Pennsylvania Academy's Schuylkill to the Hudson Exhibition part 2
John Frederick Kensett, Hill Valley, Sunrise, oil on canvas, 1851
The John Kensett oil above is a masterpiece of seeing. Kensett is renowned for his diaphanous brushwork. But he corrals his strokes into solid cohesive shapes with inventive silhouettes. Our eye gets a wild ride tracing the outline of the tops of his trees at the left and over the lines of the mountain ridges at the right.
Our responses to art are highly subjective, including mine. I know one reason I'm drawn to this beauty below by Jasper Cropsey is I've been there. My cousin has a place on Lake Sebago and took me on his boat out to where I could see exactly this view of the distant White Mts. in neighboring New Hampshire. I admire how the artist captures the sweep of wide and deep space.
Jasper F. Cropsey, Mount Washington from Lake Sebago, Maine,
oil on canvas, 1867
An almost minimalist painting by his usual standards, Cropsey nonetheless gets wonderful mileage out of his elegant gradations of color through both the sky and the water. He pushes almost all his lighter tones slightly darker so his snowy whites on the peak of Mt. Washington have a real snap to them.
Early on in my career as an artist I realized how much one can learn from soaking up the grammar of shapes and colors that made earlier painters' stories come to life. A show like Schuylkill is full of lessons.
I had to smile when I came across this engraving after a Jasper Cropsey oil, American Harvesting (below). Years back I had first learned about building deep space in a painting by studying Cropsey's original oil in my grad school's Eskenazi Art Museum. His composition stacked up alternating bands of space like a layer cake.
James Smillie after Jasper F. Cropsey's oil American Harvesting,
engraving, 1851
Jumping to my own studio, here below is one of my most recent oils where I had the overlapping layers of space I learned about from that Cropsey painting in the back of my mind.
Philip Koch, Mountains by the Sea, oil on canvas, 40 x 50 inches,
2019
Deep space itself becomes a main actor in the quiet dramas of Martin Johnson Heade's paintings of marshy fields like this one. Its air takes on a warm and humid moodiness.
Martin Johnson Heade, Haystacks at Sunset, oil on canvas, c. 1870
Heade paints an altogether different kind of atmosphere that lends an otherworldly feeling to this view of Rio de Janeiro. If you told me he had imported the mountains from the moon I think I might believe you.
Martin Johnson Heade, Sunset Harbor at Rio, oil on canvas, 1864
Probably my absolute favorite piece in the expansive exhibition is this tour de force of glowing atmosphere. The artist Frederic Church wraps jungle trees, lakes and mountains all together in a cocoon of mist. With its artful balance between softly generalized forms and a few crisply delineated details I believe this late Frederic Church oil is one of his very finest paintings.
Frederic Church, Valley of Santa Ysabel, New Granada,
oil on canvas, 1875
A big take away for me from this exhibition was is that all these painters shared a deep respect for the scale and power of the the natural world. Beneath their surface is a palpable environmentalist sentiment. This kind of painting re-ignites our awareness of and concern for the natural world. That's why I have spent my life committed to painting the landscape. In a time of impending climate crisis it is a radically important art form.
From the Schulkill to the Hudson is on display until Dec. 29, 2019.
Highly recommended!
