, and happily entertained guests.

In 1955 he died in Santa Monica and was buried there. In 1976 his daughter Eya took his remains back to Russia for reinterment in Kazan. The Russian artist Sergei Bongart bought the Rustic Canyon studio where Fechin had lived and painted there until his own death later in 1955. Some of Fechin's paintings and portraits, along with his work table and easel, are on display at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The rest of his works are displayed in different countries, with the largest collection at the Fechin Center in Kazan, Russia. In 1975 the artist/author Mary Balcomb wrote the definitive book, 'Nicolai Fechin'.

(en.wikipedia.org)

Portrait N.M.Sapozhnikovoy

Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan

From books0977.tumblr.com

“Fechin was known as the living old master ... an artist's artist. Others called him the Michaelangelo of our time.His talents in so many diverse disciplines was unique indeed --- a master of painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, woodcarving and ceramics.What his eyes saw and his hands touched, became a creative experience. His talents in so many diverse disciplines were unique indeed - a master of painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, woodcarving & ceramics. Nicolai Fechin died in 1955, but his sensitive and dramatic portraits in charcoal and oils are a legacy which stirs the emotions and inspires visions. The insight and warmth he transfered from life to canvas are in this classic volume originally published in 1975, now in its third printing by Fechin Art Reproductions.”

(Written by Mary N. Balcomb, with a forward by Fechin's daughter Eya Fechin, this 167 page volume covers Fechin's life from Russia in 1881 to America in 1955)

Toward the end of his life, Nicolai Fechin was persuaded by his biggest collector and good friend, John Burnham, to have a simultaneous retrospective at the art museums in San Diego and La Jolla. The events were huge successes and a chance for Nicolai Fechin to see paintings he had not seen for many years.

Nicolai Nicolai Fechin Painting Exhibitions & Awards:

1908 First Prize, Imperial Academy of Fine Art, Petrograd

1909 Gold Medal, International Glass Palace, Munich

1924 Proctor Prize, National Academy of Design, New York, New York

1927 Stendahl Gallery, Los Angeles, California

1930 California State Fair, Sacramento, California

1935 First Prize, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California

1936 Medal of Honor, Foundation of Western Artists

1939 Golden Gate International Exposition

1939 Oakland Art Gallery, Oakland, California

1930s-1940s Stendahl Gallery, Los Angeles, California

1968 Maxwell Gallery, San Francisco, California (nicolaifechinpaintingexpert.com)

Rafting up
Images from mcdougallfinearts.com

Rockport Harbor

From clarkegalleries.com

Known for his bold Impressionist harbor scenes, Harry Aiken Vincent was a prominent member of the Rockport Art Colony in the beginning of the twentieth century. Born in Chicago, Vincent moved to Rockport, Massachusetts in 1918, devoting himself to studying the ocean around Cape Ann. He became the first President of the Rockport Art Association in 1921 and served as a charter member of the North Shore Art Association. His vivid marine paintings won several prizes from the Salmagundi Club and the New York Watercolor Club and were featured in exhibitions at the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Today, Vincent’s work is in such prominent collections as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Butler Institute of American Art.
(questroyalfineart.com)

Old Quarry, Rockport Fall Colors Near Venice
From the-athenaeum.org

The more one reads about the life of artists, with a bit of historical perspective, the more one notices that pure talent and quality of output frequently does not correlate with the quantity of biographical material and critical writing that exists on that artist. Clearly, there is a realization that the personality of the artist himself is a factor, in addition to the quality of his or her work. Unquestionably, the exceptional quality of Harry Vincent’s mature work does not correlate with the modest amount of scholarly writing about him. One must conclude he was likely a reserved, perhaps even shy person who preferred to paint than to talk about it. Chicago-born and trained, little is known of his life prior to settling in Rockport, Massachusetts, in 1918. Apparently he was quickly recognized as a significant artist since, a short three years later, he was appointed the first acting President of the Rockport Art Association, formed in 1921. Probably best described as a painter’s painter, and an artist other artists respected, Vincent is generally considered largely self-taught. (mcdougallfinearts.com)

The Provincetown Boats in Rockport Harbor

Rockport Harbor
Images from mcdougallfinearts.com

Although he painted in the Chicago area early in his career, by the turn of the century he was painting and exhibiting in New England and gaining a strong reputation for his marine views. Vincent's paintings were widely exhibited and the artist won many awards. He was noted for his heavy use of pigment and colorful compositions. He held membership in the prestigious Salmagundi Club where he won awards in 1907, 1916 and 1918 and was both a member and associate of the National Academy of Design where his work was exhibited in 1892 and 1897.
With his studio in Boston, Vincent was also one of the many accomplished artists that made up what became known as the Rockport School. The visually abundant region around Rockport, Massachusetts attracted a wealth of talented painters in the early part of the century. H. A. Vincent painted many of his finest works in and around the Rockport area.

(vallejogallery.com)

Xiao Song Jiang
From inkdancechinesepaintings.com

Xiao Song Jiang
From blog.oilpaintersofamerica.com

Xiao Song Jiang was born in 1955, in Wuhan, China. In 1978 he studied fine arts at the China Academy of Art, formerly the Zhejiang Art Academy, where he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in 1982, then began lecturing watercolor at the City of Wuhan Construction College. Four years after, Song was selected to further develop his skill at the provincial Hubei Art Academy. During his time there, he accumulated years of experience, painting, sketching, and working for a refined grasp of color and technique.
Throughout his early career, Song has received numerous awards as one of the representatives of Chinese paintings with works displayed at international art exhibitions in the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, Turkey, and Singapore. He also had the honor of having four representative works collected and preserved at the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) and three works at the Jiangsu Provincial Art Museum.
In 1988, Song immigrated to Canada and invested a passion for its vivid scenes of the broad North American landscape. While there, he travelled widely from coast to coast and gained some 20 years of experience forming his unique style of a mixture of brush and knife with attention to the unique natural detail, richer handling of light, shadow and depth in each piece, which has won him numerous awards in North American exhibitions and art festivals.
He now lives by the lake in Toronto, Canada with his wife and son. He is influenced by the beautiful land and friendly people. Through his paintings, he wishes to express his love to the North American landscape and all its people.
(blog.oilpaintersofamerica.com)

Boat Place
From wallsgallery.com

Tide
From oilpaintersofamerica.deviantart.com

Morning

Dawn

Birch

Lane of Venice
Images from jrmooneygalleries.blogspot.com

Brown’s Memory

Evening of July

Fishing Port

Harbor of the Fall
Images from southwestart.com

As he had done every day when his factory shift was finished, the young man had bicycled to the Yangtze River in the middle of the large industrial city of Wuhan, where he grew up. There, for an hour and a half each day, he spent his only free time making oil sketches of river traffic and docks. There was no money for canvases, so he painted on cardboard. He’d received no formal art education, since Mao Tse-tung’s communist government closed schools before Jiang reached high school, and he—along with millions of other students—had been forced to leave the cities and work on farms. As a teenager with an artistic sensibility, Jiang sought out books of Western poetry and novels by Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas. Libraries had been shut down, and all aspects of Western culture were banned, so he borrowed books in secret from friends.

(Excerpts from China-born painter Xiao Song Jiang, reflects on his artistic journey and goals by Gussie Fauntleroy at southwestart.com)

Reflection of summer

Rest

The Noon

Images from Eric Smith Artexpo/Spectrum Art Show's photostream

As a boy in Wuhan before the Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1976, he thought he wanted to be an architect. His father was a technical engineer, and his mother worked as a primary-school principal. But the closing of schools eliminated that option, and his creative energy was funneled instead into teaching himself to paint. When Chinese society was reopened and began to modernize through the policies of Mao’s successor, Jiang saw his persistence in self-education begin to pay off. Out of hundreds of applicants from his home province who underwent the highly competitive examination process, he was the only one accepted into the Zhejiang Art Academy (now the China Academy of Art.) Because he had worked more than five years at the factory, Chinese policy at the time granted him a stipend for studying, allowing him to purchase better art supplies. He was placed in the printmaking department, his second choice, but his watercolor instructor allowed him to work in oils during class.

After earning a bachelor of arts, Jiang taught watercolor to architecture students at a government-run construction college in Wuhan. Then came further studies at Hubei Art Academy and the selection of his paintings by the Chinese government for inclusion in several international exhibitions. Jiang’s sister-in-law had studied in Canada, and through her he learned of an opportunity to show his work in Edmonton, Alberta.

In 1988 he traveled to Edmonton for a one-man show. Following the show he intended to return to China, where his wife and 6-month-old son remained. The Chinese government further encouraged his return by offering him a voucher to buy a motorcycle, a rare and hard-to-obtain commodity during that period in China. Then came Tiananmen Square. The massive protests in major Chinese cities—including Wuhan—and ensuing massacres by the Chinese army became symbolized internationally by a lone protester facing down a row of tanks. Having published writings critical of the government in a Chinese newspaper, Jiang was concerned about the government’s response should he return.

He obtained asylum in Canada and remained, joined two years later by his wife and son. In 1992 the family moved to Toronto, which offered a vibrant art community and proximity to other large cities. Initially Jiang supported his family as a street  artist creating charcoal portraits, but his landscapes soon began to catch collectors’ eyes. For 13 years he attended Art- expo New York, where galleries purchased virtually everything he brought.

(Excerpts from China-born painter Xiao Song Jiang, reflects on his artistic journey and goals by Gussie Fauntleroy at southwestart.com)

Landskap med kor vid vattendrag

Boskapen flyttas

Images from bukowskis.com

Norwegian fjord landscape
From commons.wikimedia.org

Anders Monsen gained greater popularity than most of his contemporaries. He took his art education under Hans Gude in Dusseldorf, and as an independent painter quickly built up renown as a landscape and animal painter. He combined the two genres for a striking artwork, where landscape and livestock united in a National Romantic expression or a pastoral ideal. It can perhaps be emphasized that Askevold became a victim of his own popularity. Demand was great, and he would gladly paint a variety of the most highly prized motifs, this resulted in his production loosing some of its freshness and taking on an air of routine. Askevold traveled frequently, and his contact with the international milieu also opened his eyes to the new French outdoor painting. In Askevold’s later paintings we see a freer brush stroke, less detail and a fresher color. The pictorial aspect adopted a greater importance in his work, but in this case did not stretch to a new kind of painting. He remained faithful to the National Romantic motif throughout his life.
(painting-palace.com)

Village by a Fjord, 1892

Source mohn-auksjon.no

From mellymirror.blogspot.com

Fjord landscape with sailing boats

From bukowskis.com

Sognejekt ved brygge

Vetlefjorden ved Balholmen (1886)

Ved Dalen i Nærøfjorden (1886)

Images from pinterest.com

Norwegian fjord with snow capped mountains

From artrenewal.org

Anders Monsen Askevold was born in Askvoll, in Sunnfjord, Norway. He was the second oldest of ten siblings. His father was a teacher. His early training started at the age of thirteen in Bergen under Hans Leganger Reuch (1800-1854) . He was educated as a painter in Düsseldorf, but continued his studies in Paris and Munich. Askevold came to Düsseldorf in 1855 and stayed for 3 years. He trained in Düsseldorf under Professor Hans Gude from 1855 until 1859. He was known as a member of the Düsseldorf school of painting with others like Adelsteen Normann. From 1861 to 1866 he was in Paris. In 1866 Askevold moved back to Norway and settled in Bergen. After this he moved back to Düsseldorf where he would spend his winters in Germany and his summers in Norway.
He died in 1900 in Düsseldorf. His paintings were shown at numerous international exhibitions, including world exhibitions in London (1862), Paris (1867) and (1878), Vienna (1873) and Philadelphia (1876). In Vienna and Philadelphia, he was honored with medals. In 1884, in London he won the gold medal. A monument was erected in his honor by the municipality of Askvoll during 1934. A painting by Askevold sold for over £5,000 in 2009.
(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Out of the Night
From masterart.com

