Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Mystery Artist: Water Lilies


Can you name the artist who painted these water lilies? I'll send a deluxe Dinotopia map to the first person who guesses the correct answer.
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Addendum: Zelas correctly identified the Russian painter Isaac Levitan (1860-1900). The painting is 95cm x 128cm and was painted in 1895, before Claude Monet's famous water lily paintings.

More samples of Levitan at Athaeneum.org/Levitan and Wikipedia/Levitan
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18 comments:

  1. AnonymousJune 30, 2009 at 7:38 AM

    Genius painting! I have no idea who did it though

    I was writing for something totally unrelated, and since this is the best way I have to send you the link..

    I've just posted this file on my deviantArt, maybe it could be useful for some of your readers?
    http://dragonladych.deviantart.com/art/Photoshop-colourwheel-tool-127763768

    It's the tool I made to find my palettes and gamuts in Photoshop?

    And while I am here this link might also be of interest?
    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/06/24/the-blue-and-the-green/

    Cheers
    Sunila

    ReplyDelete
  2. zelasJune 30, 2009 at 8:14 AM

    isaak levitan?

    ReplyDelete
  3. James GurneyJune 30, 2009 at 8:19 AM

    Zelas: Very impressive, you are right. How did you know? Please email your postal address to jgurneyart@yahoo.com.

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownJune 30, 2009 at 8:30 AM

    tineye.com I think. Found a relevant link there.

    ReplyDelete
  5. DarooJune 30, 2009 at 8:30 AM

    Huh- I was thinking Russian too -- but it looked too tight for Levitan to me and more like Shishkin.

    But then I looked back through the Levitan book and he did do some fairly tight -- surface detail oriented paintings too.

    Is it an earlier painting?

    ReplyDelete
  6. VirginiaJune 30, 2009 at 8:51 AM

    Waterhouse?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Erik BongersJune 30, 2009 at 10:03 AM

    It looks like the painting has been painted on location as the perspective of the view seems to 'curl'. That is the lower portion of the water seems to be viewed from above rather that frontal.
    The strange thing is that this perspective can only be 'felt' based on the shape of the leaves.

    ReplyDelete
  8. DarooJune 30, 2009 at 11:01 AM

    1895 makes it a later painting.

    I associate a looser broader brush style that is primarily concerned with light and atmosphere with Levitan towards the end of his career. But that's not really the case -- As a true artist he responds to his subject in a mindful way instead of taking a singular dogmatic approach in the name of personal "Technique".

    Thanks for challenging my assumptions.

    Here's a painting from the same year -- heavy on detail but almost monochromatic -- a visual tone poem:
    www.abcgallery.com/L/levitan/levitan43.html

    ReplyDelete
  9. zelasJune 30, 2009 at 11:16 AM

    Did some searching online and got linked to his wikipedia site :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. zelasJune 30, 2009 at 11:28 AM

    oh yea, if you want to be able to google it, just just type:

    painting "water lilies" -monet site:wikipedia.org

    ReplyDelete
  11. jeffJune 30, 2009 at 1:11 PM

    Levitan is a brilliant landscape painter. His life story reads as something out of a Dostoyevsky story.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Meridth McKean GimbelJune 30, 2009 at 1:28 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  13. S. WeaselJune 30, 2009 at 2:22 PM

    Beautiful painting, but it looks like a game of Pacman gone horribly, horribly wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  14. SteveJune 30, 2009 at 2:32 PM

    S. Weasel, I'm glad I wasn't alone with the Pacman brainwave. I didn't want to be seeing it, but there it was...

    Apart from that, dynamite painting. I particularly like how the plants softly disappear into the depths.

    ReplyDelete
  15. ericJune 30, 2009 at 6:01 PM

    Isaak Levitan

    ReplyDelete
  16. MoaiJune 30, 2009 at 7:02 PM

    I'd never heard of Levitan before. Thanks for bringing his beautiful landscapes to my attention!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Jed HenryJuly 1, 2009 at 1:36 PM

    Millais?

    ReplyDelete
  18. James GurneyJuly 1, 2009 at 1:38 PM

    Hi, Good guess. But Zelas figured it out on the second comment. The correct answer is Isaak (Isaac?) Levitan, a Russian landscape painter.

    ReplyDelete

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