Day Ninety Nine: October by George Inness
Hello and welcome to Day 99 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'October' by George Inness.
One more day to go and this is our last Inness. I knew I would enjoy making studies after Inness' paintings and I'm so glad that I've had the experience, though it was a lot of hard work. I will be reading from the book George Inness by Nicolai Cikovsky in today's video narration, so please check that out.
Well, we spent the last couple days talking about Modern art which might seem a little disingenuous as the name of the blog is Tonalist Paintings by M Francis McCarthy, and the series we are in is called 100 days of Tonalism.
The reasons I brought up Modern art here are because it has nearly the full attention and financial backing of the current art establishment. Representational art has been making some major inroads though and after 100 years of disparaging representational art, many artists are tired of the freak show and are looking for meaning beyond clever artspeak.
Today, since we have just one more post to go, I think I'll just talk about what attracted me to Tonalism and why I love it. I've always enjoyed art and when I was a young man I was captivated by the art of men like Frank Frazetta and all of the comic greats from my era. I had awareness of fine art as well and a deep respect for people like Michelangelo and Albrecht Durer. As I stated in a previous blog post it wasn't until sometime in the 80s that I began to visualize wanting to be a landscape painter. I've outlined most of that process of discovery fairly well elsewhere in this series of blog posts, so have a look for that if you are interested.
The major thing that has attracted me to Tonalist painting is the richness and strong emotive qualities of it. There are many ways to paint a landscape but after my initial exposure to Tonalism I felt I'd discovered the pinnacle of what had been accomplished by the great artists of the late 1800s and early 20th century. Sadly, as some of you know, much of this work was forgotten as were the artists that created it. This is changing and I'd like to think that my series here, 100 days of Tonalism is helping in that regard.
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about a book called the Agony and the Ecstasy about Michelangelo. I read this book when I was a young man and it had a great impact on me. The main thing that struck me about Michelangelo was how passionate he was. At that time in Europe, art was primarily two-dimensional/flat in feel, and though there were plenty of representations of people, often times you could not clearly make out any real anatomy for all of the rendering of folds that was going on. The Europeans did have access to ancient statuary created by the Romans and the Greeks that depicted the human figure correctly and powerfully, but there was little understanding about anatomy in the pre renaissance or, how to accurately render it.
Because Michelangelo was aware of this huge disparity between, what had been in the past and how it surpassed art in his time, he was curious about how to create anatomical art himself that would match or, even surpass the achievements of the Greeks and Romans. He set about teaching himself anatomy studiously even to the point where he would dissect corpses (an act that was illegal in his day).
The reason I bring up Michelangelo in regards to Tonalism is that I see the same sort of thing happening now with landscape painting, in that there are all these masterful Tonalist paintings that exist however, because they've been mostly bypassed and forgotten by art history, many artists are unaware of the achievement and just sort of do whatever it is they're doing, whether that is working in some sort of Impressionist vein, or just doing their best to copy photographs using oil paint. Like Michelangelo I can see that much of the landscape painting that is done by contemporary artists falls far short of the high mark set by the Tonalists at the peak of landscape painting.
After becoming aware of Tonalism I set about doing my best to create paintings that captured the same sort of mood and spiritual depth as the Masters. Whether I've succeeded or not is perhaps best judged by others but I am certainly proud of the attempt and I will continue to create landscape paintings that I find personally moving until I am no longer able to.
As I stated above there are many ways that you can accomplish landscape painting and many moods and ideas can be conveyed by various approaches. For me, no other school of painting has come even close to the level of Tonalism and that is why I spent the better part of this year working on this series in an endeavor to learn more, and also to bring greater awareness to this awesome school of art.
If you are a person that has any questions about Tonalism or Tonalist painting that you feel I can answer, I can be reached easily through my website Landscaperpainter.co.nz I am happy to help you in any way I can, so do not hesitate to contact me.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'October' by George Inness; this is a really great painting by George and one of the studies I am most proud of doing.
