Saturday, October 30, 2021

Stonington Harbor Lobstertraps Ready

Stonington Harbor
Lobstertraps Ready

from the Dockside Bookstore dock,
Stonington, Maine painted
plein air on October 24, 2021
7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light
fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade
proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough
100% cotton extra white watercolor paper,
framed, $150

Thursday, October 28, 2021

The Art of Conversation

 

The Art of Conversation

on the back deck at Dockside Books and Gifts,
a tiny bookstore with perhaps the best collection of
coastal Maine related books, with knowledgeable owner,
Al Webber, at 62 West Main St, Stonington, Maine, painted
plein air on that deck on sunny October 24, 2021
12" x 9" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light
fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade
proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough
100% cotton extra white watercolor paper,
framed, $400

The Art of What? Quiz

The Art of What? Quiz
Eight paintings in this visual essay
featuring what theme?

This visual essay features the art of:
6 men and 2 women;
3 Americans and 5 Europeans
from Britain, Germany and Ireland


1
Poetry Reading
Milton Avery (1885-1965), American
Oil on canvas, 56" x 44" (w x h), 1957
Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute, Utica, New York

Avery's work is seminal to American abstract painting. While his work is clearly representational, it focuses on color relations, not concerned with creating the illusion of depth as most conventional Western painting. Avery was often thought of as an American Matisse, especially because of his colorful and innovative landscape paintings. His poetic, bold and creative use of drawing and color set him apart from more conventional painting of his era. Early in his career, his work was considered too radical for being too abstract. Yet, when Abstract Expressionism became dominant his work was overlooked, as being too representational. (Source: Wikipedia)

2
Conversation in a Field
Basil Blackshaw (1932-2016)
Oil on board, 11" x 13" (w x h), 1952-1953
Ulster Museum, Belfast, Ireland

Basil Blackshaw was born in Northern Ireland in 1932. His work was partly autobiographical, much concerned with people, animals, places and experiences. Blackshaw studied at Belfast College of Art and in Paris. He lived in Antrim, Ireland. (Source: Artists in Britain Since 1945 by David Buckman)

3
The Conversation
Romare Bearden (1911-1988), American
Lithograph, 28" x 22" (w x h), 1979
Tougaloo College Art Collections, Tougaloo, Mississippi
Romare Bearden Foundation
An original lithograph can be purchased for $6,400 at 1stdibs HERE.

His well-known visual motif, the train, suggests to the viewer the Great Migration (African American), a mass movement of blacks from the rural South to the urban North, in search of sanctuary and job opportunities. (Source: 1stdibs)

Romare Bearden (1911-1988) was an African-American artist, author, and songwriter. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bearden grew up in New York City and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated from New York University in 1935.
Connie Mack offered Bearden a place on the Philadelphia Athletics baseball team fifteen years before Jackie Robinson became the first Black player in major league baseball. Sources conflict about whether Mack thought Bearden was white or told Bearden he would have to pass for white. Despite the Athletics World Series in 1929 and 1930, and the American League pennant in 1931, Bearden decided he did not want to hide his identity and chose not to play for the Athletics. After two summers with the Boston Tigers, an injury made Bearden rethink the attention he was giving to baseball and he put greater focus into his art, instead.

He began his artistic career creating scenes of the American South. Later, he worked to express the humanity he felt was lacking in the world after his experience in the US Army during World War II on the European front. He returned to Paris in 1950 and studied art history and philosophy at the Sorbonne. (Source: Wikipedia)

4
Conversation - Two Seated Nudes
Robin Philipson (1916–1992), English
Oil on board
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK

Painter and teacher, born Robert James Philipson in Broughton-in-Furness, Lancashire. After attending Edinburgh College of Art, 1936-40, Philipson served in a Scottish regiment during World War II, then joined the staff of Edinburgh College of Art in 1947. Was appointed head of the school of drawing and painting in 1960, a post held until retirement in 1982. Philipson was knighted in 1976. He served on the Scottish Advisory Committee of the British Council and was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Fine Arts.  (Source:
Artists in Britain Since 1945 by David Buckman)

5
Two Red Curtains Blowing
Lois Dodd (1927- ), American
Watercolor and graphite on paper, 15" x 11" (w x h). 1980
Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey

Lois Dodd, born 1927 in Montclair, New Jersey, paints in Cushing, Maine, Blairstown, New Jersey, and New York City.