Cuneo was born in London, the son of Cyrus Cincinato Cuneo and Nell Marion Tenison, artists who met while studying with Whistler in Paris. Cyrus Cuneo's elder brother Rinaldo Cuneo was also an acclaimed painter in San Francisco, as was his youngest brother Egisto Cuneo. Terence Cuneo studied at Sutton Valence School, Chelsea Polytechnic and the Slade School of Art, before working as an illustrator for magazines, books and periodicals.
In 1936 he started working in oils, continuing with his illustration work. During World War II he served as a sapper but also worked for the War Artists Advisory Committee, providing illustrations of aircraft factories and wartime events. He served and became good friends with fellow artist Cyril Parfitt.
(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Big Boy on Sherman Hill
From masterart.com

The Union Pacific Big Boy, the largest successful engine ever created, was not only a technological achievement and trophy piece, rather a necessity for the Union Pacific Railroad. Built for one purpose and one purpose alone: to pull large tonnage over the 1.55% continuous grade up Sherman Hill, based in the Wasatch mountain region, just east of Ogden Utah. Before Big Boy, a helper service was required. This is where a smaller engine is coupled to a mainline freight to ‘help’ it over the hill. The engine would then return to the bottom of the hill and await the next through train. Not only was this a slow process, but rather expensive. A new engine was needed, one that could pull a train up the hill unassisted.
The UP Class 4000 (4-8-8-4) articulated Big Boy was the answer. The American Locomotive Company (Alco) Locomotive Works was commissioned to build the engine. Starting in 1941, twenty engines were built: 4000 to 4019, then again in 1944 five more were delivered - 4020 to 4024.
At 6.00pm on 5th September 1941, the first Big Boy, 4000, strode through the east end of the UP’s Omaha yard. After testing and trials the 4000 was immediately put into active service. Mainly used during the peak season from July through November, the 4000s were used to take the massively heavy ‘red balls’ over the Hill. The ‘red balls’ are also known as PFEs, or Pacific Fruit Express Reefers, basically produce trains. Due to the heavy nature of these cars when fully loaded, prior to Big Boy, it wasn’t unusual to see 2, 3 or even 4 engines struggling up Sherman Hill. Now, just one Big Boy and one engine crew was needed, saving the Union Pacific a lot of money. Big Boy served as king of the hill for twenty-one years, travelling an astonishing one million miles each (4016 had the lowest mileage at 1,016,124 and 4006 the highest at 1,064,625). They accumulated more service than most, fighting their way relentlessly up the grades every day. They reigned supreme over Sherman Hill until the summer of 1957. Normally, it was not uncommon to see anywhere from three to six Big Boys travelling from Cheyenne to Laramie every day, all pulling separate trains.

(macconnal-mason.com)

Forgan's Trench, Pontruet

'Golden Arrow'

Tyre Production

'Flying Cheltenham'
Images from bbc.co.uk

After the war, Cuneo was commissioned to produce a series of works illustrating railways, bridges and locomotives. A significant point in his career was his appointment as official artist for the Coronation of Elizabeth II, which brought his name before the public worldwide. He received more commissions from industry, which included depicting manufacturing, mineral extraction and road building, including the M1. He was most famous for his passion for engineering subjects, particularly locomotives and the railway as a whole. But in fact Cuneo painted over a wide range, from big game in Africa to landscapes. Further success was achieved in his regimental commissions, battle scenes and incidents as well as portraits.
(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
In 1934, Cuneo married Catherine Monro and from 1940 they lived in Ember Lane, East Molesey. He had two daughters, Carole and Linda, and three grandchildren, Andrew, Melanie, and Cindy. He was a well-known figure in the neighbourhood, contributing to its cultural life and bringing many famous figures to the area, including Prince Philip. He was President of the Molesey Arts Society, and the Thames Valley Art Society.
(elmbridgemuseum.org.uk)

Invasion scene

Production of tanks
Images from wikimedia.org

Many of his works include a small mouse (sometimes lifelike, sometimes cartoon-like), his trademark after 1956. They can be difficult to detect, and many people enjoy scouring his paintings to find one. Even some of his portraits of the famous contain a mouse. Cuneo was awarded the OBE and was a CVO. A 1.5 times life size bronze memorial statue of Cuneo, by Philip Jackson, stands in the main concourse at Waterloo Station in London. It was commissioned by the Terence Cuneo Memorial Trust (established March 2002) to create a permanent memorial to the artist, together with an annual prize at the Slade School of Art, given by the Trust. In tribute to Cuneo's trademark, the statue includes a hidden mouse peering from under a book by the artist's feet, and another carved into the statue's plinth near the ground.
(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
His work has been used in a variety of ways, from book jackets and model railway catalogues to posters and jigsaws and even Royal Mail postage stamps. His work can also be found in many museums and galleries, including the Guildhall Art Gallery, Lloyds of London, the National Railway Museum, the Royal Institution and many Officers' Messes around the country. Terence Cuneo was granted Freedom of the City of London in 1993. Sadly Terence died in London on 3 January 1996. However, his paintings live on in so many places around the globe, a permanent reminder of such a wonderfully talented man.
(cuneosociety.org)
Terence Cuneo was always searching for new subjects away from the studio. He first made his mark as a racing artist in the 1920s, with his "Pitwork" series depicting Le Mans and other racing circuits. This was the training ground for future subject matter - the excitement of speed, busyness and movement which would come into his later works of equestrian subjects. His technique and skill developed when he became a war artist in the Second World War - another field for him to conquer - and later with his many travels to such places as Ethiopia and the Far East.
An exhibition of his work soon after the war demonstrated his inquisitive eye. The many military works that came out of the war and later are to be seen in the various messes around Britain: the Royal Artillery and the Rifle Brigade among others. There is always a place for an artist who observes, records and illustrates. The camera can lie, so can an artist to himself, but never to his public. Terence Cuneo was a public man; it shows in his work, the time he gave to many committees and in his universal friendship.
(Part of Obituary for Terence Cuneo, Tim Coates, The Independent, 8 January 1996)

Newport Harbor
From chinaoilpaintinggallery.com

Venice

Spring Morning

The Ledges

Gloucester Harbor

All images from wikipaintings.org

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to German immigrant parents, Twachtman found his first employment in his hometown at Breneman Brothers, a design firm that produced window shades, where his father also worked. At age fifteen, he enrolled as a part-time student in the School of Design at the Ohio Mechanics' Institute.

In 1871 he transferred to the McMicken School of Design where his classmates included Kenyon Cox, Joseph DeCamp, Robert Blum, Lewis Henry Meakin, and William Baer, all of whom achieved artistic prominence in their later careers. Frank Duveneck, however, was the most important contact of Twachtman's Cincinnati years. Twachtman had known Duveneck through mutual ties in the Cincinnati German community, but the younger Twachtman came under the slightly older artist's influence when he joined the evening class Duveneck taught at the Mechanics' Institute in 1874-75 on his return from four years of study at the Munich Royal Academy.

(johnhtwachtman.com)

Connecticut Shore, Winter
From poulwebb.blogspot.com

My Summer Studio
Current Loc The Phillips Collection
From commons wikimedia.org

Duveneck invited Twachtman to paint in the studio he shared with Henry Farny and the sculptor Frank Dengler, and in 1875 when Duveneck returned to Munich, Twachtman accompanied him. Enrolling in the Munich Royal Academy in the Fall of 1875, Twachtman studied under Ludwig von Loefftz, a painter of realist genre scenes. In the summer of 1876, Twachtman visited the small Bavarian town of Polling, which had attracted a large community of artists including many American painters. American artists Charles Ulrich and Walter Shirlaw also spent time in Polling in the summer of 1876.

(johnhtwachtman.com)

Arques-la-Bataille, 1884

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

From pubhist.com

After a brief return to America, Twachtman studied from 1883 to 1885 at the Académie Julian in Paris, and his paintings dramatically shifted towards a soft, gray and green tonalist style. During this time he painted what some art historians consider to be his greatest masterpieces, including Arques-la-Bataille, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Springtime, in the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum.

(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The White Bridge
Current Loc Minneapolis Institute of Arts
From wikimedia.org

The Cascade
From wikipaintings.org

Horseneck Falls
From allpaintings.org

In addition to his oil paintings, Twachtman continued to create etchings as well as drawings in pastel. Twachtman taught painting at the Art Students League from 1889 until his death in 1902. Twachtman was close friends with Julian Alden Weir and the two often painted together and both also had close associations with the Danish-born painter Emil Carlsen.
In 1893, Twachtman received a silver medal in painting at the Columbian Exposition; the same year, he also exhibited his work with Claude Monet at a New York gallery. In Connecticut his painting style shifted again, this time to a highly personal impressionist technique. He painted many landscapes of his farm and garden in Greenwich, often depicting the snow-covered landscape. He executed dozens of paintings of a small waterfall on his property, capturing the scene in different seasons and times of day.
Late in life Twachtman visited Gloucester, Massachusetts, another center of artistic activity in the late 19th century, and produced a series of vibrant scenes that anticipated a more modernist style yet to gain prominence in American art.
Twachtman died suddenly in Gloucester of a brain aneurysm, aged 49. Today, his works are in many museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Abbott Handerson Thayer

Source Nelson and Henry C. White research material

Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

From wikimedia.org).

Roses

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Gift of John Gellatly

From americanart.si.edu

A virgin

From theartoftheday.blogspot.com

Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849-1921) was born in Boston to Dr. William Henry Thayer and Ellen Handerson Thayer. After his birth his family moved to Woodstock, Vermont, and in 1855 settled in Keene, New Hampshire.
As a child Thayer developed a love of nature that was encouraged by his close family, which included three sisters, Ellen, Margaret, and Susan. At the age of fifteen he was sent to the Chauncy Hall School in Boston, and while there he met Henry D. Morse, an amateur animal painter. Under Morse's instruction Abbott developed his skill in painting birds and other wildlife and began painting animal portraits on commission.
In 1867 Thayer moved to Brooklyn, New York and attended the Brooklyn Academy of Design where he studied under J. B. Whittaker for two years. In 1868 he began showing his work at the National Academy of Design and enrolled there in 1870, studying under Lemuel Wilmarth.
He met many emerging artists during this period, including his future first wife, Kate Bloede and his close friend, Daniel Chester French. Thayer became part of progressive art circles, showing his work at the newly formed Society of American Artists, while continuing to develop his skill as an animal and landscape painter.
Thayer and Kate Bloede were married in 1875. They moved to Paris and he studied at the cole des Beaux-Arts, first under Henri Lehmann, and then with Jean-Léon Gérome. While in Europe he befriended fellow artists Everton Sainsbury, Thomas Millie Dow, George de Forest Brush, and Dwight Tryon.
His daughter Mary was born in 1876 and his son William Henry in 1878. The family returned to America in 1879 and settled in his parent's home in Brooklyn, where he changed his focus to portraits. After the tragic deaths of William Henry in 1880 and of their second son, Ralph Waldo, in 1881, the family led a migratory existence living in various parts of New England. In 1881 while living in Nantucket they met Emmeline (Emma) Beach (1850-1924) who would become close friends with Abbott and Kate and would be known as "Addie" to the family. In 1883 their son Gerald was born and in 1886 their daughter Gladys was born. In 1887 Thayer settled his family in Keene, New Hampshire, and began teaching a small group of students. Around this time his wife began suffering from severe depression and went to a sanatorium in 1888. She died in 1891 and that fall Thayer married Emma Beach who had helped to care for him and his children during his wife's illness.
(www.aaa.si.edu)

Blue Ribbon

Landscape at Fontainebleau Forest

The Favorite Kitten
Images from allpaintings.org

He and his second wife spent their remaining years in rural New Hampshire, living and working productively with the three remaining Thayer children, Mary, Gerald and Gladys. Throughout this latter part of his life, among Thayer’s Dublin neighbors was George de Forest Brush, with whom (when they were not quarreling) he collaborated on matters pertaining to camouflage. By his own admission, Thayer often suffered from a condition that today is called bipolar disorder. In his letters, he described it as “the Abbott pendulum,” by which his emotions precariously swung back and forth between the two extremes of (in his words) “all-wellity” and “sick disgust.” This condition apparently worsened as the controversy grew about his camouflage findings (most notably when they were denounced by former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt). As he aged, he increasingly suffered from panic attacks (which he called “fright-fits”), nervous exhaustion, and suicidal thoughts, so much so that he was no longer allowed to go out in his boat alone on Dublin Pond. At age 72, Thayer was disabled by a series of strokes, and died quietly at home on May 29, 1921.
(smithsonianmag.com)

Thayer cut a singular figure. A smallish man, 5 feet 7 inches tall, lean and muscular, he moved with a quick vitality. His narrow, bony face, with its mustache and aquiline nose, was topped by a broad forehead permanently furrowed by frown lines from concentration. He began the winter in long woolen underwear, and as the weather warmed, he gradually cut off the legs till by summer he had shorts. Winter and summer he wore knickers, knee-high leather boots and a paint-splotched Norfolk jacket.

