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Micheline's Blog

~ Art, music, books, history & current events

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Tag Archives: Seascapes

The Art of Sanford Robinson Gifford

18 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, United States

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Albert Bierstadt, first American art school, Hudson River School, John Frederick Kensett, landscapes, luminism, malaria, Seascapes

Mount Chocurua, New Hampshire

Mount Chocurua, New Hampshire

A Gorge in the Mountains

A Gorge in the Mountains

Sandy Hooke,  New Jersey

Sandy Hooke, New Jersey

Kauterskill

Kauterskill 1

Sanford Robinson Gifford

The Hudson River school: the United States’ first art School

Sanford Robinson Gifford (10 July 1823 – 29 August 1880) was a member of the 19th-century American Hudson River School and, as did members of this school, he painted landscapes and seascapes.  Gifford first studied art under the direction of John R. Smith, a water-colorist and drawing-master.  He painted the scenery that surrounded him: the North-East coast of the United States, but he also travelled and studied abroad, as did many Hudson River school artists.  They were in search of scenery.  Gifford first travelled to Europe in 1855 and met Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredged. Gifford was in fact close to several members of the Hudson River school, the United States’ first art school.[i]

Most members of the Hudson River school travelled not only to Europe but also to various parts of the United States.  Gifford travelled to Vermont in 1858 and spent the summer of 1867 on the New Jersey coast, at Sandy Hooke and Long Branch and, in 1870, he went to the Rocky Mountains accompanied by Worthington Whittredged and John Frederick Kensett, the most prominent member of the Hudson River school.

Meanwhile, however, in 1668, Gifford had returned to Europe and travelled to the Middle East and to Egypt.

Technique

When he travelled, Gifford made sketches and, on his return to his studio, in New York, he would enlarge his sketches into small oil paintings and then enlarge his small oil paintings into large paintings, the definitive work.  Therefore, the date given a painting does not necessarily correspond to the date the sketch was made.

During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Gifford joined the Union Army and subsequently returned to his studio in New York.

He died of malaria, in New York, at the age of 57.

Luminism

The paintings of members of the Hudson River school are associated with luminism.  Luminism resembles Impressionism in that artists attempt to capture the effect of light on landscapes and seascapes.  Light molds an object.  However, American luminism is much less suggestive than French Impressionism. The artworks of French Impressionists are at times blurred to the point of abstraction.

According to Wikipedia,

luminism  is characterized by attention to detail and the hiding of brushstrokes, while impressionism is characterized by lack of detail and an emphasis on brushstrokes. Luminism preceded impressionism, and the artists who painted in a luminist style were in no way influenced by impressionism.

As for the Encyclopædia Britannica, it describes luminism as a “late 19th-century painting style emphasizing a unique clarity of light.  It was characteristic of the works of a group of independent American painters who were directly influenced by the Hudson River school of painting.  The term, however, was not coined until 1954 by John Baur, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.”[ii]

In Britannica‘s definition, the operative words are “a unique clarity of light.”  However, members of the Hudson River were never a movement and, if they were “luminists,” it was sans le savoir, unawares.  The term did not exist in the 19th century.[iii]

Best-Known Works

Lake Nemi (1856-57)
The Wilderness (1861)
A Passing Storm (1866)
Ruins of the Parthenon (1880)
 
______________________________
[i] List of Hudson River School artists
[ii] “luminism”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 18 Oct. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/351248/luminism>.
[iii] Collection of the Metropolitan Museum, NY
http://www.metmuseum.org/search-results?ft=Sanfor+Robinson+Gifford&x=8&y=6
 
A Winter Walk

A Winter Walk

Summer-Idyll-large

© Micheline Walker
October 18, 2013
WordPress 
 
Summer Idyll
(Please klick on the image to enlarge it.)

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The Art of Ivan Aivazovsky & the News

20 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Canada, Music

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Crimea, Feodosiya, Imperial Academy of Arts, Ivan Aivazovsky, Seascapes, The News, Yousuf Karsh

Russians at Navarino
Photo credit and main source:  Wikipedia
 

Ivan Aivazovsky (July 29, 1817 – May 5, 1900) was a Russian artist of Armenian descent born in Feodosiya who lived and worked in Crimea (Russian Empire).  His family moved to the Crimea from Galicia (then in southern Poland, now in Ukraine) in 1812.  In Poland the family name was Aivazian.

His talent as an artist earned him a scholarship that allowed him to enroll in the Simferopol Gymnasium and later to enter Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts.  As for his talent as a seascape artist, it earned him a long-standing commission from the Russian Navy stationed in the Black Sea.

As of 1845, he travelled to İstanbul eight times upon the invitation of Sultan Abdülmecid I.  He was court painter and as a result of his stays in Istanbul, some of his paintings acquired a certain Orientalism.

The Hamidian massacres (1894–1896) saddened him profoundly and were the subject of many of his paintings.  It seems the only escape from that massacre was flight to other countries.  Photographer Yousuf Karsh (December 23, 1908 – July 13, 2002) is  Armenian Canadian and remains the most accomplished portrait photographer “of all time.” (Wikipedia)

Artist Aivozovsky married twice, first to an Englishwoman, until 1865, and second to an Armenian woman from Feodosiya.

Aivazovsky spent his last years in Feodosiya (also called Theodosia) where he supplied the town with water from his estate, opened an art school, a historical museum and was otherwise generous.  Aivasovsky died in Feodosiya in 1900.

Aivazovsky was very successful.  He was an Academician at 27, and Professor of Marine Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, at the age of 30.

According to Wikipedia, Aivazovsky is considered one of the best seascape artists of all times.  J. M. W. Turner wrote a poem about him.

 
Russians at Navarino, 1846 (at the head of my post)
Moonlit Seascape with Shipwreck, 1863
Empress Mary Caught in a Storm, 1892 
(please click on the pictures to enlarge them) 
 

The News: August 20th, 2012

English
The Montreal Gazette: http://www.montrealgazette.com/index.html
The National Post: http://www.nationalpost.com/index.html
The Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com//
The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/
Le Monde diplomatique: http://mondediplo.com/
 
CBC News: http://www.cbc.ca/news/
CTV News: http://www.ctvnews.ca/
 
Tchaikovsky (May 7, 1840 – November 6, 1893)
Polonaise 
 
45.408358 -71.934658

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