James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, but left the United States at the age of twenty-one and never returned.  He lived as an expatriate, dividing his time between London and Paris.  Whistler was famous for his abrasive wit and great artistic talent.  His work is not easily placed in any specific school or tradition and in modern times this has resulted in his art being frequently overlooked.

James McNeill Whistler, The Ocean (1866)

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In broad terms, Whistler’s style comes close to Symbolist — many of his landscapes have a moody, ethereal quality that seems as much the terrain of dreams as of the real world.  In a number of his landscapes, especially his famous Nocturnes, Whistler used a novel compositional technique in which he painted from memory rather than from sustained, direct observation.  He would memorize the main forms and then put them on the painting surface without ever returning to the subject.  This results in a simplified composition that is quite reminiscent of Asian art.

James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Blue and Silver, Chelsea (1871)

In fact, Whistler was one of the first artists in Europe to embrace Japanese art, and he owes a particular debt to Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858).  Compare Whistler’s Nocturne in Blue and Gold, Old Battersea Bridge (below top) with Hiroshige’s Kyobashi Bridge (below bottom).

James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Blue and Gold, Old Battersea Bridge (c. 1872-75)

Ando Hiroshige, Kyobashi Bridge (date unknown)

To facilitate his technique of painting from memory, Whistler completed his landscapes rapidly, using thinned oil paint.  Much like plein air painters, Whistler would complete these landscapes in a single painting session.  This is in stark contrast to his figure painting method, in which he would often labor for years over a composition, executing and fine-tuning until he was completely satisfied.

James McNeill Whistler, Cremorne Gardens No. 2 (c. 1872-77)

Whistler was also quite interested in design, and went to great lengths to ensure that his art was placed in the best possible viewing space.  Indeed it was Whistler who pioneered the modern, “sparse” art gallery — before Whistler, galleries frequently hung paintings all over the walls, from floor to ceiling.  It is even reported that, at Whistler’s insistence, gallery attendants at showings of his work were required to dress in colors that harmonized with the paintings on display!

James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Falling Rocket (1875)

James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Blue and Gold, St. Mark’s Venice (c. 1879-80)

Egotistical and eccentric, yet hugely talented, James McNeill Whistler is one of the greats and his art is enjoying a well-deserved resurgence.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

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Hello all, here’s my latest — another scene from Gethsemani Abbey.  This farm road winds throughout the entire Abbey property and each view is more stunning than the next.  The scenes I’ve posted so far are from last Fall.  I’m scheduled to be back at Gethsemani in May and will hopefully collect some nice new images.

For those new to this blog, Gethsemani is a Trappist monastery situated on around 2,500 acres near  Bardstown, Kentucky.  It’s best known as the temporal and spiritual home of Thomas Merton, who  achieved worldwide notoriety in the late 1940s upon the publication of his autobiographical work The Seven Storey Mountain.  Gethsemani is well worth a visit if you find yourself in the area.

Tom Thomson, Sunset Sky (1915)

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Anyone who has followed this blog for awhile knows I’m a big fan of Canadian artist Tom Thomson (1877-1917).  My interests range far and wide, but I always find myself coming back to Thomson.  I looked back on prior blog posts and realized I’d never collected more than a few images of his paintings in one place.  It’s good to look at a collection of them in one sitting to get an overall feel for his style, so that’s what I’m aiming at here.

Tom Thomson, Afternoon, Algonquin Park (c. 1914)

Tom Thomson, Deadwood (date unknown)

Tom Thomson, The Jack Pine (c. 1916-17)

Many critics see the influence of Van Gogh in Thomson’s bold brushstrokes and vivid coloring, and liken his compositional style to Cezanne’s — a slight telescoping of the depth of field emphasizes the flat plane of the surface without entirely relinquishing the third dimension.  You can also see Arts and Crafts design elements, especially in the somewhat stylized clouds and trees in many Thomson paintings.  I see it a lot in The Jack Pine (above) and in Bateaux, The West Wind and Pink Island (below).

Tom Thomson, Flowers (date unknown)

Tom Thomson, Bateaux (1916)

Tom Thomson, The West Wind (1917)

Thomson spent a great deal of his life painting in Algonquin Park, a Canadian provincial park located between Georgian Bay and the Ottawa River in Central Ontario.  Established in 1893, it is the oldest provincial park in Canada.  Algonquin Park was also a favorite of the Canadian Group of Seven (usually called simply “The Seven”), a group that was heavily influenced by Thomson.