His Thoreauesque communion with nature permeated the entire household. Wild animals—owls, rabbits, woodchucks, weasels—roamed the house at will. There were pet prairie dogs named Napoleon and Josephine, a red, blue and yellow macaw, and spider monkeys that regularly escaped from their cages. In the living room stood a stuffed peacock, probably used as a model for a painting in the protective coloration book. A stuffed downy woodpecker, which in certain lights disappeared into its artfully arranged background of black winter twigs and branches, held court in the little library.

Promoting to ornithologists his theory of protective coloration, Thayer met a young man who immediately was adopted as an honorary son. His name was Louis Agassiz Fuertes, and though he would become a famous painter of birds, he began as an affectionate disciple. Both men were fascinated with birds. They regularly exchanged skins and Fuertes joined Thayer on birding expeditions. He spent a summer and two winters with the family, joining in their high intellectual and spiritual arguments—the exact interpretation of the Icelandic Sagas—and their rushes to the dictionary or relief globe to settle questions of etymology and geography. On regular walks in the woods, Fuertes summoned birds by whistling their calls—like Thayer, who stood on the summit of Mount Monadnock in the twilight and attracted great horned owls by making a sucking sound on the back of his hand. One owl, it is said, perched on top of his bald head.

(smithsonianmag.com)

My Children

The Sisters

Current Loc Brooklyn Museum

Source Google Art project

From wikimedia.org

It is difficult to categorize Thayer simply and conclusively as an artist. He was often described in first person accounts as eccentric and mercurial, and there is a parallel contradictory mixture of academic tradition, spontaneity and improvisation in his artistic methods. For example, he is largely known as a painter of “ideal figures,” in which he portrayed women as embodiments of virtue, adorned in flowing white tunics and equipped with feathered angel’s wings. At the same time, he did this using methods that were surprisingly unorthodox, such as purposely mixing dirt into the paint, or (in one instance at least) using a broom instead of a brush to lessen the sense of rigidity in a newly finished, still-wet painting.
He survived with the help of his patrons, among them the industrialist Charles Lang Freer. Some of his finest works are in the collections of the Freer Gallery of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Academy of Design, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Art Institute of Chicago. Thayer was also resourceful in his teaching, which he saw as a useful, inseparable part of his own studio work. Among his devoted apprentices were Rockwell Kent, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Richard Meryman, Barry Faulkner (Thayer's cousin), Alexander and William James (the sons of Harvard philosopher William James), and Thayer's own son and daughter, Gerald and Gladys.
In a letter to Thomas Wilmer Dewing (c. 1917, in the collection of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution), Thayer reveals that his method was to work on a new painting for only three days. If he worked longer on it, he said, he would either accomplish nothing or would ruin it. So on the fourth day, he would instead take a break, getting as far from the work as possible, but meanwhile instruct each student to make an exact copy of that three-day painting. Then, when he did return to his studio, he would (in his words) "pounce on a copy and give it a three-day shove again". As a result, he would end up with alternate versions of the same painting, in substantially different finished states.
(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

End of March

From opaonlineshowcase.com

Since his move to the States, his work has undergone a natural metamorphosis. The subjects he paints are not the only things that have changed, but his techniques as well. "Before I did the Baltic Sea, and now I do the mountain streams of Colorado."

Art critics call Balkanski an impressionist - but more complex. Upon seeing Nikolo's exhibition in London, John Allen described his work as "Alert, a moment of being, engaged with a world that could dissolve to chaos but harmonized by attention...moment of meaning the fateful conjunction of type, personality and environment." The painter's years of work have produced a good variety of subject and color which appear in galleries and museums across the United States and Europe. He received his formal training in Bulgaria and Finland and currently lives and works in Denver, Colorado.

Willow Pond

Chicago Creek, Colorado

Welcoming of Winter

Taos Canyon

Spring Sunday

Images from nikolobalkanski.fineaw.com

Sunny Winter Day

Taos Clouds

Santa Mae

Images from mwfaquickdraw.com

His love of nature is evident in his work. Within his landscapes, pallet knives layer pebble upon rock, creating depth until streams appear to trickle from their frames. Nikolo Balkanski studied fine art in Bulgaria and Finland and exhibited his first one-man show at age twenty-one. He built a strong following in Europe as a master of portraiture and landscapes, with major exhibitions in Bulgaria, Finland, Sweden, England, France, and the United States.

He is highly regarded as an inspirational teacher and mentor. Balkanski’s work has been exhibited with Artists of America, the Colorado Governor’s Invitational where he received the Collector’s Choice Award in 1999, Great American Artists, Buffalo Bill Art Show & Sale,(Artist’s Choice Award 2007), Artists of the West, Bradford Brinton Museum, Arts for the Parks where he won Best Landscape in 1995.

His work currently is represented by Evergreen Fine Art Gallery, Colorado, Hayden-Hays Gallery, Colorado Springs, CO, Knox Galleries, Denver, Beaver Creek, CO, Harbor Springs, Michigan, Spirits in the Wind Gallery, Golden, CO and Weatherburn Gallery, Naples, Florida.

(mwfaquickdraw.com)

End of march

From opaonlineshowcase.com

Nikolo Balkanski plays with light and texture and employs strong thick brush strokes to convey a complete image. Within his landscapes, pallet knives layer pebble upon rock, creating depth until streams appear to trickle from their frames. "For me it is a real luxury to work on location." Nikolo said of his opportunity to paint such things as mountain scenes in the field. Since his move to the States, his work has undergone a natural metamorphosis. The subjects he paints are not the only things that have changed, but his techniques as well. "Before I did the Baltic Sea, and now I do the mountain streams of Colorado."

Willow Pond

Chicago Creek, Colorado

Welcoming of Winter

Taos Canyon

Spring Sunday

Images from nikolobalkanski.fineaw.com

Sunny Winter Day

Taos Clouds

Santa Mae

Images from mwfaquickdraw.com

Balkanski's love of nature is evident in his work. Within his landscapes, pallet knives layer pebble upon rock, creating depth until streams appear to trickle from their frames.

Nikolo Balkanski studied fine art in Bulgaria and Finland and exhibited his first one-man show at age twenty-one. He built a strong following in Europe as a master of portraiture and landscapes, with major exhibitions in Bulgaria, Finland, Sweden, England, France, and the United States. He is highly regarded as an inspirational teacher and mentor.

Balkanski’s work has been exhibited with Artists of America, the Colorado Governor’s Invitational where he received the Collector’s Choice Award in 1999, Great American Artists, Buffalo Bill Art Show & Sale,(Artist’s Choice Award 2007), Artists of the West, Bradford Brinton Museum, Arts for the Parks where he won Best Landscape in 1995. His work currently is represented by Evergreen Fine Art Gallery, Colorado, Hayden-Hays Gallery, Colorado Springs, CO, Knox Galleries, Denver, Beaver Creek, CO, Harbor Springs, Michigan, Spirits in the Wind Gallery, Golden, CO and Weatherburn Gallery, Naples, Florida.

(mwfaquickdraw.com)

Main Street Bridge Rochester

Source magart.rochester.edu

Memorial Art Gallery (Rochester, New York)

From wikimedia.org

Colin Campbell Cooper, Jr. (March 8, 1856 – November 6, 1937) was an American Impressionist painter, perhaps most renowned for his architectural paintings, especially of skyscrapers in New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago. An avid traveler, he was also known for his paintings of European and Asian landmarks, as well as natural landscapes, portraits, florals, and interiors. In addition to being a painter, he was also a teacher and writer. His first wife, Emma Lampert Cooper, was also a highly regarded painter. His mother, Emily Williams Cooper, whose ancestor emigrated to the U.S. from Weymouth, England, was an amateur painter in watercolors. His father, Dr. Colin Campbell Cooper, whose grandfather came from Derry, Ireland, was a surgeon and a lawyer with a great appreciation for the arts. Young Colin had been inspired by the art which he discovered when he attended the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876. Both of his parents were highly supportive of his ambitions, encouraging him to become an artist.

(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Wall Street Ferry Ship

From fineartamerica.com

Broad Street Station Philadelphia

Lower broadway in wartime

Mountains of Manhattan

Images from canvaz.com

Cooper was as proficient painting in watercolors as he was in oils. He would often create a small watercolor study before painting a larger work of the same subject in oils. But the smaller watercolors were not mere sketches for his own use; they were finished pieces which he exhibited, sometimes years earlier than the larger corresponding oil paintings that he would ultimately produce. Cooper was elected to a prestigious membership in the National Academy of Design in 1912 (he had previously been elected an Associate, four years earlier).

(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

East Coast, West Coast and Beyond

From images.monstermarketplace.com

Cooper’s acclaimed cityscapes of the East Coast celebrate the modern, fast-paced city and the progress represented by its quickly-changing skylines. Finally, Cooper’s west coast works depict his continued interest in monumental architecture throughout his career, including paintings of the “city” created for the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915 in San Francisco as well as more intimate scenes of figures and gardens bathed in sunlight. (heckscher.org) Summer Sailing From stanfordfineart.net Grand Central Station Poll and Canadian Building Taj Mahal Afternoon Images from oceansbridge.com It seems clear that a great deal of Cooper's skill in architectural painting is due at least in part to his understanding of the fundamental structure underlying the "skin" of a building, which Cooper could easily have extrapolated from his (then somewhat shocking) studies of anatomy with Thomas Eakins. Certainly Cooper is primarily known as an American Impressionist painter of the skyscraper. However, Cooper was not just an architectural painter. His portraits are lively and have a very personal quality which are an accurate reflection of the personalities he painted. His landscapes, even the quick gouache sketches with which he documented his travels, have a strong spirit of place.

In the later part of his life Cooper wrote about his choices of subject matter, "While architectural subjects have always delighted me, yet I have never wanted to confine myself to one class of subject, which has always seemed to limit the joy of it--life is so full of interesting things."

(sullivangoss.com)

After his wife's death, Cooper moved to Santa Barbara, California in January 1921. Santa Barbara would be his home base for the rest of his life, spending two years in northern Europe and Tunisia. He became Dean of Painting at the Santa Barbara Community School of Arts. In April 1927, he married his second wife, Marie Henriette Frehsee, in Arizona. Cooper continued to enjoy traveling, and kept painting until prevented from doing so by failing eyesight in his last years. He died in Santa Barbara on November 6, 1937 at the age of 81. In 1938 Santa Barbara's Faulkner Memorial Art Gallery paid tribute to Cooper's legacy by presenting a memorial exhibition of his work.

