~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Watercolor Artists Paint Fog
Visual Essay
Approaching Fog
John Marin (1870-1953) American
Watercolor with blotting, wiping and traces
of scraping, and with brush and black ink,
graphite, fabricated charcoal, and
touches of opaque watercolor
on paper, 20" x 15" (w x h), 1952
The Art Institute of Chicago
In 1921 John Marin wrote from Stonington, Maine to his friend and dealer, Alfred Stieglitz in New York: "Glad I am to be away from all the hurly burly I have left behind for a time... Glad to walk down to the shore and jump in the boat... Once in a while to paint a picture with none to butt in with another word. To take out my colors with none to say, You should have said pigments." (The Selected Writings of John Marin. Edited by Dorothy Norman (Pellegrini and Cudahy, NY, 1949).
Morning Fog
Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) American
Watercolor on paper, 16" x 12" (w x h), 1974
Sold at a 2014 Sothebys London auction
Private collection
Many of Fairfield Porter's paintings are set in or around their family summer house on Great Spruce Head Island, Maine and his family home in Southampton, New York. Although a realist in subject matter, Porter not only admired and championed the abstract work of his friend Willem de Kooning, but was drawn to the inherent abstraction found in nature. Porter said, "When I paint, I think that what would satisfy me is to express what Bonnard said Renoir told him: 'Make everything more beautiful.' "
Morning Fog was exhibited at the Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY, Retrospective, December 15, 1974 to April 27, 1975
Study of a Castle by a Lake
Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A., (1775-1851) English
Watercolor on paper, 9" x 7" (w x h), circa 1824
During the 1820s Turner became increasingly interested in optics and color theory. His new found understanding of color was most probably inspired by his trip to Italy in 1819-20. There, the light had the effect of liberating his palette enabling him to achieve a finer luminosity in watercolor. He drew loose preparatory sketches and pure studies in color. These studies were rapidly executed with much was left to chance. Thin translucent layers of color would be applied to wet paper and once this had dried further washes would often be added. This technique enabled him to preserve the purity and luminosity of his work, and to paint at a rapid rate.
Turner left behind more than 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolors, and 30,000 works on paper. He was championed by the leading English art critic John Ruskin from 1840, and is today regarded as having elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivaling history painting. In 1841, Turner rowed a boat on the Thames so he could not be counted as present at any property in that year's census. He lived in squalor and poor health from 1845, and died in London in 1851 aged 76, yet Turner is buried in Saint Paul's Cathedral, London.
Red Cloud VI
Donald Holden (1931-2017) American
Watercolor on paper, 11" x 7", (w x h), 1989
Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.
Donald Holden studied at the Art Students League of New York in 1947, got his BA at Columbia University in 1951 and his MA at Ohio State University in 1952. In 1986 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the Maine College of Art. He held positions as director of public relations at Philadelphia College of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Holden is the author of Whistler's Landscapes and Seascapes (1950). At age 56 he became a full-time artist. His luminous watercolors and minimalist drawings are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Butler Institute of American Art, among others. In 2004 Donald Holden Watercolors (128 pages) was published by Richard Boyle, on amazon HERE.
Foggy Morning, No. 2
Charles Reiffel (1862-1942) American
Watercolor and gouache on paper, 13" x 9" (w x h), circa 1895
San Diego Museum of Art
Charles Reiffel was an American lithographer and post-Impressionist painter Born in Indiana, he became one of California's known painters. He was. initially a lithographer, and in 1912 at age 50-years-old he took up painting. He was self-taught, and he painted en plein air as a post-impressionist. Reiffel first moved to the art colony in Silvermine, Connecticut, where he was the president of the Silvermine Artists' Guild. He later moved to San Diego. He was the subject of a retrospective at the San Diego Museum of Art and the San Diego History Center in 2013.
Landscape with Deer in Morning Haze (Fog)
Winslow Homer (1836-1910) American
Watercolor and graphite on paper, 21" x 15" (w x h),
circa 1902
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum,
New York, NY, this art at the museum since 1913
Largely self-taught, Winslow Homer, an oil painter, also worked extensively in watercolor primarily chronicling his working vacations. Born in Boston he found his way to his family property development in Prouts Neck, Maine, his Prouts Neck studio, a National Historic Landmark, is now owned by the Portland Museum of Art.
Inland Fog
Anne Seelbach (1944- ) American
Watercolor on paper, 15" x 11" (w x h), 1993
Anne Seelbach received a BA from NYU and an MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York. She has taught at the University of Rhode Island, Northeastern University (Boston), Emerson College (Boston), The Newark Museum (New Jersey), the Parrish Art Museum (Water Mill, NY), and the Victor D'Amico Institute of Art (Amagansett, NY). Seelbach lives and works in on Long Island in North Haven, NY. Her website is HERE.
Fog above Lake Garda at San Vigilio
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) American
Watercolor on paper, 20" x 13" (w x h), 1913
From the beginning, Sargent's work was characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for supposed superficiality. His commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism. In later life Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work, and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air. Art historians generally ignored society artists such as Sargent until the late 20th century.
No comments:
Post a Comment