Category: Fine Art

Fine Art · Look Here

Look Here: EARLY SNOW, ALGONQUIN PARK by Tom Thomson

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The big news in Canadian art today is that, of the 198 paintings up for sale Thursday night at Sotheby’s auction in Toronto, about 55 did not sell while several high-profile works failed to live up to expectations. Bidding on a 9×10-inch plein-air oil sketch by Tom Thomson entitled Early Snow, Algonquin Park (1916), for instance, stopped at $425,000 — $25,000 shy of its reserve and estimated price of $450,000 to $600,000. The painting was originally purchased from the Laing Gallery in 1958 for $1,000, and apparently had hung in a little waterfront bungalow somewhere in Pennsylvania for several decades before it was sent off to auction. Here’s a tiny JPEG to give the you flavour of the piece:

For the most part, Thomson’s celebrated oil sketches are very easy to like: the colour, the brushwork, the compositions, everything about them still seems fresh and attractive, even after all these years. But it’s often that way with sketches, isn’t it?

Thomson’s large-scale studio paintings are an entirely different kettle of fish.

Fine Art · Heads Up!

Heads Up: “Pre-Raphaelite Drawing” by Colin Cruise

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Here’s an art book that might appeal to fans of Jeffrey Jones and Barry Windsor-Smith, both of whom have had work featured on this blog:

Here are the details from Amazon.ca:

Pre-Raphaelite Drawing [Hardcover]
Colin Cruise (Author)

List Price: CDN$ 63.00
Price: CDN$ 39.69

# Hardcover: 248 pages
# Publisher: Thames & Hudson (April 1 2011)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0500238812
# ISBN-13: 978-0500238813

“The paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood are widely known and loved, but this book presents for the first time a comprehensive survey of the intimate world of the Pre-Raphaelites drawings. Works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais are set beside those of their followers Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and Ford Madox Brown, as well as lesser-known figures such as James Collinson and Frederick Sandys. Copiously illustrated with Pre-Raphaelite drawings from public and private collections around the UK, the book features an illuminating text by the renowned art historian Colin Cruise, offering a fresh and intimate perspective on this much-loved group of artists.”

With the Amazon discount, the price is right. But I haven’t made up my mind yet whether or not I will buy the book. This is one I’d prefer to browse through in person before I order.

UPDATE (12 December 2010):

Shortly after I posted the “Heads Up” for Pre-Raphaelite Drawing by Colin Cruise, the price of the book at Amazon.ca jumped to CDN$50.40. If you order from Amazon.com, however, the price is a mere US$31.50 (plus shipping, if you don’t live in the USA). Even so, the total, shipping included, for a Canadian buyer is a mere US$42.06, which is actually less than the old price on Amazon.ca with free shipping but WITH TAX ADDED: CDN$43.65. Since the US and Canadian dollars are pretty much at parity, I have now made up my mind to take advantage of the current discount and have placed an order with Amazon.com. Nice thing about Amazon is that they make it easy and painless to cancel a pre-order if a better deal emerges at a different store at a later date.

UPDATE (21 December 2010):

Price dropped again at Amazon.ca, so I cancelled my Amazon.com order and ordered from Amazon.ca. The total this time around: CDN$ 39.00, tax included. And the lesson is: it pays to pay attention.

Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Book/Magazine Covers (Jones) · Connections · Fine Art · Illustration Art · Jeffrey "Jeff" Catherine Jones · Look Here · Zebra/Kensington Covers (Jones)

Look Here: Two Zebra/Kensington REH covers, with art by Jeffrey Jones

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As I noted on this blog a long time ago, Jones’s paintings for Zebra Books/Kensington Publishing Corporation were one of the high points of the artist’s career as a cover artist. What I find interesting when I compare the two covers posted below, though, is the difference in Jones’s imagery and technique from one to the other. Whereas Legion from the Shadows features a rather abstractly composed fantasy battle scene delineated in thin washes of oil paint with relatively little opaque overpainting — some of the lightest lights in the painting have been created simply by wiping out the paint to expose the white ground — The Sowers of the Thunder explicitly hearkens back to the imagery and technique of James McNeill Whistler as evidenced in works such as Variations in Flesh Colour and Green: The Balcony and The Artist’s Studio, both of which I’ve included below for the sake of easy comparison. Whistler and Robert E. Howard — an odd couple if ever there was one!

[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]

The final two images above provide a comparison between the figure in the right foreground of The Sowers of the Thunder and the original art for one of the plates in Jones’s As a Child portfolio (Colchester, CT: Black Lotus, 1980).

Keywords: Bran Mak MOrn, The Sowers of the Thunder, Legion from the Shadows.

Connections · Fine Art · Gustav Klimt · Illustration Art · Jeffrey "Jeff" Catherine Jones · Look Here

Connections: Gustav Klimt and Jeffrey Jones

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A handful of photographs and preparatory sketches are all that is left of Klimt’s controversial “Faculty Paintings.” All three — Philosophy (1900), Medicine (1901), and Jurisprudence (1903) — were destroyed in May 1945 when the retreating Nazis, who had illegally seized Klimt’s paintings from their legitimate owners, set fire to Schloss Immendorf, a castle in Lower Austria to which the paintings had been transported in 1943 for safe keeping.

P.S. The reason I’ve included the photo of Jurisprudence is simply to complete Klimt’s triptych for those who haven’t seen it. It’s not because I think it had a particular influence on the paintings by Jones included above.

P.P.S. Yes, I am aware that there are several other Klimt-inspired paintings by Jones. Maybe another time…

Artist Self-Portraits · Fine Art · Look Here · Vincent van Gogh

Look Here: Two self-portraits by Vincent van Gogh

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Vincent van Gogh painted over thirty self-portraits during his lifetime; these two, from 1887 and 1888 respectively, have long been my favourites:

“I purposely bought a mirror good enough to enable me to work from my image in default of a model, because if I can manage to paint the colouring of my own head, which is not to be done without some difficulty, I shall likewise be able to paint the heads of other good souls, men and women.” — Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo van Gogh, Arles, c. 16 September 1888

Art Collection · Ebay Win · Fine Art · Look Here

Look Here: Untitled watercolour by DeWitt Hardy

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I mentioned a couple of messages ago that my wife and I own a piece of original art by American watercolourist DeWitt Hardy; however, since I doubt many people (especially here in Canada) know the name, I thought that today, for your (and my!) enjoyment, I would post an image of our purchase:

Sorry the image is a bit soft, but the painting was too big for our scanner. Also, our digital camera is not the best.