(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Fishermen Mending Nets

From ussrpainting.blogspot.com

Night in Ukraine

From bukowskis.com

Kolesnikov was born in the Ukraine and, after studying at the Odessa Art School, he entered the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in 1903 without having to pass exams, such was his talent. Here he was taught by Ilya Yefimovich Repin (1844-1930) and Vladimir Makovsky (1846-1920). The influence of the Russian Realist tradition established by these artists’ can be seen in the present work. Repin’s masterpiece Barge Haulers on the Volga, for instance, also portrays the everyday struggles and hardships of the poor.

Kolesnikov won praise from his teachers and the public alike and was one of the favorite artists of Tsar Nicolas II, who once gave the painter an engraved cigarette-case as a personal gift. After the Russian revolution, however, he moved to Yugoslavia though he continued to paint and exhibit throughout Europe. Kolesnikov was gifted with a bright individual style, standing out among the most prominent artists of his time. He left a rich and diverse legacy and was equally skilful in genre and landscape as well as in graphic and painting techniques. After emigrating he remained faithful to his Russian subjects, with bright winter landscapes and colorful festivities among his favorite themes.

(masterart.com)

The Apple Seller

From artfact.com

The Russian Sale

From artfact.com

Washerwomen
From Liveauctioneers.com

Rotwild im Winterwald

From van-ham.com

In the Fields

From masterart.com

In this above work, Stepan Feodorovich Kolesnikov depicts the harsh realities of Russian rural life. Three peasants have been trying to plough the boggy field but it seems that the plough itself has broken. One of the women is attempting to fix the axle while the tall muscular horse waits patiently nearby. The landscape is painted in a dreary and muted palette leaving no optimistic sense that there will be a bountiful end product to the workers’ labors. The black soil and stark trees emphasize the unfertile nature of the landscape and the struggle of the figures. The figures are anonymous and Kolesnikov has, therefore, painted a scene that reflects the general hardships of agricultural life in Russia and the conditions that all other farmers must contend with.
(masterart.com)

The Potato Harvest in Belorussia

(Private Collection)

From zolotoivek.tumblr.com

Similar themes are explored by Kolesnikov in The Potato Harvest in Belorussia. A group of peasant women labor in the sun to harvest the potato crop, while a male figure watches them work, like In the Fields. The women are bent double, which highlights the backbreaking hardship of their work and again their faces are hidden, so that they represent their kind as a whole. In neither work is the landscape idealized. Rather it represents a barren place where one must toil to reap any sort of reward. In stylistic terms both works exhibit a muted palette and the broad brush strokes which Kolesnikov favored.

(masterart.com)

Marche aux fleurs

From artistsandart.com

Place Vendome

From painterlog.com

Antoine Blanchard (Marcel Masson) was born in France on November 15, 1910 in a small village near the banks of the Loire. He was the eldest of three children and his father, a carver, managed a small carpentry and furniture shop. Antoine would watch his father hand carve the furniture and began to display an artistic flair early in life - in an effort to promote this talent, his parents sent him to Blois for drawing lessons.

He continued his training in Rennes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he studied sculpture and drawing. Upon completion of his studies, he was awarded the schools highest award: Le Prix du Ministre. Many of the subjects and scenes he portrayed were taken from images he collected of Paris during the 1890's and he would often work on paintings for days or months before he finally felt they were complete. A.P. Larde comments in his book Antoine Blanchard, His Life His Work that he has always spent much time on his work. This explains why his production has always been rather limited, unlike the hurried and multiple proliferations of some modern artists… Delicate touches of luminous and shimmering tones produce a marvelous impression of harmony, brightness and light. Alternate shadings and lights, sensitive and mellow blending allow the artist to attain a hardly-ever reached degree of grace, of radiant and glimmering freshness. (antoineblanchard.org)

Champs-Élysées, Arc de Triomphe

Provenance

Private Collection, Michigan

Rehs Galleries, Inc., New York City

Private Collection, Florida

From antoineblanchard.org

Arc de Triomphe

Provenance Rehs Galleries, Inc., New York City

From antoineblanchard.org

Champs-Élysées, Winter

Provenance

Private collection, Springfield, Florida

Rehs Galleries Inc., New York City, 2003

Private collection, Texas, 2004

From antoineblanchard.org

Antoine Blanchard was not an outgoing painter like his contemporary Marcel Dyf. It was not his practice to attend openings and exhibitions and charm his audience. Instead, he labored relentlessly in his studio, creating Parisian scenes that were inspired by artists like Edouard Cortes (1884-1969) and E. Galien Laloue but which relied on his own unique palette and fluid brushwork. His romanticized scenes of fin-de-siècle Paris were not sold by the artist directly to galleries, but to agents, essentially art brokers, who then sent them to galleries in Europe, the United Kingdom and, especially, the United States. And, Blanchard dealt with a number of dealers, because cash on the barrel counted more than good intentions. He came of age in an era when dealers bought and owned their inventory. Galleries purchased the works of contemporary painters instead of taking work on consignment as is customary today. So, Blanchard was more than willing to sell his paintings while knowing that his broker would mark them up when he sold them to the gallery, and then that the gallery had to make their profit as well.

In the 1960s, when Blanchards first became popular places like New York, Los Angeles and Texas, it took a lot more effort and a considerable investment for a broker to develop a network of dealers in the United States. So the artist set his price and was usually content to work in his studio and allow others to do the traveling, marketing and promotion that will always be part of the art business. Once a European or American agent purchased a group of paintings from Blanchard, he would then in turn sell them to galleries in the United States, usually ones that he worked with and sold the work of other artists to. A gallery bought the Blanchard paintings outright, usually sending a deposit and then the balance once the paintings arrived. In the 1950s through the 1970s, most of these agents had a large inventory and they usually extended some credit to their dealers to encourage purchases. The Blanchards were normally sent to the United States rolled in tubes. It was quicker, less expensive and safer to send the paintings rolled in a sturdy tube than it was to stretch them in Europe, pack them in boxes and send them off on a long voyage. Now, dealers of the 1950s and 1960s were usually more practical than those of today, some of whom have never learned to stretch or frame a painting. So it was second nature for them to stretch the paintings that came from Europe themselves. And, it is the fact that the paintings were stretched here in the States – the land of the inch and foot – that accounts for the slight variation in sizes that is found in authentic Blanchards on the American market.

Blanchard painted his work to fit standard size French stretcher bars. In the early years, tourists often purchased Blanchard’s paintings in Paris. His smaller works could be taken home in a suitcase. These would mostly have been framed in France. As an export market developed, however, he sent his paintings to his agent – who could be in France or Austria for example – who then shipped them onto dealers in the United States or the U.K. These paintings were painted roughly to the size of 35 x 45cm or 45 x 55cm, which works out to be precisely 13.7” x 17.7” and 17.7” x 21.65” respectively. These are anything but standard sizes on our market. So, when the dealers stretched the paintings here in the United States, they had to go to the expense of ordering or mitering “custom” stretcher bars.

(antoineblanchard.wordpress.com)

Antoine Blanchard was often introduced to collectors as the foremost artist of Parisian street scenes of his day. Like his predecessors, the French masters Galien-Laloue, Cortes, Loir and Utrillo, Blanchard has made an impact on contemporary art. Blanchard was encouraged at a young age to enter the arts. His parents first sent him as a young boy to an art school in Blois, and then relocated the entire family to Rennes in Brittany so that young Antoine could study there at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Three years later, in 1932, the young artist moved to Paris in order to Study at its world famous Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Upon completion of his studies, Blanchard was awarded the Prix de Rome, an honor rarely given to an artist of his young age. The following years were spent in Paris recording scenes of the city’s bustling streets characterized by glowing street lamps, flower vendors pushing carts full of brilliantly-colored bouquets and fashionable pedestrians crowding the sidewalks.

The artist, whose works were an immediate success, favored the styles of Eugene Galien-Laloue and Edouard Cortes. Indeed, critics have compared his works to the traditional Paris street scenes painted in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s in both style and subject matter. It is, however, important to note that Blanchard’s pieces are more delicate in brushwork, more generous in color and more alive in movement than those of his predecessors. Combining his years of classical training with innovative techniques of the 20th century, Blanchard was a trendsetter. The artist’s works executed throughout his fifty year long career are witness to his gradual development in technique, moving from heavy and dark tones similar to those of the old masters, to a new style using numerous strokes of color lightly applied to the canvas. With immense imagination, profound understanding of color and light and accuracy in architectural detail, Blanchard has continually delighted the art world with his compositions.

(renoirinc.com)

Le Café de la Paix

Provenance

Private collection, Nebraska

Rehs Galleries, Inc., New York City

Private collection

From renoirinc.com

In 1979, his large canvas Le Café de la Paix won the Premier Grand Prix at the first art competition held in Paris’ famed Café de la Paix on the bustling Boulevard des Capucines. That work is now part of a major collection in Salt Lake City, Utah. Spanning five decades of ceaseless hours spent in front of the easel, Blanchard’s career was fired by a pressing goal to continually excel. This strict discipline did not, however, harden his work – it proved only to refine it. Along with Utrillo, Loir, Guys, Galien-Laloue and Cortes, Antoine Blanchard is one of the great impressionists of modern times.

(renoirinc.com)

Theatre du Chatelet

Place de la Madeleine, Hiver

Place de la Republic

Images from wikipaintings.org

Blanchard initially modeled Edouard Cortes, as a Belle Epoque painter with classical art training. Blanchard’s own style developed, using a lighter, and brighter palette of colors, and a brushstroke which was light, with small strokes, resembling calligraphy. Blanchard’s excellent use of perspective, softer pastel tones, and lighter brush touch gave his paintings a more decorative look, recalling previous impressionist artists.

Blanchard viewed Paris in a historical rear view mirror, adding his own romance. He initially collected sepia postcards of Paris, which reflected life of peace, prosperity, and beauty in Paris, as opposed to the time after World War I, in which he lived.

Subjects of his paintings are the nobility chateaus of Loire Valley, the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Place Concorde the Opera, and the Arc de Triomphe, and many of the boulevards in Paris. His paintings such as Boulevard De La Madeleine, and Les Grands Boulevards La Porte St Denis let the viewer enjoy seeing horse-drawn carriages, fashionably-dressed ladies and gents, and sidewalk cafes, depicting Paris throughout the seasons.

Blanchard never sought fame as an artist, and was content to work in his studio, until his death in 1988. Blanchard’s hundreds of paintings allow the viewer to stroll along the Paris streets, window shop along the boulevards, and enjoy the beautiful scenic past of Paris.

(totallyhistory.com)

Edouard Cortes

From mirappraisal.com

Post-Impressionist Édouard Cortès is best known for his lively and colorful scenes of bustling Parisian streets. Views that depict the activities at the cafes, flower stalls, theatres, carriages with elegantly dressed passengers were quite the rage. Paintings of fashionable Parisians in chic settings replaced historical and mythic themes on drawing room walls. The feeling in the land at least among the burgeoning middle classes was one of prosperity and joie de vivre. This mirror on their lives was indeed a testament of that spirit. Paris at the time had any number of meeting places for all spectrum of society.

At age seventeen, Cortès began his studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The year 1901 marked the artist's first exhibition at the Salon des Artistes Francais of one of his works, a dramatic Paris street scene at dusk, which brought him immediate fame. Later, as an active member of the prestigious Societe des Artistes Francais, Cortès exhibited his works yearly in Paris at the Society's salon as well as at the Salon des Independants and the Salon de l'Hiver. With the tremendous success that his Paris scenes brought him during his lifetime, Cortès continues to delight art-lovers today and is considered to be one of the greatest masters of French impressionism. His paintings express the romance, energy and charm of old Paris through his masterly application of bold brush strokes and intriguing colors. His works display the profound knowledge he held of perspective and composition.