I'm very happy with the textural approach that I achieved on the study and as I've stated in previous blog posts, this has very much informed my own Tonalist painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - October by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
One more day to go and this is our last Inness. I knew I would enjoy making studies after Inness' paintings and I'm so glad that I've had the experience, though it was a lot of hard work. I will be reading from the book George Inness by Nicolai Cikovsky in today's video narration, so please check that out.
Well, we spent the last couple days talking about Modern art which might seem a little disingenuous as the name of the blog is Tonalist Paintings by M Francis McCarthy, and the series we are in is called 100 days of Tonalism.
The reasons I brought up Modern art here are because it has nearly the full attention and financial backing of the current art establishment. Representational art has been making some major inroads though and after 100 years of disparaging representational art, many artists are tired of the freak show and are looking for meaning beyond clever artspeak.
Today, since we have just one more post to go, I think I'll just talk about what attracted me to Tonalism and why I love it. I've always enjoyed art and when I was a young man I was captivated by the art of men like Frank Frazetta and all of the comic greats from my era. I had awareness of fine art as well and a deep respect for people like Michelangelo and Albrecht Durer. As I stated in a previous blog post it wasn't until sometime in the 80s that I began to visualize wanting to be a landscape painter. I've outlined most of that process of discovery fairly well elsewhere in this series of blog posts, so have a look for that if you are interested.
The major thing that has attracted me to Tonalist painting is the richness and strong emotive qualities of it. There are many ways to paint a landscape but after my initial exposure to Tonalism I felt I'd discovered the pinnacle of what had been accomplished by the great artists of the late 1800s and early 20th century. Sadly, as some of you know, much of this work was forgotten as were the artists that created it. This is changing and I'd like to think that my series here, 100 days of Tonalism is helping in that regard.
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about a book called the Agony and the Ecstasy about Michelangelo. I read this book when I was a young man and it had a great impact on me. The main thing that struck me about Michelangelo was how passionate he was. At that time in Europe, art was primarily two-dimensional/flat in feel, and though there were plenty of representations of people, often times you could not clearly make out any real anatomy for all of the rendering of folds that was going on. The Europeans did have access to ancient statuary created by the Romans and the Greeks that depicted the human figure correctly and powerfully, but there was little understanding about anatomy in the pre renaissance or, how to accurately render it.
Because Michelangelo was aware of this huge disparity between, what had been in the past and how it surpassed art in his time, he was curious about how to create anatomical art himself that would match or, even surpass the achievements of the Greeks and Romans. He set about teaching himself anatomy studiously even to the point where he would dissect corpses (an act that was illegal in his day).
The reason I bring up Michelangelo in regards to Tonalism is that I see the same sort of thing happening now with landscape painting, in that there are all these masterful Tonalist paintings that exist however, because they've been mostly bypassed and forgotten by art history, many artists are unaware of the achievement and just sort of do whatever it is they're doing, whether that is working in some sort of Impressionist vein, or just doing their best to copy photographs using oil paint. Like Michelangelo I can see that much of the landscape painting that is done by contemporary artists falls far short of the high mark set by the Tonalists at the peak of landscape painting.
After becoming aware of Tonalism I set about doing my best to create paintings that captured the same sort of mood and spiritual depth as the Masters. Whether I've succeeded or not is perhaps best judged by others but I am certainly proud of the attempt and I will continue to create landscape paintings that I find personally moving until I am no longer able to.
As I stated above there are many ways that you can accomplish landscape painting and many moods and ideas can be conveyed by various approaches. For me, no other school of painting has come even close to the level of Tonalism and that is why I spent the better part of this year working on this series in an endeavor to learn more, and also to bring greater awareness to this awesome school of art.
If you are a person that has any questions about Tonalism or Tonalist painting that you feel I can answer, I can be reached easily through my website Landscaperpainter.co.nz I am happy to help you in any way I can, so do not hesitate to contact me.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'October' by George Inness; this is a really great painting by George and one of the studies I am most proud of doing.
I'm very happy with the textural approach that I achieved on the study and as I've stated in previous blog posts, this has very much informed my own Tonalist painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, October by George Inness |