Frederic Edwin Church had the ability, even in a small field study, to capture a lot of convincing detail and texture, working quickly over a pencil line drawing in a single pass of oil paint.
View of Wimmis, Valley of the Simmental, Switzerland by Frederic Church, 1868, oil on paper mounted on canvas 32.4 x 50.5 cm
The original is only about 13 inches tall, so, depending on the size of your monitor, this detail may be about actual size.
3 comments:
Very interesting . . . the enlarged section, I mean. It is more "washy" than it appears in the small photo. But, even "washy," he has used edges and value well.
This is a wonderful feeling of architectural scale, light and atmosphere. Although the sentimentality of the "great crags" of a seascape, or the romantic "great grandeur of the mountains" (ala Church's painting pictured here) and so forth that some modern art-goers would say is a bit dated, (or "dead" for that matter) the efficacy in which Church executes this is still top notch. I love his work. As a plein air painter in the 21st century I often get caught up the intellectual debate about beauty, aesthetics, artistic message, vision, training, etc and I am always reminded that it is hard and harder to justify plein air and realistic landscape painting as relevant art forms today when one considers Big Art shows with their inflated price tags taking up all the intellectual breathing room. Does anyone else get involved in conversations that seem to diminish the importance of representational painting such as "landscape" or realism for that matter as "dated", "out of touch", not really that important as a "world class" biennial would allege to be? I see it as a battle of ideas...
When art is in trouble, realism comes to the rescue.
Post a Comment