Day Twenty Three: Venice at night by John Enneking
Hello and welcome to day 23 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is of 'Venice at night' by John Enneking.
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| Painted after - Venice at night by John Enneking, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x5, Oil on wood panel |
John Enneking was born in 1841 and died in 1916. He is generally considered to be an Impressionist painter but a survey of his work reveals strong Tonalist tendencies. I can't say that I love everything that John Enneking has done but there is certainly a lot of high-quality work there.
He is more well-known than several of the previous artists we've done on this blog. He achieved quite a lot of fame in his life and judging from the availability of information about him on the Internet, he is still quite popular in many art circles.
In keeping with our theme of the last few days about the defining characteristics of Tonalism, I like to talk today about fractured brushwork.
Many artists since before even the great masters would exhibit loose expressive brushwork in their studies, but when it came to producing the actual paintings they presented to the public at large, brushwork was usually far more refined. There are some definite exceptions to this among the old Masters, Rembrandt being chief among these. For the most part, a high finish was the standard for many centuries. By this I mean, the brushstrokes on most paintings were usually smoothed together and overlapped so that there was little focus or attention paid on the actual brush strokes.
In the 19th century painters like Millet and Corot started the trend towards a looser and more open expressive style of painting. This was strongly carried forward by Impressionists towards the end of the 19th century and is one of the defining characteristics of Tonalism as well. Most Tonalists utilize a loose fracture of brushstrokes in their paintings to render the scene, while still keeping brushwork loose to enhance the expressive qualities of the painting. There is very little effort put towards a high polish in the rendering.
In some cases, Tonalist painters will diffuse forms in their landscape paintings almost to the point of looking like they were being perceived through a textured piece of glass. In my own work I strive to keep my brushwork loose and expressive. For that reason, I tend to use brushes that are just a bit larger than what is comfortable to paint with.
A bit about 'Venice at night' by John Enneking: This is very far from the type of scene that I would ever paint and I have not been fortunate enough to visit Venice in person yet. However, I was attracted to the strong tonal quality of this painting by John and it also works very well in a square format.
The original by Enneking is actually quite a remarkable painting. I will be including a version of it at the bottom of this post. I'm happy with my study, but I was very very constrained by the small size of the panel. All in all though the piece is an attractive painting and I'm happy that I pursued this as a study.
To see more of my work, visit my site here.
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| Original painting, Venice at night by John Enneking |