Over the course of a seven-decade-long career, Dodd has developed a practice of observational painting, much of it done outdoors. This grounding in nature allows her works to achieve a delicate balance between landscape and abstract compositions, as in this watercolor sketch of laundry drying in the breeze that presents an evocative study of the day's atmosphere and a variation of formal elements. (Source: Princeton University art Museum, edited)

As part of the wave of New York modernists to explore the coast of Maine just after the end of the Second World War, Dodd helped to change the face of painting in the state. Along with Fairfield Porter, Rackstraw Downes, Alex Katz, Charles DuBack, and Neil Welliver, Dodd began spending her summers in the Mid-Coast region surrounding Penobscot Bay. Attracted by inexpensive old farmhouses, verdant fields, and the bright sunshine, they sought both companionship and an escape from the demands of city life. The break from the city and its urbane art circles allowed them the freedom to explore new modes of painting, both landscapes and figures, that were anathema in the era of Abstract Expressionism. (Source: Wikipedia)

6
Conversation of Clowns / Clowngespräch
Christian Rohlfs (1849–1938), German
Gouache on canvas, 32" x 24" (w x h), 1912
Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany

Christian Rohlfs (1849-1938) was a German painter and printmaker, one of the important representatives of German expressionism. In 1929 the town of Hagen opened a Christian Rohlfs Museum. In 1937 the Nazis expelled him from the Prussian Academy of Arts, condemned his work as degenerate, and removed his works from public collections. A year later he died in Hagen, Westfalia at 88 years-old. (Source: Wikipedia)

7
Two Pears
Euan Uglow (1932-2000), British
Oil on canvas laid on panel, 9" x 6" (w x h), 1990
Private Collection

Euan Ernest Richard Uglow (1932-2000) was a British painter. Uglow was generally a shy artist who shunned publicity as well as honors, including an offer to become a member of the Royal Academy in 1961. However, he did become a trustee of the National Gallery in London in 1991, although, in his own words, he was generally ignored by the other trustees. (Source: Wikipedia)

8
Conversation Piece
Vanessa Bell (1879-1961), English
Oil on board, 12" x 10" (w x h), 1912
University of Hull Art Collection

Vanessa Bell (1879-1961), born Vanessa Stephen, was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf.
(Source: Wikipedia)

Answer: The Art of Conversation

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

October to Fall Study 1

October to Fall Study 1

in the back fields behind my home
high on Fort Ridge in Shapleigh, Maine on
October 13, 2021, painted October 11-12, 2021
10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light
fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade
proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough
100% cotton extra white watercolor paper,
framed, $300

Saturday, October 23, 2021

October to Fall Study 2

October to Fall Study 2

in the back fields behind my home
high on Fort Ridge in Shapleigh, Maine on
October 13, 2021, painted October 11-13, 2021
15" x 11" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light
fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade
proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough
100% cotton extra white watercolor paper,
framed, $700

Saturday, October 16, 2021

Along the Trail to Autumn

Along the Trail to Autumn

at the edge of a field behind my home on
October 13, 2021, painted October 15, 2021
7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light
fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade
proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough
100% cotton extra white watercolor paper,
framed, $150

Friday, October 15, 2021

Lobsterboats Facing the Evening

Lobsterboats Facing the Evening

at high tide in Cape Porpoise, Kennebunkport,
Maine, painted plein air on October 8, 2021
10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light
fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade
proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough
100% cotton extra white watercolor paper,
framed, $300

Thursday, October 14, 2021

Lobsterboats in Mooring Space

Lobsterboats in Mooring Space

at high tide in Cape Porpoise, Kennebunkport,
Maine, painted plein air on October 8, 2021
7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light
fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade
proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough
100% cotton extra white watercolor paper,
framed, $150

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Moored in Stillness

Moored in Stillness 

at high tide in Cape Porpoise, Kennebunkport,
Maine, painted plein air on October 8, 2021
10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light
fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade
proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough
100% cotton extra white watercolor paper,
framed, $300

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Autumn Sumac by the Sea

Autumn Sumac by the Sea 

at high tide in Cape Porpoise,
Kennebunkport, Maine, in a
blue, green, orange, theme,
painted plein air on October 8, 2021
7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light
fastness and permanence, on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico
cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper,
framed, $150

Blue Green Orange - Color Theme

Blue Green Orange
A Color Theme
A Cézanne painting "exhibited in 1936
and hidden away ever since" is now on view.

