Category Archives for The Masters

Frank Tenney Johnson

Frank Tenney Johnson (June 26, 1874 – January 1, 1939) was a painter of the Old American West, and he popularized a style of painting cowboys which became known as "The Johnson Moonlight Technique".  He was born near Big Grove, Iowa.  Raised on a farm on the old Overland Trail, he observed the western migration of people on horseback and in stage coaches and covered wagons.  This exposure to the American West would prove to be an important influence and inspiration for Frank Tenney Johnson as an artist and painter of the American West.  At one of Frank Tenney Johnson's exhibits at the Grand Central Art Galleries at the Biltmore Hotel in New York City, Amon Carter bought the entire exhibition. 

Victor Higgins – Member of The Taos Society of Artists

Victor Higgins

Born William Victor Higgins in 1884 to a Shelbyville, Indiana farm family where the only art Victor was aware of as a child was his father's love of flowers. "He loved their forms and their colors, and he tended his garden as a painter might work a canvas." At the age of nine, Victor met a young artist who traveled the Indiana countryside painting advertisements on the sides of barns. He purchased paints and brushes so the young Higgins could practice his own artwork on the inside of his father's barn. He also taught Victor about art museums and especially about the new Chicago Art Institute. This information never left the young artist, and he saved his allowance until his father allowed him at the age of fifteen to attend Chicago Art Institute. He worked a variety of jobs to finance his studies both there and at the Academy of Fine Arts.

Victor Higgins traveled to New York in 1908, where he met Robert Henri, who became a significant influence by depicting every-day scenes and stressing the importance of the spirit and sense of place as important factors in painting. Higgins was also greatly affected by the New York Armory Modernism Show of Marsden Hartley in 1913.

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Van Gogh’s Bedrooms – An Exhibit

Vincent van Gogh. The Bedroom, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).

We all know Van Gogh as a person with a troubled personality, but he saw Art is a vocation not a career, something to be shared with others, not for his own glory.  

Vincent van Gogh’s bedroom in Arles is arguably the most famous chamber in the history of art. It also held special significance for the artist, who created three distinct paintings of this intimate space from 1888 to 1889. The exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago brought together all three versions of The Bedroom for the first time in North America, offering a pioneering and in-depth study of their making and meaning to Van Gogh in his relentless quest for home.

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Charles Movalli Talks About Dark & Light Pattern

Charles Movalli was a student of Emile Gruppe.  In this short video he talks about finding the simple pattern in the painting and eliminating detail.

Moran’s Green River Cliffs

green river cliffs

A couple of years a go I made a painting trip to Wyoming with a friend of mine, Jeff Love. We painted some in Utah and Dubois, WY and around the Wind River Valley. I taught a workshop around Dubois, Jeff painted and looked for grizzly bears

On the way up to Dubois we went through Green River, WY and the minute we saw those sandstone cliffs ( I’m assuming there sandstone) we recognized Thomas Moran’s painting, Green River Cliffs, which is in the National Gallery of Art. The cliffs are real distinctive and stand out from the Green River which is a tributary of the Colorado River.

Moran came through Green River in 1879 and sketched the river and cliffs. He was on his way to Yellowstone with William Henry Jackson a photographer of the west.

moran painting

The first image shown is the watercolor sketch he made (one of many) and the second image is the oil painting he painted in 1881 ( also one of many) back in his studio in New York.

view of green river

I also show the photo we took from the spot where Moran painted or sketched. I know it was the spot because we found a small plaque telling us it was. You can tell from the photo that we just missed the same lighting that Moran had in his oil painting, the sun was going down and the light was blasting the cliffs. In our photo the sun was gone, no light blasting the cliffs, but it is a pretty good view of what he saw. He did leave out the prefabricated bank building on the right, good artistic move on his part, but the rest looks pretty close. It’s a good lesson on improving the composition in the studio. You can see the changes he made in the cliffs compared to the watercolor. I also don’t rule out the possibility that he used some of Jackson’s photos, it would certainly be tempting. Of course the photos would have been black and white. Which is a good thing otherwise his studio paintings would look like ours when we depend on photographic color too much. You can enjoy more of his work in:  Thomas Moran

Brinton Museum in Sheridan, WY

Dana

The Brinton is a small art museum at the base of the Big Horn Mountains. It was built by a rancher in the 1880s and converted to the museum in the 1960’s. The permanent collection includes E. W. Gollings, Frank Tenney Johnson, Remington and Russell, George Bellows and more. The grounds are beautiful, as well as the surrounding acres.

The current show that was hanging was titled American Impressionist in the Rockies. It’s the work of Fra ( pronounced Fray) Dana, a little known artist in Sheridan County at the turn of the century and artists she studied and painted with. It includes a portrait of Dana by William Merritt Chase, who she studied with and landscapes by Joseph Sharp and E. W. Gollings. The museum has several shows through out the year.

The Museum is worth seeing if your in the area, the surrounding landscape is worth the trip.  You might enjoy seeing more paintings of women of the west.  Here’s a book that does that:  Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945

Fra Dana “Turkeys”

E W Golings

Sharp

Free! — New Video eBook Available on Facebook

If you’ve followed my blog or gotten my newsletters at all, you know how important I think it is to study the Masters.  In order to make things a little more exciting I’ve written an eBook, containing bio info and videos on several of these Masters, “The Masters I Study and How They Improve My Paintings”.  I hope you’ll download this book and spend some time learning more about these wonderful artists and how they improve my paintings, and how they can improve your paintings too.  Collectors should also get this free eBook.  Learning more about art makes collecting that much more fun.  Anyway, I hope you’ll hop on over to Facebook and download what I hope will be a fun book for you to read and keep as a reference.  The first reviews I’ve gotten have been very enthusiastic.

