Day Twelve:Near Barbizon by George Frederick Munn
Hello and welcome to day twelve of 100 days of tonalism.
Painted after - Clearing after a Storm by Charles Harold Davis , Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel
Today's study is of Near Barbizon by George Frederick Munn. Hard to find good info quickly on George Frederick Munn. I did find the text of a book on his art written by a friend of his here. I read a little from this book on today's video.
As with any artist that you may find interesting in this series I encourage you to research them on your own. I am a working artist, not an art historian. I would if I had more time make these post exhaustive but I feel my time is best spent in actually painting and then sharing that work with you, my dear reader.
Back to the soap box I was on yesterday. I was talking about the perception that many people have that art evolves. While technical advances have occurred through the ages, I think that a good argument can be made for the highest achievements of the old masters of painting not being topped to this day.
We all know the narrative of how abstraction became more prevalent in western art starting around the turn of the twentieth century. The idea was that representational art had grow staid and needed to be replaced with "modern art". There is 'modern art' that I like, but the reality is that there is far, far, more that I do not think deserves to be called art at all.
This idea that artists should eschew formal training and just 'express themselves' was all the rage in the 60's and 70's when I was a kid. Those of us that wished to draw and paint in representational ways well were on our own for the most part. We had very few good teachers at that time. Most of the good teaching I found was from illustrators and comic book artists.
I'll continue with my thoughts on this subject tomorrow...
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
A bit about Near Barbizon by George Frederick Munn. As I stated in the video, I've admired this painting for many years. It speaks to me deeply. The composition is one I use myself quite often. The video is a bit truncated as it appears I had videotaping issues the day I did the underpainting. Sigh, I try to record every step of all my paintings and for the most part I do, but occasionally I'll mess up. Usually I think the camera is running, but, it isn't.
This painting was fun and relatively easy to do. I enjoyed painting the grass and treesw in the midle vdistance. On this painting I experimented with quite thin application of vthe oil paingb and suibltly worked in shading on my second color pass.
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Original painting, George Frederick Munn