Day Ninety Five: By the Lake by George Inness
Hello and welcome day 95 to 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'By the Lake' by George Inness.
Just one more George Inness study after this one. This piece I believe is mid period Inness, most likely painted somewhere in the 1870s. On today's video narration, I read some biographical information about George Inness from the book George Inness by Nicolai Cikovsky Jr so please check that out.
I was reading from a book I just acquired about Charles Warren Eaton today. I mentioned this book in our last post about Charles Warren Eaton. The book was very interesting because it was discussing the beginnings of the Tonalist movement in art.
In many ways this period in art history from 1880 to 1920 is disregarded by some art historians or it is lumped in with the Barbizon school. In actuality, Tonalism is a very American form of painting and is quite different from Barbizon work. Although many of the greatest proponents of Tonalism were trained in the Barbizon school, what they created in the United States was very much a reflection of American and not European art.
Previous to the Tonalist movement, the style of painting that was popular in the United States was a movement called the Hudson River School. I've mentioned them many times on this blog. The Hudson River School was dedicated to capturing the splendor of the American landscape in large canvases, exquisitely detailed and rendered with polished finishes. In many ways this movement in art was running along with Tonalism which superseded and improved upon it.
Whereas the Hudson River School was about objective depictions of the vastness of nature with scenes often depicting glorious vistas of the unexplored American wilderness, Tonalism endeavored to portray a more subjective and emotional approach. Many Tonalist paintings being of every day farm life, of vacant fields or views by a river or creek. This Tonalist move from the objective to subjective is one of the precursors to modern art.
Though Tonalism is considered to be representational art; because it features the subjective, it is more poetical than scientific and, for that reason, timeless. When I first came upon this type of work I could not believe that it was not more widely known about. Our blog post yesterday spoke about some of the ways and reasons that artwork from the representational era is considered by some to be passé and not relevant to modern sensibilities.
If this sort of thinking was actually true, then there would be no reason to read any book that was published further back than 10 or 20 years. Anybody with any sense knows that this would be a stupid idea. So much classic literature going back to the Iliad by Homer is worthy of study and conveys emotion and poetry as powerfully now as it did when it was written.
This is true of fine painting as well. I dedicated a large portion of my working life this year to the study and promotion of these Tonalist Masters. I also devoted quite a lot of time to videotaping, editing videos and writing this blog. It's my way of learning on the job but also giving something back to the artists that came before me.
As someone who did not officially go to art school or study for any great length of time in the studio of a Master painter I felt it was incumbent upon me to take some time from my own painting life to learn more about how these great painters of the past accomplished the magnificent work that they did, and to share that knowledge and hopefully convert some of it to wisdom.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'By the Lake' by George Inness; this was a fun and relatively easy study to do. As I stated in the video I enjoyed painting the sky and I really feel that it is the focal point of this painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - By the Lake by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Just one more George Inness study after this one. This piece I believe is mid period Inness, most likely painted somewhere in the 1870s. On today's video narration, I read some biographical information about George Inness from the book George Inness by Nicolai Cikovsky Jr so please check that out.
I was reading from a book I just acquired about Charles Warren Eaton today. I mentioned this book in our last post about Charles Warren Eaton. The book was very interesting because it was discussing the beginnings of the Tonalist movement in art.
In many ways this period in art history from 1880 to 1920 is disregarded by some art historians or it is lumped in with the Barbizon school. In actuality, Tonalism is a very American form of painting and is quite different from Barbizon work. Although many of the greatest proponents of Tonalism were trained in the Barbizon school, what they created in the United States was very much a reflection of American and not European art.
Previous to the Tonalist movement, the style of painting that was popular in the United States was a movement called the Hudson River School. I've mentioned them many times on this blog. The Hudson River School was dedicated to capturing the splendor of the American landscape in large canvases, exquisitely detailed and rendered with polished finishes. In many ways this movement in art was running along with Tonalism which superseded and improved upon it.
Whereas the Hudson River School was about objective depictions of the vastness of nature with scenes often depicting glorious vistas of the unexplored American wilderness, Tonalism endeavored to portray a more subjective and emotional approach. Many Tonalist paintings being of every day farm life, of vacant fields or views by a river or creek. This Tonalist move from the objective to subjective is one of the precursors to modern art.
Though Tonalism is considered to be representational art; because it features the subjective, it is more poetical than scientific and, for that reason, timeless. When I first came upon this type of work I could not believe that it was not more widely known about. Our blog post yesterday spoke about some of the ways and reasons that artwork from the representational era is considered by some to be passé and not relevant to modern sensibilities.
If this sort of thinking was actually true, then there would be no reason to read any book that was published further back than 10 or 20 years. Anybody with any sense knows that this would be a stupid idea. So much classic literature going back to the Iliad by Homer is worthy of study and conveys emotion and poetry as powerfully now as it did when it was written.
This is true of fine painting as well. I dedicated a large portion of my working life this year to the study and promotion of these Tonalist Masters. I also devoted quite a lot of time to videotaping, editing videos and writing this blog. It's my way of learning on the job but also giving something back to the artists that came before me.
As someone who did not officially go to art school or study for any great length of time in the studio of a Master painter I felt it was incumbent upon me to take some time from my own painting life to learn more about how these great painters of the past accomplished the magnificent work that they did, and to share that knowledge and hopefully convert some of it to wisdom.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'By the Lake' by George Inness; this was a fun and relatively easy study to do. As I stated in the video I enjoyed painting the sky and I really feel that it is the focal point of this painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, By the Lake by George Inness |