(FADA.COM)

Chatelet

St.Denis

Flower Market At La Madeleine

Boulevard de la Madeleine

Rue de Rivoli

Place de la Concorde

Images from wikipaintings.org

A Spring Day

Boulevard a Paris

Theatre de Vaudeville

Rue Dulm Pantheon

From pinterest.com

Although Cortès was a pacifist, when war came close to his native village he was compelled to enlist in a French Infantry Regiment at the age of 32. As a contact agent Cortès was wounded by a bayonet, evacuated to a military hospital, and awarded the Croix de Guerre. After recovery he was the reassigned to utilize his artistic talent to sketch enemy positions. Later in life his convictions led him to refuse the Légion d'Honneur from the French Government. In 1919 he was demobilized.

At the age of 17, Édouard began his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His first exhibition in 1901 brought him immediate recognition. Cortès stressed his independence. Once in responding to a journalist whom asked if he was a student of Luigi Loir; he replied in pun, "Non, elève de lui tout seul." ("No, a student of myself only.") His works were first exhibited in North America in 1945 and he subsequently achieved even greater success. In his last year of life he was awarded the prestigious Prix Antoine-Quinson from the Salon de Vincennes.

(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Paris

From one1more2time3.wordpress.com

Place de la Madeleine

From olympia-antiques.com

Paris street

From artcontrarian.blogspot.com

As an artist, Edouard Cortès sought to discover the unperceived aspects of nature and man; those special atmospheric qualities of mist in the air, the afternoon sun, evening shadows, rattling carriages and bookstalls along the quays of the river Seine. Cortès captured in oils the unique and magical light of Paris. In some paintings his stonework seems almost to “weather” before our eyes and in others it glistens like pearls against a summer sky. In evening compositions night falls like a gentle veil, wistful and wreath-like, holding intact shadows of the night.

Edouard Cortes windows shine brightly, blazing with his lamps glowing, signs shimmer and streets appear wet from a sultry nocturnal rain. Clearly evident is Cortès’ talent for creating the perfect composition, every angle giving way to a new look.

Living in the heart of Paris, Cortès was surrounded by the many famous landmarks: Notre Dame, La Madeleine, L’Opera, the Café de la Paix, Place de la Concorde, La Place Vendome, the Eiffel Tower and more. Cortès deliberately chose these sights, studying each from different points of view, at certain times of the day and in varying seasons. The dramatic facades of winter versus summer resulted in entirely different compositions, crystalline white snow, chilled air and buildings standing triumphant in a winter wonderland, versus the sweet smell of summer, flower vendors and book sellers, blazing shadows and glistening white fountains. Unique to Cortès was his impressionistic flair with the brush. With strict precision in the use of his brush and oils, each movement of the paint on canvas made its impact.

(haynesfineart.com)

Man Climbing a Mountain

From mowglisurf.com

A very special child was born to eastern European immigrants Max and Sarah Tepper on Christmas Day, 1899, on the lower east side of Manhattan. New York’s melting pot is well known for the talents that emerged from those streets of pushcarts and immigrants. Hard work was the key to success there, and Saul Tepper was no exception.

By 19, he was working full time in his own lettering studio while studying art at night and on weekends. He found William DeLeftwich Dodge’s composition classes at Cooper Union and George Bridgeman’s “ideas in drawing” at the Art Students League, were important influences. But his most important influence came later, under Harvey Dunn at the Grand Central Art School and at Dunn’s Tenafly, New Jersey, studio.

A multifaceted talent, Saul branched out into other fields. Aside from his masterful use of the brush, Saul had a strong love of music which has led to many published songs and resulted in a membership in ASCAP in 1941. He created many of the songs for the popular “Illustrators Shows,” produced by the Society of Illustrators. The Illustrators Barbershop Quartet, with Saul as baritone, was a highlight of those productions. Over the years, Saul’s music has been recorded by Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Glenn Miller, Harry James and many others.

Second illustration for The Tall Ladder

From chawedrosin.files.wordpress.com

As a lecturer, Saul has spoken often to groups of students and professionals at Cooper Union, Pratt Institute, the Society of Illustrators and Art Directors Clubs. Because Saul knows the importance of the patient help one artist will lend another, he has given of his time to many. Al Dorne apprenticed to Saul at his first lettering studio and later Harry Beckoff and others. We will never know how many would have put down the pen for a shovel without Saul’s help. He tells about one young man, Arthur DeKuh, an ex-boxer and bathhouse bouncer, who, through hard work and Saul’s critiques, established a career in art.

Saul, having grown up during the Golden Age of American Illustration, was influenced by it. The period between World War I and II was Saul’s “Golden Age,” an era of romance and adventure in which he, Cornwell and Rockwell played an important part. Reproduced in the major magazines for four decades, Saul’s work became a source of inspiration for many artists of that period. In the 1950’s, still an active artist for the new adventure magazines (True, Argosy and Real), Saul reached a point of dissatisfaction.

He became TV art director for J. Walter Thompson and BBD&O, creating images for TV commercials. He also continued with his music, composing the Red Cross theme song for 1960-1961.

(societyillustrators.org)

The Wind

From underpaintings.blogspot.com

Teal, purple, black

From pinterest.com

ALCOA

From theblockforum.com

War

From patricksaunders.blogspot.com

PIEDMONT

From nevsepic.com.ua

Saul Tepper was a native New Yorker who had a highly successful career as an illustrator. In 1926 he studied at Grand Central Art School under illustration artist Harvey Dunn, who taught several illustrators of Tepper's generation who went on to achieve prominence in their field. This painting probably was done around that time. Tepper's characteristic style was realistic, with bold contrasts of light and dark and close attention to detail. He produced illustrations for most of the major magazines of the time such as Liberty Magazine, as well as advertising art for major accounts such as General Electric, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Mobil and Texaco. Tepper was elected to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 1980. Meanwhile, he also had a second career as a popular songwriter.

(georgeglazer.com)

David A. Leffel

Portrait by Donna Granata - 2008

From focusonthemasters.com

Self Portrait

From pinterest.com

Self Portrait drawing

From freeblueprints.net

Born in Brooklyn in 1931, the distinguished painter David A. Leffel spent eleven years of his childhood battling a bone disease in various hospitals. He used this time to hone his drawing abilities. This passion eventually led him to enroll in Parsons School of Design, as well as Fordham University. At the Art Students League of New York, he flourished under Frank Mason and ultimately taught there for 25 years.

In 1992 Leffel and his partner, the distinguished painter Sherrie McGraw, moved to Taos, where their studios overlook the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Well-known to art students worldwide through his bestselling books and videos, Leffel conducts workshops throughout the country and launched his own annual awards program for excellence in painting.

(Excerpts from the article “David A Leffel: The Elegance of Paradox” by Rachel Wolf, Fine Art Conoisseur, October 2011)

Still Life

From artcontrarian.blogspot.com

Still life

From newcityart.blogspot.com

Still life

From pinterest.com

In 1959-1960, Leffel studied at the Art Student's League in New York City. There he developed the chiaroscuro technique that has led to his frequent tribute as a "20th-century old master."

In 1972 Leffel returned to the Art Students League as an instructor. Under the influence of the great 17th-century Dutch masters, especially Rembrandt, Leffel's work reflects a personal belief that a painting must convey a sense of mystery and beauty. Throughout the interplay of light and shadow, through texture and shape and color, Leffel transforms the simple and ubiquitous objects of everyday life into rich creations of enigma and presence. Although he concentrates much of his efforts on still lifes and portraits, Leffel has done more landscape paintings with strong skies, dark clouds, and a magnificent shaft of light. For the self-described light and shadow painter, the canvas presents the challenge to create "beauty and simplicity through colors, textures, shapes, lights, and darks, as they are the tools of the artist. If he can see."

(americanartinvitational.com)

Love For Three Oranges

From brightlightfineart.com

Love For Three Oranges

From aaronoz.com

David A. Leffel is a twentieth-century artist who paints in the classic Flemish/Dutch old master style, much in the manner of Rembrandt or Chardin. His subject matter is still-lifes, landscapes, portraits and figures, but the real subject of his work is how light affects everything, as it gently drifts from one object to another. Light is, in fact, what Leffel calls "the concept" of the painting.

For David, beauty is absolute, perfect and universal. He believes the goal of the artist is to understand beauty and to translate its essence upon the canvas. His art reflects this constant striving to expand this understanding, and, his artistic application of the knowledge. Since beauty is absolute, and not relative to the artist, art is therefore timeless. Although the art of Leffel is reminiscent of the Dutch Baroque painters, he is a master of light and shadow. When Leffel paints, even the simplest still lifes are dramatic, and fill the observer with a profound sense of awe. Viewers must appreciate the art of David A. Leffel on its own terms, and not try to apply stylistic associations to his work. The beauty Leffel conveys on canvas testifies to his understanding and talent.

(frankmkamer.com)

Red Onions, Eggs and paints

From pinterest.com

David Leffel’s works have been exhibited in major museums and private collections, and he has received three gold medals at the National Academy of Western Art, as well as a gold medal from the Hudson Valley Art Association and Allied Artists of America. He has also been featured in a number of publications including American Artist Magazine, Artists of the Rockies and the Golden West, Southwest Art, American Artists of Renown, and American Society of Portrait Artists. An instructional painting book on Leffel’s teachings was written by Linda Cateura, Oil Painting Secrets from a Master (Watson Guptill, 1984). It continues to instruct new generations of painters. Internationally recognized as a “20th Century Old Master,” David Leffel illuminates his paintings with a light that seems to fall from deepest memory.

Yet while the figures of 17th Century Dutch Masters—most notably Rembrandt—cast powerful shadows on Leffel’s work, it is not only the shades of history, but the artist’s immediacy, that awaken us to brilliance. Perhaps in this way more than any other, David Leffel proves himself a true master of chiaroscuro—not only with shadow and light, but with past and present. In An Artist Teaches: Reflections on the Art of Painting, we discover the revolutionary approach that Leffel brings to the classical tradition of painting.

(brightlightpublishing.com)

George Carlson and Boy w/Eagle, 1991

T’ang Horse and Chinese Lanterns, 1996

W. Donald Head, 1997

Rembrandt, Pushman and Court Lady, 2000

Mery, 2001 Edward “Eddie” Locke, 2001

Images from davidleffel.com

Although he concentrates much of his efforts on still life and portraits, since his move to New Mexico in 1992, Leffel has done more landscape paintings with strong skies, dark clouds, and a magnificent shaft of light. For the self-described light and shadow painter, the canvas presents the challenge to create "beauty and simplicity through colors, textures, shapes, lights, and darks, as they are the tools of the artist. If he can see…"

(whistlepik.com)

Le Bassin De Carenage

Boat in the port

Images from fineartamerica.com

Born 1955 in Morocco of French parents, Jean-Paul Courchia moved to the Provence region of France in 1964. Here he began his career as an artist with his first exhibition in 1981. In 1994, the prestigious Jouvene Gallery of Marseille started to represent his works. Jouvene has been associated with some of the finest French painters including Cezanne and Van Gogh. With the addition of Courchia they continue their support of the traditional Provençal landscape painting.

Courchia shares many common features with he best-known Provençal painters. These include a deliberate forcefulness and willful expression of emotional power. the exaggeration of volume, color and line are also manifest in Courchia’s process, often through distortion. His compositions are enhanced by superimposing broad strokes of color and light over scenes of everyday life. His canvases are serene reminders of the past. His simplification of objects into shapes and broad bans of color disguises a complexity of emotion. His dramatic use of shadows and reflections give motion and vitality to his works. The absence of figures does not imply a barren or abandoned landscape devoid of life. The colors and shapes themselves are the life of Courchia’s paintings and they are as striking and animated as any human figure, if not more so.

