Day Twenty One: Out of the Studio Window, Montclair by George Inness
Hello and welcome to day 21 of 100 days tonalism.
Painted after -Out the Studio Window by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel
Today's studie is 'Out the Studio Window, Montclair' by George Inness.
On today's video I read a passage from a book about George Inness called
"Inness landscapes" by Alfred Werner
. The quote refers to some of his Barbizon school influences namely: Corot, Rousseau and Daubigny.
I didn't narrate this in the video, but the same book goes on to state that Inness was also under the spell of Constable, who saw the outward forms of nature "imbued with the spiritual significance," and who firmly believe that the artist could "extract from the physical world around him elements of moral truth." He also admired Turner, who painted in accordance with the dictum, " I do not imitate nature, I improve upon it."
I think it's interesting that this book mentioned Constable today, as I feel that this painting by George Inness bears some resemblance to Constable's own work. The two artists are not often mentioned in the same breath but there is no doubt that Constable was among the great giants of landscape painting and it is easy to see how his work could influence Inness.
Over the last several days I've been discussing different aspects of what I consider the defining characteristics tonalism, especially as it pertains to landscape painting. So far, I discussed narrative or the lack thereof, and also the concept of unity. In regards to unity so far we have concentrated on unity in composition especially in the selection of landscape subject matter.
Today I'd like to discuss the idea of unity as it pertains to color. Many tonalists used a colored ground to tone their canvases prior to painting. This is in line with some painting traditions going back to the great masters wherein, they would use a brown toned canvas or, in some cases a raw umber or gray tone. It's become fashionable these days to paint directly on white canvas and this is something that I believe the Impressionists did quite often as well.
Painting on a toned ground creates a lot harmony in a painting. The reason for this is thin oil colors will show some of the ground color coming through. Also, in many cases bits of ground color will peek out between various brushstrokes therefore unifying color.
One of the big secrets to achieving vibrancy and unity in landscape paintings, is to use a warm red tone as the ground color and over that, apply cool tones like blues and greens. This creates an interesting vibrational effect. I first read about this in a book by Birge Harrison called
. This is a very good book and easy to find on Amazon. By the way, it is also available for free online in the form of PDF on google books.
Other ways to create unity with your color are to add small amounts of a particular tone to each mixed color painted on the canvas. This technique was employed quite often by Whistler among others. I like to create tonal harmony by pre-mixing about eight or nine colors prior to laying in my first color pass. I do not mix the bits of the same color into each ala' Whistler, but I do seek harmony from the start. Also color unity can be achieved by limiting your color palette. This is something I discussed often on my other
in the past.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
A bit about 'Out of the Studio Window, Montclair' by George Inness: I was attracted to doing a study of this painting because of the vertical composition. Mystudy went together quickly and most of it was painted in one pass. I find the colors in this painting to be quite un-Inness like. I cannot think of that many other paintings of his that featured a blue sky.
Or, upon checking out the reference painting, a grey sky? As with almost every other study I've done in this series, there's a lot less of a yellow tint in this study than the reference image. It would be a pretty easy task to glaze every thing with a raw umber/yellow tint to impersonate aged varnish though I prefer what I feel is a cleaner look.
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Original painting, Out the Studio Window Montclair by George Inness