Click Here to go to my Facebook page where you’ll find the “Free eBook” tab.

Julian Onderdonk – American Impressionist

Julian was born into an artistically inclined family. His father Robert, a professional artist when he came to Texas from Maryland in 1879, married Emily WesleyRogers Gould in 1881 in San Antonio, and the couple made Texas their permanent home. The Onderdonks and the Goulds were distinguished families whose heritage included clergyman, statesmen, and educators, dating back to the seventeenth century. Julian, the first child, was born to Emily and Robert on July 30, 1882.Julian’s father was his first art teacher, but by the time Julian was eighteen years old he was anxious to study in the eastern United States. A friend and neighbor, G. Bedell Moore, lent him money to go to New York. In 1901 Julian enrolled in the Art Students League (his father’s alma mater), where his first instructor was Kenyon Cox.During the summer of 1901 Julian attended William Merritt Chase’s classes in Shinnecock, Southampton, Long Island.  Julian went far beyond painting pictures “swiftly at one sitting,” but he never lost the profound respect for nature that Chase had instilled in him. Exhausting his funds after the summer at Shinnecock and the following winter term at the Art Students League, Julian started painting to support himself. After he married Gertrude Shipman in June 1902, his formal art education came to a virtual halt. He did take a night course, however, conducted by Robert Henri.In 1906, Julian was offered a salaried position to assist in organizing art exhibitions for the Dallas State Fair, a function that his father had performed for many years. This job brought him back to Texas occasionally, and in 1909 he decided to return to San Antonio permanently.   Upon his return Julian immediately began painting the Texas countryside. He and his father went on sketching jaunts together, and Julian, after so many years in New York, was back in his natural element. He diligentlyapplied the principles he had learned from Chase and painted directly from nature. Revealing his love for the Texas landscape, he wrote: San Antonio offers an inexhaustible field for the artist. Nowhere else are the atmospheric effects more varied and more beautiful. One never tires of watching them. Nowhere else is there such a wealth of color. In the spring, when the wild flowers are in bloom, it is riotous: every tint, every hue, every shade is present in the most lavish profusion, and even in the dead of summer, when one would imagine that any canvas could only convey the impression of intense heat, the possibilities of the landscape are still beyond comprehension. One has only to see it properly to find that everything glows with a wonderful golden tint which is the delight and the despair of all who have ever tried to paint it. Julian’s life became a routine of summers in New York assembling shows for the Dallas State Fair and the rest of the year painting in Texas. His work began to sell locally and as his reputation grew he also showed in galleries throughout the state and in other parts of the country.   His last paintings, Dawn in the Hills and Autumn Tapestry, among his finest, were on the way to New York for the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design for 1922 at the time of his death. Although regulations limited the exhibition to the work of living artists, Julian was accorded the unique honor of having his work accepted because of the unusual circumstances of his death as well as for the excellence of his paintings. Julian’s death, in 1922, was as sudden and unexpected as many of his actions in life. He fell ill in San Antonio and failed to recover from an operation for an intestinal obstruction. His untimely death was doubtless hastened by a cavalier disregard for his own welfare. Since his early demise, Julian Onderdonk has become a legend. His work, represented in many public and private collections, is still avidly sought and has escalated enormously in value. Julian’s legacy lives on in his emotional, mysterious, and beautiful art.  More about Julian can be learned from this book: Julian Onderdonk: American Impressionist (Dallas Museum of Art Publications)

Marion K Wachtel – Painter of the American West

Marion was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, her mother was an artist and her grandfather was a member of the Royal Academy in London.

She studied painting at the Chicago Art Institute under John Vanderpoel and William M. Chase in New York. She taught for several years at the Chicago Art Institute and was a popular portrait artist in Milwaukee.

 

 

In 1903 she received a commission from the Santa Fe Railroad to paint scenes from a trip to San Francisco. There she studied with William Keith and then from Elmer Wachtel when she moved to southern California.

 

 

In 1904 Elmer and Marion were married in Chicago and settled in Arroyo Seco. She and Elmer were constant painting companions through out southern California as well as the deserts of  Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico.

 

Although Marion painted in both oil and watercolor she stuck with watercolors while Elmer was alive, who worked in oils. After his death in 1929 she used both mediums.

 

 

Marion exhibited in California and New York and she was a member of 

the California Water Color Society, the Academy of Western Painters and the Pasadena Society of Painters.  More about Marion and other women painters of the American West can be found in:

Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890 – 1945.

Carl Rungius – Artist & Sportsman

Rungius was born in Germany in 1869 and attended the Berlin art Academy.
He spent a lot of time sketching at the Berlin Zoo where he developed an interest in animals that drove him to research and study the mannerisms and habits of animals as well as a concern for anatomical accuracy.

In 1894 Runguis made his first visit to the U.S. where he spent 10 summers painting and hunting big game in the Rocky Mountains and the rest of the time in his New York studio turning his studies into paintings.

In 1921 Runguis built a cabin and studio in the Canadian Rockies where he painted each summer until his death.

Runguis painted directly from life using his small oil sketches and pencildrawings to create his larger canvases.

Check out his book here:

Carl Rungius: Artist & Sportsman