Gallery Revel, New York began their relationship with the artist in 1998, bringing the painting of Provence to the Americas. In June of 1999 and again in 2005, the National Arts Club in New York hosted a one-man show for Courchia. His work has great appeal, bringing the warm sunshine and leisurely life style of Provence alive on the canvas. Thematically his paintings concentrate on the subjects most associated with the region, i.e. the cafes, the hidden gardens, the harbor and the magnificent views. What typically attracts the viewer is the contrast between the simplicity of style and the complexity of emotion.

(mdhfinearts.com)

Entrée du port de Marseille avec voile par

images from france.jeditoo.com

Jean-Paul Courchia is a highly successful painter both in Europe and in America. His oils on canvas were displayed in Marseille in the famous Provençal Gallery Jouvène, which Van Gogh and Cezanne called home for their artwork. Her Highness Queen Paola of Belgium, Madame Nobutaka Shinomiya, wife of the Consul of Japan in Marseille, and Mr. Aldon James, president of the National Arts Club in New-York, are avid collectors of his work.

Jean-Paul Courchia is also a unique speaker, able to explain through a simple approach the way we see art. He is a physician and a world renowned artist painter. He splits his life among his office, his studio and the department of ophthalmology where his two passions merge: he works on the relationship between art and the brain by analyzing eye’s movements.

(fineartamerica.com)

La Place de St. Remy

Chaises Longues Op La Place

Images from poemes-provence.fr

He is often requested to give lectures in France and in the United- States about the art visitors’ visual strategy, and art and science. If you think that you are free in front of a painting you are wrong. Once the artist “catches” you he makes you travel in his work of art. If he is clever and succeeds in his plan, he will show you elements that are at the base of his message. If you stay in front of the painting, you will connect with the brain of the painter when he created his work. Through the study of eye movement he can describe the most complicated inner workings of the brain in a way that no one could understand. There is another facet to his interesting persona: medical doctor of endocrinology and metabolic diseases, he is fascinated by science and has given about one hundred of lectures in both fields: endocrinology and vision in art.

Measurements of eye movements in the discovery of a painting show how vision is often disconnected from the brain. Starting out from a preliminary study on the behaviour of museum visitors, and in particular the average time spent in front of a picture (about 12 seconds!), his research is intended to highlight the information picked up by viewers exploring various paintings. You will be captivated by the videos showing the eye-gaze strategies in paintings by Henri Matisse and Francisco Goya.

In a new work presented at the French Society of Ophthalmology he explores the last painting of Van Gogh, and shows how the artistic information conducts the eye of the spectator. Through this painting, we discover the artist’s brain in his last moments. His study interested the documentation center of the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. It is a unique chance to have in the same personality the two sides of these fields, artistic and scientific knowledge.

During his lecture, Doctor Courchia will bring you in his studio to explain how a painter, whether consciously or not, uses his abilities to catch the eye and makes it travel between the lines and the colours.

(fineartamerica.com)

The interplay of light and shadows is not by accident in the works Jean-Paul Courchia. And the basic constriction of many famous works of art is also not by accident. He is fascinated by science, art, medicine, perceptions, and light. He is working with the department of ophthalmology in Saint-Joseph’s hospital in Marseille and he is often requested to give lectures in France about the visual strategy of visitors in front of paintings. Measurements of eye movements in the discovery of a painting show how vision is often disconnected from the brain. One of his videos shows the eye gaze strategies in paintings by Henri Matisse and Francisco Goya. In a new work presented at the French Society of Ophthalmology in Paris in May 2007, he realizes the exploration of the last painting of Van Gogh, and shows how the artistic information conducts the eye of the spectator.

(westportrivergallery.com)

Jean Fracois Rafelli

From art.com

Village Street

From oilpaintingsgallery.com

Rue-de-Montmartre

From giornivacanzieri.blogspot.com

Paris, le boulevard Haussmann

Levard des Italiens,Paris

Images from .impressionism-art.org

A Boulevard

A Gypsy

A Lane of Plane Trees 1910

A Ragman Lighting His Pipe 1879

A Sunlit Port

Images from neptis.egloos.com

Jean-François Raffaëlli (April 20, 1850 – February 11, 1924) was a French realist painter, sculptor, and printmaker who exhibited with the Impressionists. He was also active as an actor and writer.

He was born in Paris, and showed an interest in music and theatre before becoming a painter in 1870. One of his landscape paintings was accepted for exhibition at the Salon in that same year. In October 1871 he began three months of study under Jean-Léon Gérôme at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris; he had no other formal training.

Raffaëlli produced primarily costume pictures until 1876, when he began to depict the people of his time—particularly peasants, workers, and rag pickers seen in the suburbs of Paris—in a realistic style. His new work was championed by influential critics such as J.-K. Huysmans, as well as by Edgar Degas. The rag-picker became for Raffaëlli a symbol of the alienation of the individual in modern society.

Art historian Barbara S. Fields has written of Raffaëlli's interest in the positivist philosophy of Hippolyte-Adolphe Taine, which led him to articulate a theory of realism that he christened caractérisme. He hoped to set himself apart from those unthinking, so-called realist artists whose art provided the viewer with only a literal depiction of nature.

His careful observation of man in his milieu paralleled the anti-aesthetic, anti-romantic approach of the literary Naturalists, such as Zola and Huysmans. Degas invited Raffaëlli to participate in the Impressionist exhibitions of 1880 and 1881, an action that bitterly divided the group; not only was Raffaëlli not an Impressionist, but he threatened to dominate the 1880 exhibition with his outsized display of 37 works.

Monet, resentful of Degas's insistence on expanding the Impressionist exhibitions by including several realists, chose not to exhibit, complaining, "The little chapel has become a commonplace school which opens its doors to the first dauber to come along."

An example of Raffaëlli's work from this period is Les buveurs d'absinthe (1881, in the California Palace of Legion of Honor Art Museum in San Francisco). After 1890 Raffaëlli shifted his attention from the suburbs of Paris to city itself, and the street scenes that resulted were well received by the public and the critics. He made a number of sculptures, but these are known today only through photographs.

In the later years of his life, he concentrated on color printmaking. Raffaëlli died in Paris on February 11, 1924.

(Wikipedia)

Street in a Rural Village

The Minstrels

Suburbs of Paris

Strollers Leaving a Village

Wedding Invitations

Images from the-athenaeum.org

Boulevard

Saint-Michel

Vue de Notre-Dame

Eze-Sur-Mer

Images from .overstockart.com

Walter Elmer Schofield, 1935

Cornish coast Eng. 1935

From ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART

Walter Elmer Schofield was a landscape painter associated with the Pennsylvania impressionists. Known for his virile, or vigorously masculine, style of painting, Schofield specialized in snow scenes, painted in Bucks County and other locales in the Delaware River Valley, as well as marine landscapes often painted in Cornwall, England. A strapping outdoorsman who stood 6'4", Schofield generally painted outdoors, en plein air, savoring even the bitterest winter weather.

Although Schofield's early landscapes were soft and romantic, featuring muted greens, grays, and browns in a tonalist manner, his mature work was characterized by bold realism and impressionism. These paintings are vibrant, exulting in the energy of coursing, frosty streams, while showing bold colors, and broad, thick, heavy brushstrokes. Schofield divided his time between the United States, where he was based in the Philadelphia area, and Cornwall, in England, where his wife Muriel and their children resided. Schofield descended from an illustriously creative family; his mother, Mary Wollstonecraft Schofield, was the grand-niece of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

( The James A. Michener Art Museum)

June Morning

From the-athenaeum.org

Trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, PA from 1889 to 1892, Schofield studied with Thomas Anshutz, the famous student of Thomas Eakins. Schofield became associated with the circle of the American realists including artists such as Edward Redfield, Everett Shinn, Robert Henri, George Luks, and others. Additionally, Schofield attended the weekly meetings of the Robert Henri studio as well as studied abroad.

Schofield studied art at the Academie Julian in Paris and later, after marrying his British born wife Muriel Redmayne, settled in the artist colony of St. Ives, Cornwall, England. This art colony was known for following the tradition of plein aire landscape painting. Schofield produced American landscape paintings in and around New Hope, PA and he was acquainted with the members of the New Hope artist colony. His most well known American landscape paintings are those which were produced in the region of the Delaware River and Canal from circa 1925 to 1940.

His best known English landscape paintings were produced from about 1901 to 1940.

(drloriv.com)

The Clearing Storm

From ajkollar.com

Frosty Morning

From averygalleries.com

Schofield won many awards during his lifetime, including two gold medals from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, three awards from the National Academy of Design, and the National Arts Club among many others.

His work is in the permanent collections of some of the worlds most prestigious institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Luxembourg Museum in Paris, James A. Michener Art Museum and the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian Institute, among others. (gratzgallery.com)

For three years John Brosio accompanied storm chasers in the Midwest, gathering actual sensory information and taking enough photographs to fuel his decades-long relationship with the All-American twister. His early tornado paintings almost seem a pretense for his unabashed love of surface and intense color.

In “Edge Of Town” Brosio paints an eerily deserted street in the kind of small town where nothing ever happens--except very, very bad weather. One silhouetted, seemingly unconcerned pedestrian crosses the street nonchalantly unaware, or perhaps in denial, of the black, snake-like cloud of destruction inexorably approaching. The palpable and strange disconnect between the ominous impending twister and almost certain devastation in its path, contrasted with the calm of the pedestrian, begs a question: Is it human proclivity to ignore what we cannot control? Is it a paralysis of helplessness that leads us to pretend that our houses will protect us against flood, earthquake, fires, volcano’s, and yes, tornados? Is it hubris that we continue to build on cliffs, in canyons, on riverbanks, in forests and at the feet of volcanoes, almost daring nature to dislodge us?

Brosio is a master of the frozen moment right before the dreadful is about to happen. We become a witness, but are just rubbernecking, powerless to affect the outcome. We are stuck in this dangerous, unpredictable netherland--a place of eerie unreality--like a bad dream. Not unlike Chauncey Gardiner, in the 1979 film “Being There,” we “like to watch.” Brosio’s works are an ode to the human capacity for self-deception and inaction.

(JOHN BROSIO by Nancy Kay Turner at artscenecal.com)

Harbinger (Self-Portrait)

From 444.hu John

Brosio was born in Pasadena, California and received a BFA from University of California at Davis. Earlier to that he attended Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

The tornado in his work represents a perfect blend of mythology and science. He finds it easy to imagine it being alive and unpredictable, to view it as a god or agent thereof. One sees this mile high banshee choosing certain targets and skipping others like a jittery reaper.

Being witness to the birth, entire life, death, and interim behavior of a tornado was for Brosio witnessing a creature greater than human and hearing the footfall of a giant. And akin to a human, after all the wonder and speculation, it is returned to a mass of animated dust.

(artistaday.com)

Scouring

From artistaday.com

Queen of Suburbia

From portersquare.blogspot.com

State of the Union Edge of Town

From 444.hu

Ripping through the American landscape genre in much the same way as the actual twisters that serve as the subject matter for these new works, John Brosio brings an innovative sense of drama and tension to a traditional style of depicting scenes from nature.

“For me the tornado represents a perfect blend of mythology and science,” says Brosio. “It is easy to imagine it alive and unpredictable, to view it as a god or agent thereof. One sees this mile-high banshee choosing certain targets and skipping others like a jittery reaper with sound and mannerisms so evocative of a living entity.

” Brosio’s handle on the twisters he depicts comes from a deep understanding of the subject gained from doing field research as an actual storm chaser and watching the ebb and flow of these destructive forces as they make their way across the American prairie.

“Witnessing its birth, entire life, death and interim behavior leaves me feeling privy to the life of an animal greater than us—the footfall of a giant,” says Brosio. “And, after all the wonder and speculation, it is in the end, like me, just a mass of animated dust.”

