The American sublime: Jaded art world gasps in amazement at American Christian landscape painters

WORLD ^ | 10/26/02 | Gene Edward Veith

[AnAmericanMother]

I have to be in the right mood for HRS landscapes. You are right that they are dramatic, and a steady diet of them would probably be a bit overwhelming. But a little drama is sometimes a good thing!

If you prefer a little more modern landscape, here's N.C. Wyeth:

Or Winslow Homer, who may be my alltime favorite landscape artist (and Civil War artist-correspondent):

[AnAmericanMother]

Oh, I almost forgot . . . I hate Kincaid, but he's different from this crowd. His technical facility is all surface and no depth. . . . as one of Kipling's characters said in one of his stories, "the picture goes no deeper than the paint."

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

If you like Durand's Niagra you should see Fredrick Church's painting of the view of the Canadian Side.

Rhema, thanks for posting this article. bump up...

[piasa]

From askart.com

by Regis Francois Gignoux

[piasa]

Another from askart.com

Robert Havell, Jr

[piasa]

by George Inness

[AnAmericanMother]

Ask and ye shall receive:

[piasa]

And now... for something really different...

by Homer Dodge Martin

[piasa]

by William Trost Richards

[piasa]

by Sontag, an Ohioan

[537 Votes]

Is it going to far to suggest that if a person claims to like Picasso, you know you're dealing with a first-class phoney?

[MHGinTN]

Thank you, folks, you have regaled my sagging soul.

[piasa]

Some of them do have a way of doing that, don't they? There are a few modern-day artists who can do so as well- I've run into a few while doing shows. But they don't get all those NEA grants like the tasteless 'shock' artists do.

[Paul Atreides]

Not a bit. Especially, when the person launches into a litany of the reasons why they consider Picasso, and all modern art, so important.

[xJones]

Never say sag. Go here for a whole lot of Hudson School paintings: click

[Interesting Times]

Thomas Cole's masterwork is a four painting series called the Voyage of Life.

Childhood

Youth

Manhood

Old Age

Cole also did a striking five-piece series called Course of Empire.

[macamadamia]

So by your sorry logic, anyone who likes art that YOU DON'T LIKE is a first class phony? Who are you to judge the sincerity of other people's tastes?

[Paul Atreides]

I didn't bring my personal opinions into it. There are just some constants in life. One example is that Yoko Ono is no singer. Getting up and screeching is not equal to singing. By that virtue, a bunch of slash marks on a canvas aren't art. If that is what you like, more power to you, but I don't want to hear from any modernists, and being an artist myself, I have heard what a lot of them have had to say, looking down their pretentious noses at the works spoken of in this article. I have taken a course in modern art, and it has one major philosophy: an utter contempt for the art of the past.

[AnAmericanMother]

Picasso was, IMNSHO, primarily a con man. His early Academy style work shows a mild technical facility, nothing more. Any art student worth his salt could have done as well.

I am inherently suspicious of folks who can't handle basic drawing skills and thereafter turn to "interpretive" or "abstract" art. Jackson Pollock, a truly awful painter when he tried realism, is a prime example. He was still an awful painter while dripping globs of pigment on huge canvases, but it was harder to tell. :-D

Just to make everybody mad, though, I'll point out that Cole couldn't draw the human figure very well. His people are stiff, conventional to his period (women with big eyes and tiny pointed feet) and not quite anatomically correct. But his landscapes are marvellous.

For somebody of the period who could handle both landscapes and the human figure, may I offer William Sidney Mount?

The Farmers' Nooning

The Power of Music

He was really a Long Island painter rather than HRS, but about the same period or a trifle later (1830s).