1
L'Estaque aux toits rouges /
L'Estaque with Red Roofs

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), French
Oil on canvas, 32" x 26" (w x h), 1883-85
Christie's 2021 auction estimate: $35,000,000-55,000,000 USD

In 1876, seven years before he started painting this, Cezanne wrote to his friend and mentor Camille Pissarro about the village of L'Estaque. "It's like a playing card, red roofs against the blue sea… It's olive trees and pines, which always keep their leaves. The sun here is so frightful that it seems to me the objects are silhouetted not in white or black, but in blue, red, brown, violet. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that this is the opposite of modeling."

Christie's Notes (edited):
This painting,is a view of L'Estaque, the Provençal fishing village where the artist forged a radical new way of depicting the world around him. Exhibited in 1936 and hidden away ever since, this will finally come back on view as part of The Cox Collection: The Story of Impressionism, taking place at Christie's New York on November, 11, 2021.

While Cézanne is primarily associated with Aix-en-Provence, the village of L'Estaque near Marseille was a place that he returned to again and again when he sought sanctuary. He holidayed there as a child with his mother. In 1870, when Cézanne left Paris to avoid conscription into the army following the start of the Franco-Prussian War, he escaped to L'Estaque. In 1878, Cézanne once again fled to L'Estaque to avoid the disapproval of his father, who'd discovered Cézanne's semi-secret family life with his unwed partner Hortense and their illegitimate son, Paul.

L'Estaque aux toits rouges transformed the landscape into planes and facets of color. Shadows are gone. Provençal light is depicted through a brighter palette, while the balance between the trees, buildings and the flat blue sea vibrates at a perfect tension, evoking the intense heat of the south.

Christie's Auction House video about this art (2:17) HERE.
Christies web page about this, including a circa 1935 postcard photo of this view is HERE.

2
Nasturtiums in a Blue Ginger Jar /
Oost-Indische kers in een blauwe gemberpot

Jan Voerman (1857-1941), Dutch
Watercolor on paper, 8" x 12" (w x h), , circa 1935

Wiki (edited):
Dutch painter Jan Voerman was also known as Jan Voerman Sr. He studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (State Academy of Fine Arts) in Amsterdam and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. Around 1900, Voerman painted the clouds above the IJssel river. In Hattem, many of his works can be seen in the Voerman Museum Hattem, Netherlands.

He married Anna Henriette Gezina Verkade, in 1889 in Amsterdam. They had two sons, Jan Voerman Jr. (1890–1976) and Tijs Voerman (1891–1970), who both became illustrators.

His art is in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle, the Voerman Museum Hattem, the Drents Museum and the Stedelijk Museum Zutphen, all in the Netherlands.

You can put together a 108-piece jigsaw puzzle of this painting online HERE.

3
Bluebirds and Persimmon
Andrea Johnson (1954 ), American
Acrylic on canvas, 11" x 17" (w x h), 2020
Sold, Winfield Gallery, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Andrea Johnson is the daughter of Barbara Johnson, painter, printmaker and member of the Carmel (California) Art Association. Her life-long involvement with art and nature has manifested intricately detailed watercolors and acrylics with nature themes.

Timeline
1954, Born, Key West, FL
1974, Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, Annual Watercolor Show, Award
1975, Purchase Prize-Lodi Annual at Barengo Cellars, Lodi, CA
1975, Award, Painting and Ceramics-Monterey County Annual, Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art
1976, BFA Painting, University of California Santa Barbara, CA
1979, Graduate work in Painting, California State Univ. Long Beach, CA
1999, Monterey Peninsula Museum Biennial Award of Merit

Andrea Johnson, daughter, has a web page with art at the Carmel Art Association is HERE.
Barbara Johnson, mother, has a web page with art at the Carmel Art Association is HERE.