However, it’s not just the drama of the scenes that attracts Brosio to the subject matter. For him, the paintings still maintain a very high degree of technical possibilities that need to be understood to fully delve into these new works. “The inspiration for this particular set of twister paintings is derived from an exploration of the figure/ground relationship, a dynamic that pervades all art,” says Brosio. “In these images, moving almost 180 degrees from the more diorama-like depictions of American scenery, I looked to painters like Mark Rothko and Albert Pinkham Ryder. Prior to this point, the paintings were evocative of artists like Edward Hopper.”

(gcgallery.com)

Breaking news

Whole Foods

Images from 444.hu

Last Taco Stand

From assets.openmuseum.org

When John Brosio wants to relax, he sometimes heads to a historic ocean liner called the Queen Mary and climbs aboard. These days the giant vessel is docked in Long Beach, CA, and has been transformed into a hotel with art deco appointments and remnants from the grand ship’s glory days. Yet it’s not the elaborate style that attracts Brosio rather, it’s the vessel’s sheer size. It’s 1,000 feet long and once carried more than 3,000 passengers and crew across the Atlantic Ocean. The Southern California painter enjoys the feeling of being dwarfed by something larger and more forceful than himself, he says. And that, in fact, is a central theme in his paintings.

The obvious question for viewers is, why tornadoes? On this particular day Brosio is ruminating on the question from a bench on Balboa Island and sipping a cup of steaming coffee. It’s dusk, and across a narrow waterway an old-fashioned Ferris wheel spins on nearby Balboa Peninsula. The carnival ride looms large on the landscape and looks very much like the one depicted in Brosio’s painting Rides except that today there is no ominous black plume lurking in the background.

For Brosio the experience of being dwarfed by a tornado is an exhilarating one, he says in an effort to explain his attraction to storms. “Witnessing a tornado’s birth, behavior, and death leaves me feeling privy to the life of an animal greater than us—it’s the footfall of a giant,” he says.

Today he continues to paint twisters in his Los Angeles area studio, but he is also percolating ideas related to mythology, another of his passions. He says these future works will be inspired by Virgil’s Aeneid, which he read in high school and can’t forget. “But I don’t see tornadoes stopping. Although I may take a break,” he says. “I have been into rattlesnakes lately they’re so gorgeous and dangerous.”

Brosio is represented by Tirage Gallery, Pasadena, CA; Arcadia Gallery, New York, NY; and Diane Nelson Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA. (John Brosio, A Terrible Beauty by Bonnie Gangelhoff at southwestart.com, Featured in January 2003)

Richard Alan Schmid

From qiang-huang.blogspot.com

Richard Schmid in his studio

Abbotsford House, Scotland

From underpaintings.blogspot.com

Richard Schmid has promoted art education through his books, articles, workshops, seminars, and television presentations. He travels widely for his subjects, and currently lives in New Hampshire with his wife, the painter Nancy Guzik.

Richard holds a Doctorate in Fine Art and is a recipient of The John Singer Sargent Medal for Lifetime Achievement. Since the publication of his landmark book on landscape painting in 2009, Richard has been involved in two major projects. The first, in 2011, was a very large painting of Abbotsford House, the Manor home of Sir Walter Scott in Scotland, which won a viewing and praise from HRH Queen Elizabeth during grand re-openning ceremonies of the house and visitors center. The second project, begun in 2011, was the new expanded edition of Alla Prima, ALLA PRIMA II, completed in 2013, and now in its second printing. Additionally, exhibitions of Richard’s art were mounted at the National Academy of Science on Cape Cod, and Wellesley College in Boston. Throughout his distinguished career as a painter, author, and teacher, Richard Schmid has been a candid spokesman for what is known as the Grand Manner—a certain mingling of virtuosity and unrestrained joy in art.

(richardschmid.com)

Snow Maples

Victorian Winter

All images from tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com

In his book and videos, Schmid emphasizes some fundamentals that are often glossed over, but are worth being reminded of. One in particular is “doing the charts”; a process that young art students often think is onerous busywork, but seasoned painters know is as invaluable to a painter as practicing scales is to a musician. This is the process of painting your own color charts, in which you mix a value scale of each color, and then value scales of each color in combination with each of the other colors in your basic palette. It is a process that gives you more color mixing knowledge than a truckload of color mixing books and preprinted charts could ever begin to provide.

It is this kind of adherence to the time tested painting fundamentals, which work and have been successful for representational painters through history, which is the basis for both Schmid’s teaching and his beautifully economical and lyrically poetic paintings.

(linesandcolors.com)

Floral Art

Fromliveinternet.ru

Still Life

From gbtate.com

Impressionistic, realistic, classical, romantic...while people don’t always agree on how to describe the art of Richard Schmid, there is no mistaking it. Painterly brushstrokes, meticulous composition, subtle tonality and use of luxurious, luminous color set his works distinctly apart. Schmid prefers to paint all prima, completing a work of extreme accuracy in just one sitting. The first brushstrokes blend with the last, conveying the excitement of the artist calls "immediate intimacy."

Schmid, born in Chicago in 1934, has spent many years sketching and painting throughout North America, Europe, South America and the Caribbean. His roving nature also applies to his subject matter; restlessly, he captures everything in sight, composing landscapes, nudes, wildlife, still lifes and children’s portraits. Schmid credits his instructors the landscape painter Gianni Cilfone and Professor William Mosby of Chicago’s American Academy of Art for much of his success. (greenwichworkshop.com)

Mosby, a graduate of the Belgian Royal Academy in Brussels and the Superior Institute in Antwerp, was an expert on European and American realism. Studies with him involved working exclusively from life, at first using the conceptual and technical methods of the Flemish, Dutch, and Spanish masters, and eventually incorporating methods from all of the late 19th century European and American painters.

The emphasis in each period was on Alla Prima (e.g., Direct Painting) systems of the various periods. Building upon this foundation, Schmid’s individual style and the content of his work developed along personal lines.

(artmatch4u.com)

Morning light

From flickr.com

Schmid also acknowledges a debt to the great masters, among them the Spanish portraitists Goya and Velasquez and the Impressionists Cassatt and Manet. His work has been widely acclaimed. He has won the Allied Artists of America Gold Medal, the American Watercolor Society Gold Medal, and won the top award in the 1987 National Parks Academy. He has had no less than 41 one-man shows and his work has been exhibited at the National Academy of Design, the Smithsonian, the Gilcrease Institute and the Beijing Exhibition Center in China.

(greenwichworkshop.com)

No Title

From pinterest.com

Richard Schmid’s life’s work has had a major impact on the art world. In addition to spending time creating his own works of art, he generously shares his time, knowledge and resources promoting excellence in fine art. His public appearances include workshops, charity events, lectures, and media interviews.

In January 1989, Richard Schmid launched his independent publishing company, Stove Prairie Press, LLC, with the printing of his instructional book, Alla Prima, Everything I Know About Painting. He has written and self published several art books and produced numerous instructional DVDs.

(artmatch4u.com)

Richard Schmid studio and palette

All images from michelledunawayartist.blogspot.com

Richard Schmid's work has been represented in the following:

The Smithsonian Institution

The National Academy of Sciences

The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

The Art Institute of Chicago

The Harvard Club

The Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts

The National Academy of Design

The American Watercolor Society

The Thomas Gilcrease Museum

The Frye Museum

The Allied Artists of America The Colorado Historical Society

The Butler Institute of American Art

The Holter Museum The St. Louis Artist’s Guild

The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center

The Salmagundi Club

The Tucson Museum of Art

The Albuquerque Museum of Art

The Loveland Museum

The Beijing Exhibition Center, China

(richardschmid.com)

Untitled
Images from terenchin.com

The strong man

From s007.radikal.ru

Born in White Plains, New York, Howitt was struck with a case of polio at age four. During his time of recovery and convalescing, his father drew pictures for the boy and encouraging him to draw also. As he got older and his affliction limited his other physical activies, drawing became a passion for “Newton,” and he devoted more serious attention to it.

The young Howitt was quite studious and graduated from high school at age sixteen. He then enrolled at the Art Students league in New York City where he studied under noted the noted instructor George Bridgeman. Howitt embarked upon a career in illustration, and from 1910-1930 he led an extensive commercial career with paintings appearing in the magazines Pictoral Review, Liberty, The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and Delineator, all of which were extremely high profile publications of the day. In addition he illustrated several books as well as stories for the newspaper supplemental sections, This Week, New York Herald Tribune, and the American Sunday Monthly Magazine.

(adventurehouse.com)

Road to the village

From goodfon.ru

During the 1920s Howitt was commisioned to create advertising work for several nation-wide companies that included Jello Foods, Post Bran Flakes, Devoe Paints, Vermont Marble and Crisco Shortening. In between commercial assignments, Howitt always devoted his time to painting landscapes. He traveled extensively in North America, painting everywhere he went. He established a solid reputation as a landscape painter of high quality and he exhibited his works regulary in prominent galleries. To this day his landscapes hang in noted museuems and public collections across the country.

(adventurehouse.com)

The Spider July-1935

The Spider October-1937

The Scorpion

All images from pulpcovers.com

As the depths of the Depression struck, Howitt apparently found himself on shaky ground financially. Unable to earn a living from his past markets, he turned to the pulps as a means to make a living. Howitt had reached middle-age and was much older than many of his contemporary pulp artists just beginning a career. The forty-eight year old Howitt could have considered the pulps nothing but a step down from the level of succes he had achieved. According to Mrs. Shirley Steeger, wife of Harry Steeger who knew Howitt well, he “deplored the work — but it was meticulously done.”

(adventurehouse.com)

Football Player

Woman on a Bike

Sleeping Baker

Images from saturdayeveningpost.com

SEP Cover, Sleeping Baker

From etsy.com

According to the artist,"Too much emphasis is put on art fashions of the moment and there is not enough recognition of good painting. We who are not "modernists" have found that we get no recognition today in art circles unless our work is clothed in the style that is considered fashionable. It does not matter how well or how forcibly we express it; we get no attention from critics or museums or even the large exhibitions. Museum collections of American paintings will never be important as long as they only follow the latest fad in art.
Painting should have a more solid basis than fashion. As long as it is not possible for an artist to paint for mass production and do good work, many painters today are quite willing to adapt their prices to the buyer's pocketbook. We artists are ready to meet the private buyer half-way. We believe that no painting stacked against the wall is fulfilling its function. We must sell to continue painting and unless we can continue, art will die, because painting is not a part-time job."

(David Saunders 2009 at pulpartists.com)

Patriotic Employment Poster WWII 1944

WWII Patriotic Posters Civilian Jobs

From crazywebsite.com

Because of the men severing in the military and the nation's industries increased wartime production efforts, there was a critical shortage of labor. Consequently, women were hired in increasing numbers and their participation in the job market increased extremely. During this push for greater production, the employment of women in America rose from about twelve million to more than eighteen million.

By the end of World War Two, women made up about 35 percent of the labor force. The type of people presented on posters such as these were not haphazardly created. The selection of an "average Joe" to personify American male workers was selected to gain the "common man's" allegiance to production goals and approving use of women for the workforce.

The average working woman on the other hand was idealized as a fashion model in denim; this carefully glamorized image was intended to convince women that they would not have to sacrifice their femininity by taking a traditionally "man's job" for war support work.
Second World War American patriotic posters like "I'm Proud, my husband wants me to do my part." helped unite Americans and mobilize the private and industrial sectors; U.S. citizens of every age, gender, and walk of life did their part to support the war effort, allied military and defeat the axis powers. U.S. citizens hoped that the Axis powers could be stopped without American military support and hoped America could avoid direct involvement in World War 2 but that all changed the morning of December 7 when Japan blindsided the U.S. military with bombs in the attack of Pearl Harbor Hawaii and other U.S. military outposts. The military might of the United States of America of course responded with a powerful vengeance but leaders knew that troops could not win the war alone. The American citizens rallied for the troops and swift mobilization of American citizenry and industry during World War II was an achievement without precedent in speed, scale, complexity and duration.
(crazywebsite.com)

Howitt disappeared from the pulp field following the September 1939 issue of The Spider and the September/October 1939 issue of Operator 5. Howitt had moved back to the “slick” magazines exclusively, along with his advertising art; he also painted wartime posters for the Red Cross.

