beside the easel

Piazza Navona, Rome 1699 Caspar van Wittel was a Dutch veduta painter born on 1653 in Amersfoort, a medieval city in central Netherlands. He lived most of his life in Italy, specifically in Rome— becoming a member of the Accademia di San Luca— although he travelled all over the country. Wittel is considered among the very first to spur the veduta genre, even before Canaletto and Panini, making detailed studies from nature and pioneering the format we know today as the panorama, or wide-view of scenery. Affectionately known in his day as Gaspare degli Occhiali , (Caspar of the Eyeglasses) his views of the Italian countryside combined with beautiful architecture with local figures helped forge a rich , seductive genre that would have an immense impact on landscape art. In Piazza Navona above, (painted when Canaletto was about two years old) Wittel offers us a view that, even though we know it well to this day, here it still appears fresh and interesting to us. The cont...

Lucrezia as Poetry, ca.1641 Born on July 21, 1615, Salvator Rosa was an Italian Baroque painter from Arenella, near Naples. Rosa is one of the only artists from the era to have had an influence on the Romantic artists, namely Turner , for his emotionally charged landscapes and highly independent attitude of being an artist, often rejecting lucrative commissions and only painting "my brushes when I am in ecstasy". An accomplished poet, he wrote many satires and was highly cynical in matters of the heart and marriage, quoted as saying that Un buon cavallo e una bella donna sono due care bestie — a good horse and a beautiful woman are two dear beasts. This painting above of his wife, Lucrezia shows a stylized yet perceptive manner of portraiture. Judging by her appearance she was younger than him by more than a few years. This image here from Wikipedia is not the best for detail but it illustrates Rosa's understanding of body language and facial expression. Astrai...

Pissarro Building, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas While on holidays on a cruise a few years back in the Caribbean I passed by this curious museum which, unfortunately was closed at the time and I couldn't return later much to my disappointment. Camille Pissarro was born and raised here on July 10, 1830, in this heaven-on-earth island, but he spent most of his adult life painting in Paris. Although not exactly a household name to many familiar with Impressionism, he was a huge influence and father figure to many artists of that era including Cezanne, Van Gogh, Seurat and Gauguin. What makes Pissarro cool is that he seems to get only better with age, and his urban landscapes are light years ahead of any painter in the genre. The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning, 1897 A perfect snapshot of the era and a stunning painting, this kind of work seems remarkably simplistic up close but step back and it has a photographic realism to it. This is obviously true of all Impressi...

Portrait of Giovanni Paolo Pannini by Louis Gabriel Blanchet One of my favourite vedutisti , Pannini was born on this day in 1691. During the Rococo of the late 1600's two major ideas evolved in landscape painting: the capriccio and the veduta , which eventually sort of merged into a kind of scenic cappriccio. The Capriccio, meaning caprice or fancy, evolved from the idea of imagination triumphing on the base of Classical architecture, often depicting it with deep shadows and bold colours, whereas the veduta. or view, arose from the British who frequently visited Spain, France and Italy (the Grand Tour) where they became so inspired by the glorious vistas they wanted to take a souvenir back home with them, a veduta. This of course launched the careers of some artists, especially Canaletto. Pannini, although he didn't invent the style, was the one who inspired all of them and as we can see by his portrait above by Blanchet, Pannini was held in high regard in his lifetime. ...