Day Eight: Pasture by a Pond by William Morris Hunt
Hello and welcome to day eight of 100 days of tonalism.
Painted after - Pasture by a Pond by William Morris Hunt, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x5, Oil on wood panel
Today's study is 'Pasture by a Pond' by William Morris Hunt.
By this point I was settling in for the painting and 'Pasture by a pond' fell together easily. I've read a little about William Morris Hunt and in the video narration I quote a bit off off Wikipedia. Hunt was a foundational painter in the tonalist vein. He studied in France with Jean-François Millet, a major 'Barbizon School' painter.
Hunt's work clearly has that Barbizon stamp but is also American in tone and feeling. The differences and similarities between the Barbizon school and Tonalism are varied and I'll be exploring this topic more in future posts where I've done studies after Barbizon painters like Corot and George Frederick Munn.
Today's video went much smoother, thanks for asking. Yesterday was a comedy of errors as I first rendered the video at a super high resolution and then had issues uploading to Youtube. Sorry for the slight delay in uploading the video portion of my post. I'll try to get ahead of things like that in the future.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
A bit about 'Pasture by a Pond' by William Morris Hunt. I discussed this in the video narration but I guess I'll explore some more here about my process. The rich greens are achieved by painting a thin wash of green over my Burnt Sienna underpainting and then adding more varied greens using the side of my brush. I paint grass all the time (there's a lot of it out here) so strategies for creating interest with those areas are handy.
I've textured the wood board that I'm painting on with clear gesso that has my ground color mixed in. This is very useful on the smaller paintings because I can achieve some good effects just by dragging my brush across the surface.
To see more of my work, visit my site
Original painting, Pasture by a Pond by William Morris Hunt