July in Purple --- Days 14/198 - 202

Walks: Hood, Civic Center

Distance Average: 3.5 miles

Pondering Likes Quiet --- Days 14/196 & 197

Walks: Hood

Distances: 3.5 average (plus short  yoga & exercises - daily, but not mentioned)

Happy July and maybe beach reading, dear readers.  Ciwt and her cats always appreciate the quiet after all the fireworks.  Good for pondering. Ciwt has lots of little things here and there in her life but nothing that seems quite CIWT.

Fireworks and Sparklers --- Day 14/195

Walk: Hood

Distance: 3.5 miles

Bonnie White, Fireworks and Sparklers

So, in her more urban art world travels Ciwt rarely encounters folk art.  But, when she does,  she is often captured by its charm and the acquaintance of a new artist and new/old view of life.  

Until today she had never heard of folk artist Bonnie White but loves this old timey rendition of Today, Fourth of July.

Here's a little bit about Bonnie White Ciwt found on line: 

American folk artist Bonnie White grew up on a horse farm in Canaan, New York. Although Bonnie’s first love was horses, she always had an interest in art. When she wasn’t riding horses, she was sketching them. She began creating frakturs and paintings to decorate her home. Her first large painting on canvas was given to her mother for Christmas in 2002. The painting is of her family’s farm all decked out for the holidays. Bonnie and her husband still reside on her family’s Spring Gait Farm with their three sons, their dog Misty and their cat Dot.

And her website where you can find her paintings, prints, calendars and other offerings. Enjoy!

Happy Fourth 

The Name's the Same --- Days 14/189-194

Walks: Cold, Windy Hood and Presidio

Distances: 3.5 miles average

Louis (?) Le Nain (Fr. 1600/1610-1648), Peasants Before Their House, ca. 1641, o/c

So, in our grey, muted summer weather, Ciwt's attention turns to greyish art. And, if you noticed it above, you might wonder why she put a question mark after the artist's first name.  Well, Louis was one of three never married Le Nain brothers who were all born in Laon, formed a workshop together in Paris, specialized in painting peasant life collaboratively as well as individually, stopped dating their works early on, and never signed their work with their first names - just Le Nain.  Clearly this has made life a challenge for art historians.

It has become common to treat their work as a single artist.  One brother though, Louis, is regarded as the 'genius of the family' and it is thought (but not proved) that this canvas at our Legion of Honor Museum can only have come from him.  Why?  Louis is described as having been a somber artist, self-contained, shunning elegance and restlessly explored new horizons.  With their air of melancholy, it could be he modeled these peasants on himself.  

Whoever they were modeled on, these people are clearly earthbound and bound to each other. The earth, the clothing, the stone of the house, the dog, pet rooster, skin tones - even the sky - are all in chalky greys and ochres.  The sole exceptions are the boy's red cloak, the rooster's comb and a red sleeve in the lower background doorway.  

To Ciwt these moments of red seem to be Louis's painterly decisions about how to add contrast and energy to the canvas. In other technical ways, this is a remarkably well painted canvas.  Le Nain's brushwork is confident and proficient. And varied; at times he paints openly and loosely and at others he carefully delineates the details of portraiture close up and in the distance, as well as the wispiness of the grasses on the roof and the facets of the house's stone.   The peasants' poses are static but varied and point to Louis's ability to make 'a thousand poses taken from life.'

There's a quiet, stable air of dignity, almost serenity to this family  grouping.  They may be peasants, but we do not get a sense they are threadbare, destitute, lonely.  They have each other, infants, pets, a solid house, things look cleans, their bodies appear strong and healthy.  And herein lies a critical rub.  For all its realistic and sympathetic portrayal of peasants, there are some who question how 'taken from life' Le Nain's work really was.  The native peasants from Le Nain's Laon were actually living in the midst of the Thirty Years War, a time of hardship, anguish, depredation by cruel marauding armies.  Yet these people are portrayed as calm, almost docilely engaged in homely activities.  

It has been suggested by some scholars that Le Nain intentionally downplayed any misery in order to please wealthy urban patrons.  Ciwt thinks yes, artists must sell to survive.  But, realistic portrayal or not, there are more important matters at hand.  One is the mastery with which the peasants are painted.  Another is that they were portrayed at all at a time when more elevated subject matter was to be expected.  The third, and most important, is that the Le Nains' art somehow made it to the walls of the Louvre where it very likely had an influence on later realist painters of peasant labor and life and, shortly thereafter, on the gorgeous - and decidely not grey -  capturing of everyday life by the impressionists.                           

