beside the easel

I don't believe in making pencil sketches and then painting landscape in your studio. You must be right under the sky. William Merritt Chase The Nursery, 1890 William Merritt Chase was born on November 1, 1849 in Williamsburg (now Nineveh), Indiana. Chase was a member of Ten American Painters which included Child Hassam and Joseph DeCamp , among others. Having studied both in America and Europe, he was a multifaceted Impressionist artist working in several kinds of media and subject matter, and was also well-known as an instructor where he opened his own school in 1896, the Chase School of Art . That school exists today as Parsons The New School for Design . Chase's work is characterized by deep saturated color—even when he uses a more monotone palette there is always a sense of depth and richness to those values. In The Nursery above, he contrasts complementary colors red and green under a soft, diffused afternoon light with a very warm-toned earth the figure...

A Rainy Day in New York City, 1905 Born in St. Louis, Missouri on August 15, 1864, Paul Cornoyer was an American Impressionist painter. He studied under a scholarship at the Académie Julian in Paris under Jules Lefebvre and Benjamin Constant before eventually settling in New York years later, where his strong French influences would surface to bring about his own vivid style. Cornoyer had the uncanny ability to meld mood and color together in a way that made his architectural settings seem to speak aloud. In this post I'd like to talk about a few of his works. In A Rainy Day in New York City above, Cornoyer uses reflections and strong darks to balance warm and cool colors under an overcast sky that, despite being grey, actually has many subtle colors. The use of one-point perspective also leads our eye toward very cool distant buildings and an empty sky that brings our eye back to the architecture and pedestrians. Note the use of variance in edges, how the foreground tree i...

I follow the light, where it comes from, where it goes Frank Weston Benson Lily Pond,1923 Born on March 24, 1862 Frank Weston Benson was an American Impressionist painter from Salem, Massachusetts and a founding member of the Ten American Painters which included Childe Hassam and Joseph DeCamp . Of the three, Benson is the most impressionist, with thick dry brushstrokes and a more vibrant use of color both in his highlights and shadows. Benson is known also for his variety of subject matter and use of various media in which he used everything from wet and dry media to lithography and etching to capture not only landscapes and figures but wildlife, especially birds and fowl. His career was filled with numerous accolades and memberships, his exhibitions very successful, and today his work can be found in many museums across the United States. Read more about his life here . Just looking at Lily Pond above, we see a sensitive eye with a deep respect for light and color. A...