You can put together a 25-piece jigsaw puzzle of this painting online HERE.

4
Lake George, Autumn, 1922
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), American
Oil on canvas, 27" x 15" (w x h), 1922
Private Collection
Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Winona, Minnesota

Museum Notes (edited):
Nicole Chamberlain-Dupree,
Executive Director, Minnesota Marine Art Museum
Lake George Autumn, from 1922, is a small, personal work of blues, greens, reds and orange. It was painted at Lake George in New York, where O'Keeffe spent long summers with her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, and his family on their massive property on the southern shore of the lake.

Apparently, the Stieglitz family was "a large and sometimes boisterous clan," that would intrude on her time to paint. So, to escape them, O'Keeffe would wander the 40-acre property and enjoy (and paint) all that the land had to offer.

O'Keeffe, like many artists before and since, was an original 'social distancer.' From 1918 to 1934, her summers at the Stieglitz estate were the most productive of her career and resulted in the creation of over 200 works; over 20 of which are dedicated to Lake George.

5
Herbsthimmel am Meer /
Autumn Sky by the Sea

Emil Nolde (1867-1956), German
Watercolor on Japanese paper,
20" x 14" (w x h), circa 1940
Christie's 2012 auction sold for $698,500 USD

About Nolde. Christie's notes (edited):
His birth name was Emil Hassen but he later changed it to Emil Nolde after the name of the German town near where he grew up. Nolde was one of the first Expressionists. Nolde was a supporter of the Nazi party from the early 1920s. He had considered Expressionism to be a distinctively Germanic style and shared viewpoints with high level Nazi officials such as Joseph Goebbels.

Ironically, Adolph Hitler rejected all forms of modern art as "degenerate art", and Nolde's work was officially condemned by the Nazi party. Prior to that point in time Nolde had been a highly regarded and famous artist in Germany. 1,052 of Nolde's works were removed from German museums, more than those of any other artist. Some were included in the Degenerate Art exhibition of 1937.

By law he wasn't even permitted to paint. In personal protest he painted hundreds of watercolors, which he titled the "Unpainted Pictures". After World War II, Nolde was reaffirmed as a great German artist and even received the German Order of Merit, Germany's highest civilian award. A 2019 exhibition (Emile Nolde: A German Legend, The Artist during the Nazi Regime, Berlin National Gallery, 2019) examined Nolde's self-professed Nazi leanings, and the tendency of postwar art historians to downplay them.

About Nolde and This Painting. Christie's notes (edited):
Watercolor played a central role in Nolde's artistic practice from 1910 until his death in 1956. Working on highly absorbent paper that he dampened before painting, Nolde created vibrant colors flowing into one another and saturating the page in fluid, transparent pools. Two of the pre-eminent subjects in Nolde's watercolor oeuvre are flowers and the sea, both of which gave rise to extravagant, emotive displays of color. For much of his life, Nolde lived on the edge of, or close to the ocean. It was the dominant element in his native region of Schleswig-Holstein, the German portion of the Danish peninsula, and although he spent a great deal of time in Berlin, it was always to this North Sea coast that he returned.

Nolde began to work with watercolor in 1892-1898, while teaching commercial drawing at St. Gallen in Switzerland. His watercolor production from this early period, however, consists almost entirely of accurately drawn, topographically correct landscape views. After St. Gallen, it would be another decade until Nolde picked up watercolor again, this time during a stay at Cospeda, near Jena, in 1908. Nolde recounted, "I made great advances in this technique... and painting in watercolors has remained a need for me ever since... From the intimate, somewhat fussy manner of my earliest watercolors, I progressed with infinite trouble towards a freer, broader, and more flowing style, which requires especially thorough understanding of and feeling for the different types of paper and the possibilities of color."

