More luminist painting

I could go on a long time showing the luminist painters, there were a lot of them and they made a lot of wonderful art. However I will show a few more tonight and move on. My intention is to provide an overview of American landscape tradition. There are certainly readers of this blog who are not familiar with this history, . I hope to pique your interest so that you seek out and learn more about these painters on your own. Many of you though know these artists very well and I don't feel it is within the scope of my blog to "go deep" on this subject, so I hope you enjoy the slide show of artists who are old friends. I also know that in moving on now I am leaving out a number of painters , Heade, Moran and a few others in particular. If you like you can castigate me in the comments, but I do want to get to the next chapter. That would be Inness, he gets a chapter of his own. Although his tail might be found in the Hudson River school, his thorax and head stretch forward into the tonalist era. He is so unique and almost unfathomably good that I will have to dwell on him . He is the KING of American landscape painters.

The forest scene above is a William Trost Richards 1833- 1905 was an admirer of Ruskin and painted with great clarity and detail. He did a great number of watercolor seascapes in his latter years.



The painting above" The old hunting ground is by Worthington Whittridge. 1820- 1910

The guy posing for Washington was.......Worthington Whittridge. Now there is art trivia at its finest. You old pros get thrown a bone now and then on this blog too. Hers another of his paintings,

Whitteridge became best known for his pictures painted on the western plains. Below is a painting by Samuel Coleman i832-1920. Coleman later in life became a partner to Luis Comfort Tiffany.

I love that Coleman of the Hudson River. Below is another of my favorite paintings.

This painting is by a less well known luminist ( spell check recommends Leninist )who is a particular favorite of mine Jervis McEntee 1828-1891. McEntees paintings have a melancholy and reflective beauty to them that I love. As much as I appreciate the big Bierstadts and Churches, there is something about this guys art that really speaks to me. He is one of my favorite painters. I saw a show of his paintings at a gallery in New York that is now gone, but I have treasured the catalog. It is hard to find his paintings. He was a friend of Sanford Gifford and traveled extensively with him. McEntee kept extensive journals and they provide an enormous amount of information on the social and financial lives of the Hudson River school, you can read them here. ( see you in about a week) Here is another of his paintings.

The final artist that I want to show tonight is Fitz Henry (formerly Hugh, and I liked that better) Lane 1804- 1865. I know Lanes locations well. He painted in Gloucester and in Maine, both places I have lived. I have stood on many of his sites and a few such as Braces cove or Blue hill are places I have painted . Lane is the most transcendental of the luminists. His paintings have a still, ethereal unworldliness to them that makes the haunting. He also was an expert on ships and their rigging because he was the son of a sail maker and lived his adult life right on the waterfront in Gloucester. Here is a Lane. This painting is of Southwest Harbor on Mt. Desert in Maine.

One of my little hobbies is finding not only the sites at which artists painted but also their graves. Lanes is in Oak grove cemetery in Gloucester. I have found the graves of dozens of American painters in the old cemeteries of Gloucester. I guess I will go lay down now.

images this page from Artrenewal. org and the Athenaeum.org