He continued, as he started, painting commercial and fine art—obsessively, every day—until his death in 1958 at the age of 72, even winning awards in later years for his landscapes. It is believed that Howitt ultimately looked down on his career in the pulps despite the effort he put into it. His wife, Bertha (1880-1975), definitely did, preferring her husband to be remembered as a fine artist and teacher. There are very few known existing original pulp paintings by Howitt, and this appears to be intentional on the part of the artist or his widow.

(2010 Age of Aces Books)

ROGER DALE BROWN in 2008

From dotcourson.com

ROGER DALE BROWN

pototschnik.blogspot.com

Farm at Herns Mill Rd

From wallsgallery.com

Roger believes, as the historical master artists such as John Carlson and Edgar Payne, that "plein air" painting is an essential element in being a great artist. He spends countless hours studying and painting on location, to continue to perfect seeing important nuances of a scene, a day, or an object, which are necessary in creating a great painting. Roger works hard to balance the emotion of a scene, with the knowledge of painting, in every painting he paints.

Roger's oil paintings have been displayed in galleries throughout the United States and have won many awards which include: First Place in the Barnes and Farms National Juried Art Show, Museum Purchase Award and third place at the Easton Plein Air Competition, Best of Show at the Central South National Juried Show, as well as the Gold Medal Award from the Hudson Valley Art Association. His work has also been accepted in the Oil Painters of America National Juried Exhibition, and Salon International. Roger has been published by: International Artist Magazine, American Artist Magazine, American Art Collector Magazine, and the Artist Magazine. His works are owned by private collectors across the country and include many well-known celebrities and major corporations.

(rogerdalebrown.com)

After the storm

From nashvillearts.com

Today Roger is not only one of the most notable artists in the genre of plein-air paintings; he encourages others to step onto his vapor trail. He has become the go-to teacher in this region for the genre; any starry-eyed dreamer who hopes to become a painter in the Impressionist vein has taken classes with him. By going into the backcountry to hike, by traveling all over the country in his camper, it seems Brown has captured every rugged mountain, golden field, calm harbor, and snowy forest—and he has captured them in the ever-changing sunlight with loose, energetic strokes.

(nashvillearts.com)

Still Harbor Sunning

Twilight Last Glow

Images from thesylvangallery.com

Sentries

From outdoorpainter.com

Roger Dale Brown visited the coast of Maine and painted his impressions of it. The results are gathered in an exhibition titled, appropriately enough, "Maine Impressions." This detail from Brown's painting "Sentries" shows Brown's purposeful use of value and color. Brown reports that the light yellow mark by the goose's beak was an invention. "I created the area by adding a light spot below the darkness of the goose's head," he says. "This created a stronger contrast in that area. This, along with a sharper edge and the strong shadow, is enough to make the viewer stop. This portion of the painting was placed there on purpose. I place objects, colors, or value in certain areas of my paintings with intent -- not being literal to the scene but being creative and evoking the mood and story of the moment. I want the viewer to go to certain spots in my painting -- it's like taking the viewer on a guided tour throughout your creation. You enter the painting in a certain area and there are stopping points the viewer comes to and hangs out for a while. These are tension areas or subordinate focal points in the painting. They are not strong enough to compete with the focal point, but are strong enough to pull your eye around the painting."

(ootdoorpaintr.com)

Listen

Glimmering Evening

Images from wallsgallery.com

Roger finds himself mesmerized by the charm, history, and natural beauty of Maine. He said, It has an old soul. Artists are naturally drawn to it. It’s more spiritual.That spiritual, artistic quality is essential to Brown’s style and general approach to painting. He paints the places that speak to him, the ones that conjure some emotion. And he does so by painting from life amongst the elements that inspires him whenever possible.

To capture the beauty Roger sees in Maine, he employs a delicate mix of Impressionism and Realism. Each scene calls for a different technique. Brushstrokes can range from loose to tight, and color can be built up through thin layers to thick impasto— whatever is needed to conjure the feeling Brown himself felt that day. The result is work that feels real, like you’re there standing amongst the sand, sea and and rocks. You can almost smell the saltwater and feel the warmth of the sun.

"Maine is an artist’s dream,” says Gary R. Haynes, gallery founder and long-time friend of Brown’s. “Artists have come here for generations, but Roger’s looking at it from a new angle. He’s aware of the history of place, but he doesn’t let that distract from his vision. He wants to share the essence of the place in a fresh way and he does that beautifully.”

(bangordailynews.com)

Luminesce

From dotcourson.com

Painting in the Plein Air style by definition puts the artist in places that are not normally near their studio. That creates extra challenges and difficulties in satisfactorily recreating what you saw on location on the canvas. Roger Dale Brown, after some humorous trial and error, has finally arrived at a workable, even comfortable solution. He pulls his studio behind a burly diesel pick-up in the form of a 33’ travel trailer. He and his wife, Beverly, head out annually for 6 to 7 months - one trip in 2013 will keep them on the road for 4 months - to locations of particular beauty around the US. Their abhorrence of motels, the difficulty of schlepping all their gear and luggage in and out, and wet canvases in motel rooms pushed them into the rolling studio world. But, what a journey that has been. The first attempt at this was a 21’ RV. Seemed like a reasonable, economical choice until they took that first trip to Yellowstone. Way too small and under equipped. So, up they jumped to a 34’ RV, but that required they pull a car behind it in order to drop off canvases at in-town galleries. But the car was too small to hold the large canvases. Finally, they landed on the truck/trailer combo. However, more fun was in store for the first trip with the new rig. With the awning left extended one night and the trailer parked on a slight incline, down came the rain, flowing down the awning and right into the interior for an unwanted indoor waterfall feature. The storm and its clouds did have a silver lining - since gutting the interior was a must, the Browns redesigned the space to better suit living and working needs. Out went the dining table and large sofa to be replaced by a smaller sofa and two drawer units converted into a table with rollers, on which the couple takes their meals. That made room for each to have their comfy work space for easel, canvas, palette, and brushes. Life on the road now is much sweeter and a lot more productive. (jerryparkphotography.com)

Born Zhao Kalin in Bengbu 1961, the artist has become an important Chinese master of contemporary realism. At an early age, Kailin understood that he wanted to be involved in the arts. "By eight, I knew I wanted to be a painter," Zhao relates. "It was my second grade teacher in elementary school who taught me basic painting skills and encouraged and challenged me. Most important, she taught me how to soar with imaginary wings through the secret world of art." Under her tutelage, Zhao's painting abilities matured, so much so that his work began appearing in juried shows in Bengbu.

(odonwagnergallery.com)

Return to My Hometown

Rong

Splendid Attire

Images from mandarinfineart.com

Memories of My Youth

From artadoo.com

Beautiful Memory of Qiuxiang

From contemporarychinesefineart.com

The title,"Beautiful Memory of Qiuxiang ", pays homage to an opera based on a legend about Tang Bohu .......During a trip to the West Lake, gifted scholar Tang Bohu falls in love at first sight with Qiuxiang, a maid in the residence of Hua Hongshan, a ranking official. For Qiuxiang's sake, Tang forgoes his noble status to serve as an attendant in Hua's residence. There he unfortunately meets his cousin sister and ex-lover Feng Yulan. An emotional entanglement among Tang, Qiuxiang and Yulan evolves. Eventually, however, Yulan gives way to enable her cousin brother to marry his true love, Qiuxiang.

Zhao Kailin's choice to place this portrait of a sitting beauty in the foreground among the great painting styles of Song Dynasty Emperor/Painter Ji, Zhao and the great Ming painter Bohu, Tang is evidence of Kailin's admiration for his pedigree, for his cultural roots and for his rich heritage. The beautiful young women in Kailin's composition is a direct descendent and a symbol of the lineage that is the Great history of China

(contemporarychinesefineart.com)

Waiting for Marriage-detail

Spring Wind Over Last Night- detail

Spring Wind over Last Night

Images from octavia-gallery.com

In 1988, Zhao Kailin was accepted for graduate studies at the prestigious oil painting department of Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts, China's most illustrious and rigorous fine arts institution. "From 1988 to 1990, I studied there and learned traditional western-style oil painting," states Zhao. "It was the most important period of art studies in my life."

During this period of intensive training, Zhao was exposed to the galvanizing portraits of Dutch Renaissance master Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) and was immediately taken with the work's luxuriant brushwork, jewel-like color and commanding manipulation of light and shadow inspired by Italian Renaissance painter Carravagio (1573-1610). It was during this same time that Zhao also became enamoured of the elegantly voluptuous society portraiture of American painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925). Sargent's Madame X (1884), a full-figure portrait of a mysterious porcelain-skinned woman dressed in a long black dress that scandalized Paris's Salon of 1884, most certainly has left its silky mark on many of Zhao Kailin's portrait paintings.

More recently, Zhao's work has concentrated on depicting beautiful, introspective young women, most of whom are Asian and dressed in traditional Chinese attire. Several of the latest pieces feature females with musical instruments. These paintings capture the essential aura of young women suspended between the innocence of childhood and the smoldering sexuality of womanhood, evoking a sense of longing, dreams and desire.

"Every painting I do involves personal stories and memories," Zhao explains. "I am always striving to communicate not only the beauty and unspoken personal narratives of these women, but also the inherent beauty of Chinese culture and life."

Zhao Kailin's work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Asia, Europe and the U.S. and is a part of notable public and private art collections. Winner of a number of awards for his work, and has been an influential mentor to a number of other painters currently represented exclusively by Contemporary Chinese Fine Art in Laguna Beach, California.

(contemporarychinesefineart.com)

An Old Story of China

Images from absolutearts.com

At Window

From brickleartcollection.com

Education:

1991

Graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China

Solo Exhibitions:

2006

"Zhao Kailin's Realism Oil Painting," Contemporary Chinese Fine Art Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA

1994

"Zhao Kailin's Realism Oil Painting across Northern Europe Region," Kurt Svenssons Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden

1993

"Zhao Kailin's New Realism Oil Painting," Kurt Svenssons Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden

1992

“From the East,” Kurt Svenssons Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden

1991

“Zhao Kailin Oil Painting Exhibition,” Kurt Svenssons Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden

1990

“Zhao Kailin Realism Oil Painting Exhibition,” Mexican Embassy, Beijing, China

Selected Group Exhibitions:

2010

“Eli Klein Fine Art Winter Exhibition,” Eli Klein Fine Art, New York, NY

2007

“5^th China Realism,” National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China

2004

“Kail Studio Artist Exhibition,” Gallery 27, London, UK

2002

"Kail Studio Artists Group Show," Frames Contemporary Gallery, Perth, Scotland

2000

“Exhibition for Kail Studio,” Powell Street Gallery, San Francisco, CA

“New Journey Beyond the Silk Road: Kail Studio Artists,” Utopia Gallery, North Queensland, Cairns, Australia

1997

“Out of China,” Odon Wagner Gallery, Toronto, Canada

“Tone,” Art House Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
“American Western Coast and Eastern Culture Foundation: International Exhibition” Arts Foundation, Los Angeles, CA

1993

“English & Chinese Culture-Art Exchange,” Framed Contemporary Gallery, Perth, Scotland

1991

“China Contemporary Fine Arts Exhibition; Celebrating the 20^th Anniversary of the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between China and Japan,” Tokyo, Japan

(kleinsungallery.com)

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