beside the easel

A Street in Normandy, ca. 1924 Born on the 19 of September in 1844 in western France, Marie Cazin was a French landscape painter and sculptor. Although little of her works appear online and she is often overshadowed by her artist husband, Jean-Charles Cazin , Marie was a painter of incredible mood and light. The period in which she was active was dramatic itself in that the established and conservative Salon of Paris was slowly loosing its stronghold on art and artists while Impressionism was beginning to emerge as a new art form. Cazin exhibited also in England and Belgium, where she found a herself as a painter that could capture the French countryside and sculpt people with equal brilliance. In A Street in Normandy above, Cazin utilizes a distinct brushstroke that is not exactly Impressionist nor Post-Impressionist, but her own unique style. That warm faint glow of the sky in the distance between the buildings is poetry. What I admire about this painting also is how despite t...

The Vegetable Garden, ca.1885-1888 Anthonij (Anton) Rudolf Mauve was a Dutch painter born on September 18, 1838 in Zaandam, northern Holland. He was a leading member of the Hague School of painters in the late 1800's, and outside Holland not well-known except for his connection to Vincent Van Gogh , whom he influenced greatly. Mauve's work focused on rural motifs that captured the everyday farm-life under the often characteristic overcast skies that define Dutch landscape art and the Hague School, hence earning them the curious nickname the Gray School. Mauve's early art instruction were from more formulaic Dutch painters that Mauve sought to break free from into a more naturalist approach using color and mood to heightened effect. Action and composition were not the primary forces that motivated Mauve, but rather the way people moved, how they worked, and the scenic atmosphere under which they lived. Mauve would eventually evolve into another school or rather art col...

Bluff-bowed Fishing Boat on the Beach at Scheveningen, 1899 Jacob Hendricus Maris was a Dutch painter born on August 7, 1837 in The Hague, Netherlands. A key member of the Hague School , a group of Dutch landscape artists in the late 1800's known for their subdued, low-key palette, which gave them the nickname the Gray School . Not every single painting was gray, of course, but it was rather the way in which they used gray as inspiration for mood in depicting pastoral scenes. Clouds became the focal point instead of just a background element. Using gray to its fullest range, experimenting with temperature and values created beautiful and pensive landscapes that furthered the incredible work a couple of generations before in France with the Barbizon School and in particular the brilliant work of Corot . In Bluff-bowed Fishing Boat on the Beach at Scheveningen above, we quickly understand how Maris used gray to full effect. We can almost hear those seagulls hooting in the di...

Italian landscape, ca. 1645 Born around 1615 in Utrecht, Netherlands, Jan Dirksz Both was a painter and etcher whose dramatic landscapes influenced Dutch painting deeply. Both spent time in Rome and Venice where he discovered several Masters, including the vibrant landscapes of Claude Lorrain. Where Lorrain used Classicism heavily in his paintings, with Roman architecture and figures, Both concentrated more on the luminous effects of light and elevated trees to a noble kind of natural architecture. Both also created atmosphere and mood with perspective in a way that not only depicts a view, but invites us to share a beautiful moment of fleeting sunlight. In Italian landscape above, Both leaves much of the foreground in shadow, something most landscape painters would never do. Note how the light is coming from the far left, beyond the frame of the painting. Look at how it falls across the rustic path—Both creates a sliver of light where his figures stand, on horseback, pos...

The Blue Cup, 1909 Born on November 5, 1858, Joseph Rodefer DeCamp was an American Impressionist painter from Cincinnati, Ohio. As one of the founders of the Ten American Painters, which included Childe Hassam , DeCamp painted portraiture, figures and landscapes throughout its twenty year span in Boston. And although DeCamp painted various subjects during his career I find his recurring theme of women as musicians and figures bathed in window-light quite intriguing for their mysterious, poetic quality. Look at The Blue Cup above, at how simple it is, yet mesmerizing. DeCamp utilizes a blend of warm and cool colors for the wall behind her, and note the intensity and temperature change in her apron from how the light falls upon it from the top to the bottom. I like how the larger, more elaborate chinaware on the table beside her, complete with subtle reflections, are not the focal point despite their considerable attention to detail. Her facial expression denotes a simple delight ...

Ville d’Avray, 1867 Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was born in Paris on July 16, 1796. He was a giant of the Barbizon school and humbled his contemporaries with brushwork that almost defies description along with a poet's understanding of light. His landscapes speak. The trees themselves are like figures in a scene. And yet he could also paint people quite well, bathing women in soft light and delicate features like the landscapes of his French countryside. In the Renaissance and Baroque the landscape was often depicted in sunrise or glowing sunset, as if revealing the untapped potential of humanity itself, whereas with Corot overcast skies and trees blowing in the wind foreshadow the progress of man looming over nature. He still manages to make breathtaking work in the process. In Ville d’Avray he makes the ordinary surreal, using strong horizontals but makes the two trees vibrate with his characteristic blurred brushstrokes that are even more impressive seen in person. Corot re...

Shepherd and Shepherdess, ca.1670 Yesterday marked the birthday of another great Carlo, who was born in 1628, a few years after Carlo Maratta. Cignani studied under Francesco Albani, who in turn learned from the Carracci's and became a great teacher himself, influencing not only Cignani but others including Andrea Sacchi and Francesco Vaccaro. The commonality between all these artists were the use of chiaroscuro and color together with inventive composition, avoiding the overly dark and often dreary tenebrism that Caravaggio and his realism brought. Personally, I enjoy both styles, having seen plenty of both on my trip to Rome in 2010...and there is plenty to learn from each artist. In the above example, Cignani creates a pyramidal composition that is lyrical and musical— the eye flows around this piece in circular motions despite the complex details and textures depicted here. The body language and positioning of the two children is natural and frames the goat. Curiously, th...

Yesterday was the 185th birthday of one of my favourite French painters, someone who could merge figures and landscape together beautifully like no other artist, someone who made fields of harvesters against the setting sun seem real yet dreamlike. Welcome to the world of Jules Breton... The Song of the Lark, 1884 This is like music. Squint your eyes and the golden glow of that late sun spreads across that orange sky and down that empty field...the woman is barely silhouetted against that sky, sickle in hand, listening to the sound of a lark after a long day's work. Breton is telling us to stop and appreciate the natural world around us. He also maintains the dignity and character of all his subjects, not as poor and ignorant, but real people who help to feed the world. The Barbizon School sought to cherish nature and the landscape, to preserve it from the oncoming Industrial Revolution and factories that would later lure people out of the countryside and into the city for wo...

The Virgin and Child with St. Anne, ca.1510 Yesterday was the 560th birthday of history's greatest artistic genius and polymath, the legend that intrigues and astonishes half a millenium after his time. Leonardo da Vinci. It is difficult to understate the influence this single human being had on art and the world itself, and to still fascinate scientists and artists (and Dan Brown) alike after such a period of time is obviously a testament to his very unique greatness. I want to talk here about why the hype of a centuries old artist is still amazing. (The Dan Brown theories you can read about elsewhere.) His name alone is interesting in itself. Born in a modest farmhouse actually a couple of miles away from the small comune of Vinci, east of Florence— at a time when surnames were already being used for a few centuries— it is indeed interesting that his father and Leonardo's grandfather lived in Vinci all their lives, hence the namesake. Leonardo was the bastard son of h...