Tom Thomson, Northern River (c. 1914-15)

Tom Thomson, Lightning Bolt (date unknown)

Tom Thomson, Campfire (c. 1916)

Thomson painted almost exclusively en plein air, and his quick, bold, loose brushstrokes were ideally suited to capturing the quickly-changing light and air of the rugged Canadian wilderness.  The deceptive simplicity of his compositions is a direct reflection of the environment in which they were painted.

Tom Thomson, Hot Summer Moonlight (1915)

Tom Thomson, Pink Island (date unknown)

A large collection of Thomson’s work is contained in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa (see link on this site) and his work has greatly escalated in value in recent years.  It’s not hard to understand why!  I hope you enjoy Thomson’s work as much as I do.

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Here’s my latest.  I’m continuing my “limited palette” experiment.  For this one I restricted myself to Cobalt Blue, Venetian Red, Naples Yellow, Ivory Black and Permalba White.

This scene is from Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve in DuPage County, Illinois, outside Chicago.  Waterfall Glen is basically  comprised of all the land immediately surrounding Argonne National Laboratory.  The flora and fauna of Waterfall Glen is a bit unusual for this part of the Midwest — oak-pine savannah.

There’s a ten-mile trail that takes you completely around the perimeter of the preserve, and this scene is a spot on that trail.   This was at about 4:00 p.m. this past Saturday and the view is to the southeast.  It was a beautiful day and very quiet.  You could hear the trunks of the pine trees creaking in the breeze — and that soft whispering sound pines make when the wind blows.

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Happy Valentine’s Day!

Peonies is one of my favorite paintings by one of my favorite artists, American Impressionist William Merritt Chase.  This is a simple composition with an overt Asian influence, done with spot-on coloring.  The red and green are perfect complements.

I’m especially taken with the radiant green of the table cloth.  What’s more subtle is the soft violet in the background and negative space of the peonies, which delicately interacts with the pale yellow in the background, the flowers, the vase, a couple of spots on the table cloth and fan, and the waistline of the kimono.  The depth of field is slightly flattened, emphasizing the two dimensional plane of the painting surface.

It’s hard to decide which is lovelier, the flowers or the woman, and I suppose that was Chase’s point.

Bob Baker, Gethsemani Abbey Grounds – in Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre and Cobalt Blue (2012)

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Hello world!  These are my two latest paintings.  As you can see, I went “old school” on these two.  I stuck with a very limited color palette — what amounts to a Renaissance palette — to see what would happen.  The result is these two paintings.

As I’ve mentioned before, I try to walk a line between the chromatic exuberance of the Impressionists and the restraint of Barbizon School painters like Corot.  To bring myself closer to the Barbizon School, once in awhile I will paint things using a very limited color palette — emphasizing value and intensity over hue.  That’s what the old masters did, because they really had no choice: modern colors hadn’t been invented yet!

Whenever I do this I find that what I give up in color is almost always more than made up for in intensity of tonal value.  You’re forced to make some pretty dramatic contrasts when you paint with such a limited palette, because that’s basically all you’ve got to work with.

The top painting is a barn and house across the road from where my dad lives in Evansville, Indiana.  I’ve been by this place a bunch of times and never thought to paint it — sometimes the most familiar things go right past us.  The bottom painting is yet another scene from my trip to Gethsemani Abbey last year.  This was a pretty view from a hilltop looking across a valley at another hilltop, where the Trappists have set up a big cross that can be seen from all over the Abbey grounds.

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Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875) was the leading painter of the French Barbizon School in the middle of the 19th Century. He is a key figure in the history of landscape painting, serving as a bridge between Neo-Classicism and Impressionism.  Claude Monet famously declared in 1897 that “there is only one master here — Corot.  We are nothing compared to him, nothing.”  Edgar Degas said in 1883 that “he [Corot] is still the strongest, he anticipated everything.”  “M. Corot’s compositions,” said Baudelaire, “which are always entirely free of pedantry, are seductive just because of their simplicity of color.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Shipyard in Honfleur (1823)

Corot is a great favorite of mine, and a terrific starting point for anyone interested in learning the art of landscape painting.  My favorite Corot paintings employ classic compositional devices such as a road, a stream or a line of trees (for example) to lead the viewer’s eye into and around  the painting.  A number of the original Impressionists were heavily influenced by Corot’s methods of composition — Alfred Sisley being a prime example.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, The Road to Sevres (c. 1858-59)

Corot frequently used a loose painting style that captured mood and anticipated Impressionism.  Yet Corot was enamored of more earthy, natural color than most of the Impressionists.  Having said that, Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro often exhibited restraint in the use of high chroma colors, and to my mind this shows Corot’s influence.  In my own painting I find myself borrowing from Corot’s compositional style and trying to walk a line between the chromatic exuberance of the Impressionists and Corot’s restraint.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Road to Sin-le-Noble (1873)

