December 25, 2013

Arthur Wesley Dow


Flowering Field, 1895

Autumn - A Landscape Sketch


Moonrise

Boats at Rest, c. 1895

Arthur Wesley Dow (April 6, 1857 – December 13, 1922) was an American painter, printmaker, photographer, and influential arts educator.
Dow taught at major American arts training institutions for 30 years, among them Teachers College, Columbia University; the Art Students League of New YorkPratt Institute; and, from 1900, his own Summer School of Art at Ipswich, Massachusetts.
His ideas were quite revolutionary for the period; he taught that rather than copying nature, art should be created by elements of the composition, like line, mass and color. His ideas were published in the 1899 book Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers.


Berthe Morisot (3)


Dahlias, circa 1876

The Cheval Glass, 1876

Young Girl in a Ball Gown, 1879

Berthe Morisot 1875

Berthe Morisot (January 14, 1841 – March 2, 1895) was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt.[1]
In 1864, she exhibited for the first time in the highly esteemed Salon de Paris. Sponsored by the government, and judged by academicians, the Salon was the official, annual exhibition of the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris. Her work was selected for exhibition in six subsequent Salons until, in 1874, she joined the "rejected" Impressionists in the first of their own exhibitions, which included Paul CézanneEdgar DegasClaude MonetCamille PissarroPierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. It was held at the studio of the photographer Nadar.
She became the sister-in-law of her friend and colleague, Édouard Manet, when she married his brother, Eugène.

Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets, 1872


Ambrose McEvoy (4)


The Thames from the Artist’s House (1912)

Miss Teddy Gerard (1921)

Scene in France

The Thames from the Artist’s House in Grosvenor Road

Ambrose McEvoy (12 August 1878 – 4 January 1927) was an English artist. His early works are landscapes and interiors with figures, in a style influenced by James McNeill Whistler. Later he gained success as a portrait painter, mainly of women and often in watercolour.
Arthur Ambrose McEvoy was born on 12 August 1878 in CrudwellWiltshire, the son of a Scottish engineer. Encouraged by Whistler, who spotted his talent early on, McEvoy enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art in London when he was fifteen. At the Slade he was part of the group around Augustus Johnand William Orpen. McEvoy had the reputation for a fine technical skill in oils, learnt from study with Whistler. He later worked with Walter Sickert in Dieppe. While at the Slade he was fellow pupil of Gwen John, with whom he had an unhappy affair.
From 1900 he exhibited at the New English Art Club (NEAC), and became a member in 1902. In the same year he married the painter Mary Edwards (1870–1941). In 1907 he held a one-person exhibition at the Carfax Gallery. In 1911 he was a founder-member of the National Portrait Society, and in 1913 he became a member of the International Society.

Alfred Sisley (4)


Fog, Voisins, 1874

Station at Sèvres 1879

 The Chemin through Woods at Roches-Courtaut, St. Martin’s Summer (1880)

Le port de Moret-sur-Loing, le soir, 1884

Alfred Sisley (30 October 1839 – 29 January 1899) was an Impressionist landscape painter who was born and spent most of his life in France, but retained British citizenship. He was the most consistent of the Impressionists in his dedication to painting landscape en plein air (i.e., outdoors). He never deviated into figure painting and, unlike Renoir and Pissarro, never found that Impressionism did not fulfill his artistic needs.
Among his important works are a series of paintings of the River Thames, mostly around Hampton, executed in 1874, and landscapes depicting places in or near Moret-sur-Loing.

Amedeo Modigliani


The jewess (c. 1908)

Bride and Groom (The Couple) 1915

Portrait of chaim soutine, 1915 

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style, characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form. He died at age 35 in Paris of tubercular meningitis, exacerbated by poverty, overwork and addiction to alcohol and narcotics.




December 20, 2013

Charles W. Hawthorne (4)


On Board The S. S. Alesia, circa 1928-1929

Highland Lighthouse

Artist in Plein Air

Provincetown

Charles Webster Hawthorne (January 8, 1872 – November 29, 1930) was an American portrait and genre painter and a noted teacher who founded the Cape Cod School of Art in 1899.
He was born in Lodi, Illinois and his parents returned to Maine, raising him in the state where Charles' father was born. At age 18, he went to New York, working as an office-boy by day in a stained-glass factory and studying at night school and with Henry Siddons Mowbray and William Merritt Chase, and abroad in both the Netherlands and Italy.
He studied painting under several notable artists] at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League. Among his teachers were Frank Vincent DuMond andGeorge de Forest Brush. But Hawthorne declared that the most dominant influence in his career was William Merritt Chase, with whom he worked as both a pupil and assistant. Both men were naturally talented teachers and figurative painters who were drawn to rich color and the lusciousness of oil paint as a medium. Chase passed on aMunich tradition of tone values and tone painting, and Hawthorne learned all he could.
While studying abroad in the Netherlands as Chase's assistant, Hawthorne was influenced to start his own school of art.
His winters were spent in Paris and New York City, his summers at Provincetown, Massachusetts, the site of his school. In addition to founding the Cape Cod School of Art, Hawthorne was also a founding member of the Provincetown Art Association established in 1914. While in Paris Hawthorne became a full member of the French Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1917.
The Cape Cod School of Art was the first outdoor summer school for figure painting and grew into one of the nation's leading art schools. Under thirty years of Hawthorne's guidance, the school attracted some of the most talented art instructors and students in the country including John NobleRichard Miller, and Max Bohm. At his school, Hawthorne gave weekly criticisms and instructive talks, guiding his pupils and setting up ideals but never imposing his own technique or method.
Another well known student was Norman Rockwell, who studied with Hawthorne one summer while he was enrolled at the Art Students League. William H. Johnson also studied with Hawthorne and later got a grant from him.

Alson Skinner Clark (2)



Winter Industrial Landscape on the Chicago River, 1906. OIl on Canvas, 26 x 32 in.

Hillside, Giverny, 1911

Alson S. Clark (25 March 1876 - 23 March 1949) was an American Impressionist painter best remembered for his impressionist landscapes. Born in ChicagoIllinois, his art education included training at the Art Institute of Chicago (where he enrolled at Saturday classes at the age of 11), the Art Students League of New York, and in the atelier of William Merritt Chase. He spent much of his early career working in Paris,France. He served in the US Army as an aerial photographer during World War I. In 1920 he and his wife relocated to Pasadena, California. He taught fine art at Occidental College, and was director of the Stickney Memorial School of Art in Pasadena.
His memberships in arts organizations included the Pasadena Society of Artists and the California Art Club. His work was included in theTonal Impressionism exhibition curated by Harry Muir Kurtzworth in 1937, along with the works of Frank Tenney Johnson, Frank Tolles Chamberlain and Theodore Lukits which was held in the Los Angeles Art Association Gallery at the Los Angeles Public Library.