Philip Koch Paintings

John Frederick Kensett, Hill Valley, Sunrise , oil on canvas, 1851 Last Friday my wife and I had a personal tour from Curator Anna Marley of the major exhibition she organized, From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early American Republic , at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. I wrote a previous post about the the show's first pioneers of the American landscape painting movement. Their works were centered in Philadelphia, preceding the better known Hudson River School. This is a look at some favorites by later Hudson River School artists.  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 on...

Albert Bierstadt, Niagara, oil on paper laid down on canvas, 1869 One of the things that sustains me as a landscape painter is understanding I am part of an historic movement of artists who took delight in our planet. Each generation of landscape painters adds their own contemporary voice to a chain of paintings stretching back hundreds of years. Especially in our time of impending climate crisis reigniting the deep strain of environmental sentiment that runs all through American landscape art is part of my personal mission. This week Anna Marley, the Curator of Historic American Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, very kindly gave me and my wife a personal tour of her major exhibition From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early American Republic  shining a light on the earlier beginnings of landscape painting our country. Contrary to the usual understanding, Marley shows the much better known...