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, The Lane (c. 1850)

Corot is widely loved, and for good reason.  He is also one of the most forged artists in history.  I’ve previously related the joke about Corot — that of the 3,000 known works of Corot, 5,000 may be found in the United States alone.  In his lifetime Corot was famous for his personal kindness and generosity — and as a result you almost never hear anyone make an uncharitable comment about him.  Just one more reason to admire the work of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Mount Soracte (1826)

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I just heard in the news that Elizabeth Taylor’s Van Gogh painting Vue de l’asile et de la Chapelle de Saint-Rémy (top of post) was recently auctioned off at Christie’s for just under $16,000,000.  The convergence of the names Vincent Van Gogh and Elizabeth Taylor certainly helped the price, but I was very taken with the painting itself.  In it, Van Gogh depicts the asylum in which he spent the final months of his life.  He painted this on one of the occasions when he was allowed outdoors after having been confined for six months in the asylum.  So it’s a very poignant work.

Vincent Van Gogh, Almond Branches in Bloom (1890)

Van Gogh loved to paint flowers, and his Almond Branches in Bloom (above) has always been a favorite of mine.  I love the design simplicity and cool color palette.  This is in contrast to the very warm palette Van Gogh used in his famous Twelve Sunflowers (below).

Vincent Van Gogh, Twelve Sunflowers (1889)

It is easy to forget Van Gogh’s very dramatic and beautiful religious art.  Two of my favorites are his Pieta (below top) with its fabulous use of contrasting warm and cool colors and dark outlining of the figures — much as one would see in a stained glass window.  Georges Rouault used the same technique to great effect in his work.  I also love The Good Samaritan (below bottom).  Again there are contrasting warms and cools but the colors are earthier.

Vincent Van Gogh, Pieta (1889)

Vincent Van Gogh, The Good Samaritan (1890)

I have a special regard for Van Gogh’s landscapes.  I love the warm golds and dark outlining in Noon Rest, After Millet (below top).  The blues and greens in Wheat Field With Cypresses (below bottom) are some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen; Van Gogh had a very subtle eye for greens and that is on full display in this one.

Vincent Van Gogh, Noon Rest, After Millet (1890)

Vincent Van Gogh, Wheat Field With Cypresses (c. 1889)

Van Gogh’s Sower With Setting Sun (below top) and Sower Against Setting Sun, After Millet (below bottom) are two of the best examples of yellow-violet color complementarity.  They’re dazzling, aren’t they?  There’s nobody like Van Gogh.  Later.

Vincent Van Gogh, Sower With Setting Sun (1888)

Vincent Van Gogh, Sower Against Setting Sun, After Millet (1881)

William Glackens, March Day, Washington Park (date unknown)

William James Glackens (1870- 1938) is yet another American artist trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (can you tell I love that place?) and remains one of the best known of the Ashcan School of painters (also called “The Eight”) — a group of realist painters who in 1908 organized an independent exhibition of their work in defiance of the National Academy of Design’s rather rigid views about beauty in art.

William Glackens (date unknown)

At the Pennsylvania Academy Glackens studied under Thomas Anshutz and was a classmate of John French Sloan.  Sloan and Glackens became friends and Sloan introduced Glackens to Robert Henri.  In 1895, Glackens, Sloan and Henri traveled to Europe to study the Dutch Masters and to paint.  The Impressionists greatly influenced Glackens and would give direction to his artistic career upon his return to the United States the following year.

William Glackens, The Shoppers (1907)

William Glackens, Chez Mouquin (1905)

William Glackens, Hammerstein’s Roof Garden (1901)

Ashcan School artists, such as Glackens, have in common an aggressive realism that finds beauty even in the conventionally ugly. “Ashcan School” was originally intended as a term of derision and some of the members of the School, most notably John French Sloan, despised it.  Personally, I like the moniker because it neatly summarizes what made these artists great. Their 1908 show was well received and went on tour under the management of Sloan.  Glackens’s two most prominent paintings in the 1908 show were The Shoppers and Chez Mouquin (both above).  Most of the Ashcan School artists also participated in the Exhibition of Independent Artists in 1910, a further attempt to break down the exclusivity of the National Academy.