Father of Sunsets+ --- Days 14/187 & 188

Walks: Hood, Sloat Garden Center

Distances: 5.5, 3.5 miles

Claude Lorrain (Fr. working in Italy, 1604/5-1682), Seaport at Sunset, 1639

Claude Lorrain, View of Tivoli at Sunset, Oil on canvas, 1644 39 1/2 x 53 1/2  

So, if the artist Claude Lorrain had called himself a landscape painter at the beginning of his career, it would have been a very short one indeed.  In his era 'landscape' was simply the outdoors one had to toil in or contend with and paintings of it were among the least prestigious.  History painting was the thing so he invented historical people engaged in historical activities surrounded by classical architecture.  And placed them in front of his real subject: idyllic landscapes illuminated by atmospheric, radiant skies. 

And, within just a few years, he had singlehandedly elevated the prestige, collectability and popular enjoyment of landscape art.  This was not coincidental and the look of his art wasn't a 'schtick' to sell. He deeply loved nature, felt compelled to portray its beauty and needed to invent techniques to do that.  According to his fellow painter, Sandrart, Lorrain would lie out in the fields from dawn to dusk storing up the visual effects of light in his brain. Then, he would make ink and chalk studies on paper, bring them back to his studio and work alone to complete the complex and costly process of making a large, detailed landscape.  This intensely personal relationship between artist and subject resulted in works that have a simple honesty filled with an almost religious belief in the beauty of nature.  

And spoke to the public.  He became highly collectible by those mostly upper class, mostly affluent, mostly English young men, undertaking the rite of passage 'Grand Tour.' Of these there were many; they traveled through Europe, typically accompanied by a tutor or family member, with the Italy the prime taste educational destination. And many of those young men returned home with a painting by the artist already known by the prestigous one name:Claude.

In fact Claude paintings became so popular they were subjected to many forgeries.  To defend against this and to ensure he, not forgers, got the monies and recognition due, he produced the "Liber Veritatis." Defined "Book of Truth," it contains drawings that detail nearly 200 of his compositions on canvas. Residing in the British Museum it has been invaluable in authenticating Claude's work over the decades.  But it may be even more important as a means of bringing Claude's landscape techniques before developing artists. The prints made from the book were increasingly detailed so that drawing teachers began recommending them for copying thus influencing the development of future landscape artists and furthering the acceptance of landscape as a worthy subject of its own.

Claude's art had enormous influence on English landscape architecture in the eighteenth century as well.  Many of its manor houses were surrounded by parks specifically designed to look like Claude paintings.  The style came to be called 'picturesque landscape,' and none fit the description better than the English manor, Petworth, where the renowned J.M.W. Turner was a frequent visitor.  Turner revered Claude's work, and over a century after his death, took Claude's sunsets to new levels of atmospheric luminosity.

 

J.M.W. Turner, (English, 1775-1851), The Lake, Petworth: Sunset, fighting Bucks, ca 1829

Petworth interior with Turner paintings

Then another Claude - Monet - who encountered Turner's art and sunsets during a brief exile in London and returned to them several times later, took them another step into Impressionism, now the most beloved of all art styles

Claude Monet (Fr. 1840-1926), Sunset on the Seine at Lavacourt, Winter Effect, 1880

Flat as a Racetrack --- Days 14/180 - 186

Walks: Lots of indoor things to do this week

Distances: 2.5 average

Not for those who don't like gazing at beautiful stars and cars or feeling the beat of jazzy music, or jetsetting to the glitzy, ritzy Formula 1 worlds around the world.  But if you're okay with all those things, then, like Ciwt, you'll overlook the bald tire thin plot and just enjoy your big screen experience. 

Everyday Art --- Day 14/178 & 179

Walk: Civic Center, AMC Kabuki 8 (The Life of Chuck)

Distance: 4.5 miles, 3.5 miles

 The Life of Chuck is touching poetry in the most prosaic of packages.  You might like it (as Ciwt  did) if you too like poetry and/or Stephen King (and are a bit older). Otherwise....

Bouquets to Ciwt --- Day 14/177

Walk: Hood Brunch

Distance: 3 miles

So yesterday's photo shoot crew thanked Ciwt with some pretty and artistic bouquets.