His breakthrough at Cospeda occurred as he was painting winter landscapes en plein air, and falling snow melted onto his work, causing the colors to run into one another and to crystallize on the page. "Sometimes I also painted in the ice-cold evenings, and I enjoyed seeing the colors freeze into crystal stars and rays. I loved this collaboration with nature, in which painter, reality, and painting seemed to fuse into one entity." Although he never repeated this "collaboration with nature" in the same form, it was decisive in his development of his mature watercolor technique. In 1910, seeking to duplicate the accidental changes brought about at Cospeda by the sleet and snow, he used thick, highly absorbent rice paper that he dampened first and then saturated with layers of watercolor. The fluid, transparent colors would penetrate the paper, flowing into one another, blurring contours and altering forms; the act of creation thus became part of the picture, forms no longer delineated but seemingly conjured up out of the superimposed strata of pigment. After the page had dried, Nolde could add additional layers of paint, strengthening one or another focus of interest or heightening the free, often extravagant play of colors.

6
Orange, Yellow, Green, and Blue
Wolf Kahn (1927-2020), German-born, American
Pastel,20" x 17" (w x h), 1995
Private Collection
Valued at $10,000 USD, in 2019 Kahn donated it
to the Brattleboro (Vermont) Museum & Art Center
for a museum fundraising raffle.

Art historian Barbara Novak wrote, "Kahn's remarkable work in [pastels] emphasizes color — at first in austere, tonalist images, and later in brilliant, high-keyed paintings that have established his reputation as one of the most important colorists working in America today."

Kahn spent his summers and autumns in Vermont on a hillside farm, which he and his wife, the painter Emily Mason, owned since 1968. His primary residence was in New York City. They had two daughters, Cecily and Melany. Cecily Kahn, also an artist, is married to the painter David Kapp.

7
The Gorge
George Noyes (1864-1954), Canadian, American
Oil on canvas, 1912
Believed to be the mountains of New Hampshire

Wiki and Who Was Who in American Art (edited):
George Loftus Noyes was an American painter, born in Canada of American parents, who started painting at an early age. He was a noted landscape painter in the Boston area just after the turn of the 20th Century.

In 1901, Noyes he established a summer school and taught painting in Annisquam on the North shore of Massachusetts. One of his first students was N. C. Wyeth. In 1921 Wyeth studied with Noyes again, saying, "His color knowledge is superb and I think he will give me much help at this juncture".

Noyes first studied with English artist George Bartlett in Boston, and later studied in Paris at the ateliers of Gustave Courtois, Joseph-Paul Blanc and Paul-Louis Delance. It was there that he joined in the new enthusiasm among French painters for painting en plein air, and was undoubtedly influenced by the French Impressionist works making headlines at the time.

Noyes was able to exhibit successfully at the Paris Salon, and on his return to Boston, established himself as a landscape painter, painting many coastal paintings. Noyes was painted in Cape Cod, as well as the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont. He lived in Boston/E. Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1893-1931; Winter Park, Florida, 1931-35; and Pittsford/Branden, Vermont, 1935-on.

He married Mabel Hall of Newtonville, Massachusetts, in 1903. Tragically, much of his work was lost in a barn fire.

8
North Truro Porch (Orange)
Mitchell Johnson (1964 ), American
Oil on linen, 32" x 24" (w x h), 2020

The Author's website (edited):
Mitchell Johnson, born in 1964, in Rock Hill, South Carolina, was raised in New York and Virginia. In 1990 he received an MFA from Parson School of Design. After graduating, he took a studio assistant position for artist Sam Francis which brought him to Silicon Valley, where he currently lives and works in Menlo Park, California. In the 2000s Johnson began making regular trips to New England and Asia, in particular painting trips to Truro, Massachusetts. His paintings are in over 700 private collections and 25 museum collections, including Bakersfield Museum of Art.

Johnson's paintings have appeared in numerous feature films, mostly Nancy Meyers projects, including The Holiday (2006), Crazy Stupid Love (2011), and It's Complicated (2009).

The artist's website is HERE.

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

Audubon Afternoon Light Leaving

Audubon Afternoon Light Leaving

at Maine Audubon Sanctuary in Falmouth, Maine
on September 13, 2021, painted September 14, 2021
7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light
fastness and permanence, on 140 lb. Fabriano
Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton
extra white watercolor paper,
framed, $150

The Art of Yellow and Green Leaving

 The Art of
Yellow and Green Leaving

1
Green to Yellow Leaves
Any Goldsworthy (1956- ), British
Sculpture photograph
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Yorkshire, England, 1987


At first glance, the predominant two-color line is deceiving. As it recedes it seamlessly blends from a yellow line on a green line to green line on a yellow base. The two-color line is composed of simple pieces of torn leaves carefully placed so that each leave is perfectly aligned.