William Glackens, Skating in Central Park (c. 1910)

William Glackens, May Day, Central Park (c. 1905)

William Glackens, Fruit Stand, Coney Island (date unknown)

Like a number of other Ashcan School artists Glackens was a newspaper and magazine illustrator before becoming a painter.  In many of his genre paintings he continued in the manner of illustration (Sloan did likewise), emphasizing communal relationships and action.  Yet Glackens’s landscapes, especially his late ones, are strongly Impressionistic.   Most critics see the influence of Renoir in Glackens’s later work, and I would have to agree — have a look at Bathing at Bellport, Long Island;  New Hampshire Field; Connecticut Landscape; Portsmouth Harbor, New Hampshire; and particularly Cafe Lafayette, Portrait of Kay Laurel (all below), and see if you don’t agree.

William Glackens, Bathing at Bellport, Long Island (date unknown)

William Glackens, New Hampshire Field (date unknown)

William Glackens, Connecticut Landscape (date unknown)

William Glackens, Cafe Lafayette, Portrait of Kay Laurel (date unknown)

William Glackens, Portsmouth Harbor, New Hampshire (1909)

Much like Everett Shinn, Glackens’s work is frequently imbued with levity and good humor.  He did not subscribe to the idea that realism must of necessity be dour and depressing: happiness is real too, and Glackens was glad to depict it.  There’s a joyful buoyancy to his work that is very appealing without feeling contrived.  Art critic Forbes Watson said of Glackens that his paintings are “haunted by the spectre of happiness, obsessed with the contemplation of joy.”  I couldn’t agree more.

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In my last post I featured the work of the great Hudson River School artist Sanford Robinson Gifford, who was one of the great Luminists — an artistic movement interested in moody atmospheric effects such as mist and fog.  My research into Gifford and Luminism reminded me of another late-19th-Century  artistic movement: Tonalism.

Like the Luminists, Tonalists painted landscapes with an overall feeling of dreaminess or mistiness; the style emphasizes neutral hues in gray, blue and brown and can often have an ethereal, almost ghostly quality.  One of the most famous painters in this style is James McNeill Whistler.

Tonalism, in turn, is associated with Symbolism, another late-19th-Century artistic movement, which is focused on mythological and dream imagery.  The symbols used by Symbolist painters were not the traditional, time-honored  symbols of iconography, but personal, idiosyncratic and often obscure references.  Symbolism is complex and multi-faceted and it would be easy to over-simplify.  Symbolist art draws from diverse  sources and is tied in with the late-19th-Century fascination with Spiritism and psychoanalysis — think of Gothic Romanticism, Edgar Allen Poe and Sigmund Freud.  In modern fiction Peter Straub’s Ghost Story has a very Symbolist feel.

Leon Dabo (1909)

Leon Dabo (1864-1960) was an American Tonalist artist perhaps best known for his landscapes of the Hudson River Valley in New York.  He studied under James McNeill Whistler and doubtless absorbed a great many Tonalist-Symbolist ideas and methods in the process.

Like the Hudson River School artists, Dabo conveys in his landscapes a feeling of spaciousness, with an emphasis on atmospheric effect.  But Dabo carries the effect further.  When Sanford Robinson Gifford depicts the Catskill Mountains in October in the Catskills (see prior Art Out The Wazoo blog post) there is a mythic quality to the landscape but we are still firmly tied to Earth.  In Dabo’s Silver Light, Hudson River (below) we might be tied to Earth — but then again we might not.

Dabo was also attracted to the design simplicity of Asian art.  This is evident in his landscapes and is quite apparent in his still lifes, such as Still Life With Flowers (below).

Leon Dabo, Evening on the Hudson (1909)

Leon Dabo, Silver Light, Hudson River (1911)

Leon Dabo, Still Life With Flowers (date unknown)

By the turn of the century Dabo was dividing his time between Europe and the United States.  He participated in the Exhibition of American Artists, the show promoted by members of the so-called Ashcan School (or “The Eight”) led by Robert Henri.

Dabo was later  a principal organizer of the famous International Exhibition of Modern Art,  the then-radical modernist art exhibition more commonly known as the Armory Show of 1913.  With his contacts in both Europe and the United States Dabo was ideally suited to organizing the Armory Show, and he hosted several of the earliest meetings in his studio.  After the Armory Show Dabo lived for nearly another fifty years, actively painting into his nineties.

Leon Dabo, Fog and Mist (date unknown)

Leon Dabo, Along the Lake (date unknown)

Dabo’s works have a mysterious, otherworldly quality that is quite striking.  If you’re a fan, as I am, of ghost stories and Gothic novels, you will most likely be captivated by Dabo’s work.  I hope you enjoy his paintings as much as I do.

Leon Dabo, On the Hillside (date unknown)

Leon Dabo, Hudson River (1918)