Day Eighty Three: Landscape near Perugia by George Inness
Hello and welcome to Day 83 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is of 'Landscape near Perugia' by George Inness.
Today's study is a mid period George Inness. For the last several George Inness studies that we've done, we have been reading from the book 'George Inness' by Nikolai Cikovsky on our video narration for that day. Today we're going to keep that going so please check the video out.
Continuing on with our discussion of my history as a landscape painter. As I stated in the previous blog post I started out working in a more Impressionist mode. I think that many landscape painters these days are working in an Impressionist manner whether they are aware of it or not. I can't say I was all that aware of it myself until through my research and study of the history of oil painting, I gradually became familiar of many modes of landscape painting that were popular in the United States that had been pretty much forgotten.
Sometime in 2008 my (now) wife came out to visit me in California from New Zealand. Though I lived in San Jose which is only about 60 miles away from San Francisco, I very infrequently would go up to the city. But, because I wanted to show her the sites we made a trip not just to San Francisco but also to Oakland.
At that time I was very deep into oil painting, doing a lot of paintings and reading a lot about the history of landscape painting online. I'm not exactly sure where and when I first became aware of George Inness. I was going to say it was the blog of Stapleton Kearns but I now recall that I probably discovered his blog in the process of researching George Inness.
Either way I was aware that there were a few paintings of his at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. They have a fantastic wing of American landscape paintings. Many are from the Hudson River school era but there are quite a few Luminist and Tonalist works there as well.
I was completely blown away by the mastery that I saw that day at the Museum. These guys had done paintings that positively glowed, not to mention the exquisite surface quality of their work. I believe I've talked a bit about surface quality in this blog. All I will say today is that, I think many modern artists are almost completely unaware of this aspect of their work, to the detriment of their paintings.
I left the Museum that day totally infused with a desire to improve the quality of my own paintings and with a really good idea of the direction that I wanted to move in artistically. I wasn't exactly sure why this era of landscape painting had been subsumed by Impressionism but I knew then that I wanted to become a Tonalist painter.
Tomorrow we'll talk a bit more about Tonalism.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Landscape near Perugia' by George Inness; this painting has a very unique sky in it and I almost didn't want to do a study because of that. It is however a very strong mid period George Inness painting so I included it in this series.
I really like the way that Inness has modulated from greens in the foreground to mauves and grays in the background and I'm quite happy with my study from his painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Landscape near Perugia by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is a mid period George Inness. For the last several George Inness studies that we've done, we have been reading from the book 'George Inness' by Nikolai Cikovsky on our video narration for that day. Today we're going to keep that going so please check the video out.
Continuing on with our discussion of my history as a landscape painter. As I stated in the previous blog post I started out working in a more Impressionist mode. I think that many landscape painters these days are working in an Impressionist manner whether they are aware of it or not. I can't say I was all that aware of it myself until through my research and study of the history of oil painting, I gradually became familiar of many modes of landscape painting that were popular in the United States that had been pretty much forgotten.
Sometime in 2008 my (now) wife came out to visit me in California from New Zealand. Though I lived in San Jose which is only about 60 miles away from San Francisco, I very infrequently would go up to the city. But, because I wanted to show her the sites we made a trip not just to San Francisco but also to Oakland.
At that time I was very deep into oil painting, doing a lot of paintings and reading a lot about the history of landscape painting online. I'm not exactly sure where and when I first became aware of George Inness. I was going to say it was the blog of Stapleton Kearns but I now recall that I probably discovered his blog in the process of researching George Inness.
Either way I was aware that there were a few paintings of his at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. They have a fantastic wing of American landscape paintings. Many are from the Hudson River school era but there are quite a few Luminist and Tonalist works there as well.
I was completely blown away by the mastery that I saw that day at the Museum. These guys had done paintings that positively glowed, not to mention the exquisite surface quality of their work. I believe I've talked a bit about surface quality in this blog. All I will say today is that, I think many modern artists are almost completely unaware of this aspect of their work, to the detriment of their paintings.
I left the Museum that day totally infused with a desire to improve the quality of my own paintings and with a really good idea of the direction that I wanted to move in artistically. I wasn't exactly sure why this era of landscape painting had been subsumed by Impressionism but I knew then that I wanted to become a Tonalist painter.
Tomorrow we'll talk a bit more about Tonalism.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Landscape near Perugia' by George Inness; this painting has a very unique sky in it and I almost didn't want to do a study because of that. It is however a very strong mid period George Inness painting so I included it in this series.
I really like the way that Inness has modulated from greens in the foreground to mauves and grays in the background and I'm quite happy with my study from his painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Landscape near Perugia by George Inness |