WiKi (edited):
Andy Goldsworthy, OBE (Order of the British Empire) (1956- ) is a British sculptor, photographer, and environmentalist who produces site-specific sculptures and land art situated in natural and urban settings. From the age of thirteen, he worked on farms as a laborer. He's likened the repetitive quality of farm tasks to the routine of making sculpture: "A lot of my work is like picking potatoes; you have to get into the rhythm of it." The materials used in Goldsworthy's art often include brightly colored flowers, icicles, leaves, mud, pine cones, snow, stone, twigs, and thorns. He has been quoted as saying, "I think it's incredibly brave to be working with flowers and leaves and petals. But I have to: I can't edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole." Photography plays a crucial role in his art due to its often ephemeral and transient state.

He studied fine art at Bradford College of Art from 1974 to 1975 and at Preston Polytechnic (now the University of Central Lancashire) from 1975 to 1978, receiving his BA from the latter. In 1993, Goldsworthy received an honorary degree from the University of Bradford. He was an A.D. White Professor-At-Large in Sculpture at Cornell University 2000–2006 and 2006–2008.

2
Lime Tree Shade
Amy Katherine Browning (1881-1978), British
Oil on canvas, 42" x 45" (w x h), 1913
Colchester and Ipswich Museums, Colchester and Ipswich, UK
Gift from the family of A. K. Browning


WiKi (edited):
Amy Katherine Browning, born Amy Katherine Dugdale (1881-1978) was a British Impressionist painter. She signed her paintings "A.K. Browning" to avoid any discrimination based on gender.

The second of eight children, she entered the Royal College of Art in 1899 but had to leave in 1901 as she was eldest unmarried daughter and her mother was pregnant. When scholarships allowed her to return to the Royal College, she was the favorite student of Gerald Moira. Moira would send her upstairs to teach the male student painters. She left the college in 1906. She'd become friends with Sylvia Pankhurst. Together, they created an art exhibition for the Women's Social and Political Union at the Prince's Skating Club in 1909. They remained friends and they worked to raise money for the poor during the First World War. Meanwhile, she taught, but also had early success with her painting. In 1913 the French government bought Chequered Shade, which had taken the silver medal when it was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1913. The French also bought The Red Shawl. When the Paris Salon restarted after the war she returned and exhibited regularly taking the gold medal once. Browning continued exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy and at other international locations.

Browning spent her time teaching to subsidize her painting. She also took commissions including one of Winston Churchill and another of his wife.
Her paintings are in these museums: Musée Baron Gerard, Bayeux, Luton Museum and Art Gallery, Wolverhampton Museum and Art Gallery, Ipswich Museum and Art Gallery, Kelvingrove Museum and the Royal Academy's collection. Portraits of her are held in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery of Britain.

3
Landscape at Twilight
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Dutch
Oil on canvas, 42" x 20" (w x h), June 1890
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands


WiKi edited:
Near the end of his life, during his last weeks at Saint-Rémy, his thoughts returned to "memories of the North", and several of the approximately 70 oils, including Landscape at Twilight, painted during his days in Auvers-sur-Oise, are reminiscent of northern scenes. In June 1890, he also painted several portraits of his doctor, including Portrait of Dr Gachet, and his only etching. There are other paintings which are probably unfinished, including Thatched Cottages by a Hill.
The month after he painted Landscape at Twilight, July 1890, Van Gogh wrote that he'd become absorbed "in the immense plain against the hills, boundless as the sea, delicate yellow". He'd first become captivated by the fields in May, when the wheat was young and green. In July, he described to Theo "vast fields of wheat under turbulent skies."

4
Mountain and Meadow (Vermont)
Milton Avery (1885-1965), American
Oil on canvas, 68" x 60" (w x h), 1960
National Gallery of Art, Gift of Sally Michel Avery


Milton Clark Avery (1885-1965) was an American modern painter. In 1924, he met Sally Michel, a young art student, and in 1926, they married. Her income as an illustrator enabled him to devote himself more fully to painting. They had a daughter, March Avery, in 1932. Art critic Hilton Kramer said, "He was, without question, our greatest colorist. ... Among his European contemporaries, only Matisse, to whose art he owed much, of course, produced a greater achievement in this respect."

Bennington Museum, Bennington, Vermont, 2016 catalogue by Jamie Franklin, curator (edited):
The Averys, Milton, his wife Sally, also an artist, and their daughter March, spent at least six extended summer holidays, between 1935 and 1943, in Vermont. They stayed in the Green Mountains of south-central Vermont at the small adjacent villages of Rawsonville and Jamaica, in the West River Valley. Their Vermont visits were significant in the evolution of Milton Avery's distinctive style.

Avery worked voraciously while in Vermont. The artist noted, "In the country I get up at six o'clock and do a watercolor before breakfast, and three or four more during the day." His process during his summers in the country involved creating watercolors or gouaches, not from life, but based on plein air sketches in graphite, ink, and lithographic crayon. He translated this work into oil paintings in his New York studio during the winter months, sometimes years later. Drawing on his everyday experiences, Avery summarized his approach: "I work on two levels. I try to construct a picture in which shapes, spaces, colors form a set of unique relationships, independent of any subject matter. At the same time, I try to capture and translate the excitement and emotion aroused in me by the impact with the original idea."

5
The Gardener
Georges Seurat (1859-1891), French
Oil on wood, 10" x 6" (w x h), 1882-83
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York


MET label:
Although Seurat is best known for his scenes of urban life, many of his paintings of 1881-84 depict rural laborers and landscapes. He initially favored an earth-toned palette reminiscent of the work of earlier painters of the countryside, such as Jean-François Millet. However, the bright hues of this picture reflect Seurat's growing interest in Impressionist techniques and his reading of treatises on color, especially the American Ogden Rood's Modern Chromatics (published in English in 1879, and in French in 1881).

WiKi (edited):
This was painted in 1882-1883, soon before working on his first major painting in 1883, a large canvas titled Bathers at Asnières, showing young men relaxing by the Seine in a working-class suburb of Paris. The following years, 1884-1886 her painted his best-known painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

Georges Pierre Seurat (1859-1891) was a French post-Impressionist artist best known for devising the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism as well as pointillism. While less famous than his paintings, Seurat's conte crayon drawings also garnered a great deal of critical appreciation. Seurat's artistic personality combined qualities that are usually supposed to be opposed and incompatible: on the one hand, his extreme and delicate sensibility, on the other, a passion for logical abstraction and an almost mathematical precision of mind. His large-scale work A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–1886) altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of late 19th-century painting.

6
Untitled
Andrew Forge (1923-2002), British
Watercolor on paper, 15" x 22" (w x h), 1996
Private collection of John Meditz


This painting (above) appeared in the Fairfield University catalogue for his exhibition: Andrew Forge: The Limits of Sight, September 25 - December 19, 2020, Fairfield University Art Museum, Fairfield, Connecticut.

Karen Wilken wrote:
Forge's dots have nothing to do with pointillism. The dotting is an end in itself, not a means of description. From a close viewpoint, the fact of the touches of paint dominates. As we read across the surface, we are absorbed by the shimmer of the deliberately placed spots of pigment, captivated by the varied rhythms created by the dispersal of particular colors, and intrigued by the chords, harmonious or dissonant, created by groups of related or opposing hues. But we are always aware of the repetitive action of the artist's hand making each mark, even – or especially – when the swirling rhythms of the dots, which Forge referred to as "drumming," are punctuated by spatterings of short, straight strokes, which Forge referred to as "sticks." The dots and sticks coalesce into a rich, confrontational tapestry, declaratively on the surface of the canvas.

To see the catalogue with his paintings and read more about his art see this clever online exhibition catalogue book HERE.

WiKi edited:
Andrew Murray Forge, an English painter, academic, and art critic, was born in 1923 at Kent England and dies in 2002 in New Milford, Connecticut. In the 1940s he studied art at the Camberwell School of Art in London. From 1950 to 1964, Forge was a senior lecturer at the Slade School of Art in central London, where he met Dorothy Mead in the 1950s, a former member of the Borough Group, when she was a mature student at the Slade. He showed with the London Group of artists from as early as 1950. He formally joined the London Group in 1960, the same year as Mead, and was president from 1966 to 1971. He was succeeded as president by Mead. From 1964 to 1970, Forge was Head of the Department of Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in southeast London. From 1971 to 1972, he was a lecturer in the Department of Art at the University of Reading.

Andrew Forge emigrated to the United States and was Visiting Professor at Cooper Union, New York (1973-74), Associate Dean, New York Studio School (1974-75), Visiting Professor (1975-2002). He became Professor of Painting at Yale University (1975-91), Dean of the School of Art (1975-83), and Emeritus William Leffingwell Professor of Painting (1991-94). In 1992, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1994.

In 1950 Forge married Sheila Deane and they had three daughters. The marriage was dissolved and he remarried in 1974 to Ruth Miller.

7
Roses under the Trees /
Rosiers sous les arbres
Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), Austrian
Oil on canvas, 43" x 43" (W X H), circa 1905
Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France (temporarily)


Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Although Klimt's primary subject was the female body, he painted landscapes. This painting was painted two years before he painted one of his most famous paintings, The Kiss.

The Art Newspaper (edited):
In 2021 France's culture minister announced that France will return this painting by Gustav Klimt, Rosiers sous les arbres (Roses under the Trees) to the heirs of its previous Viennese owner Nora Stiasny, who sold it under duress during the Nazi era.

It was first acquired by the Jewish Austrian industrialist and collector Viktor Zuckerkandl in 1911. After Zuckerkandl and his wife Paula died, it was bequeathed to his niece, Eleonore "Nora" Stiasny. She was forced to sell it for a bargain sum in August 1938, shortly after Hitler annexed Austria to Germany, to Philipp Häusler, a professor acquaintance who was a Nazi party member. Four years later, Stiasny and her family were deported and killed by the Nazis.

The French state acquired the painting for the future Musée d'Orsay in 1980 from Galerie Peter Nathan in Zurich; it had been owned by Herta Blümel, Häusler’s companion, who had inherited it from him. At the time, the French state was ignorant of the painting's provenance.

Laurence des Cars, president of the Musée d'Orsay, said, "Removing such an important painting from the national collections is a heavy decision, which honors our collective commitment to the memory of the victims of Nazi barbarism."

8
Tree with Bright Green Leaves
Frank Walter (1926-2009), Antiguan
Oil on card, 7" x 9", (w x h)
Ingleby Gallery, Hong Kong


Wiki (edited)
Frank Walter (1926-2009), born Francis Archibald Wentworth Walter, was an Antiguan artist, sculptor, photographer, composer, writer, and philosopher. Always shy and reserved, he became a recluse in later life so that he could devote himself to the pursuit of art. Walter achieved posthumous recognition as one of the Caribbean's most significant artists.

He produced over 5,000 paintings featuring landscape, portraiture, and identity, as well as abstract explorations of nuclear energy and the universe. His portraits, both real and imagined include a ballerina's legs in African Genealogy; Hitler in Dipsomaniac; Walter himself as Christ on the Cross; and Prince Charles and Princess of Wales Diana as Adam and Eve.

In 1993, Walter designed and built a house and art studio in the picturesque Antigua countryside above Falmouth Harbour, where he lived until his death in 2009 in peaceful isolation. He sited the structures to enjoy the spectacular views of Sugarloaf Mountain, Monk's Hill, Falmouth Harbour, and the sea, and dwelt in close proximity to nature. Without running water or electricity, Walter grew much of his own food, and lived near his relations who were organic farmers. His home was filled with paintings and sculpture that he made in secrecy and carefully arranged in his house. He was also surrounded by stacks of books on philosophy, law, history, botany, and heraldry. Walter's creative process relied on a multidisciplinary approach and a collection of curios to generate what Walter Benjamin identified in his 1931 essay "Unpacking My Library" as a "dialectical tension between the poles of order and disorder."