An Artist’s Process: A Painting Demonstration by Lauren Sansaricq

Lauren Sansaricq (b.1991), whose landscape paintings are inspired by the artists of the Hudson River School and are represented by Hawthorne Fine Art, recently performed an exciting artist demonstration at the Alva de Mars Megan Chapel Art Center at Saint Anselm College, where her work is on exhibit until December 6, 2012.

Lauren Sansaricq, Winter Afternoon, View of Carter Notch, NH. Oil on canvas, 14 x 19 in.

This event featured one of Lauren’s hauntingly beautiful nocturnal scenes illuminated by a pulsing full moon, and demonstrated the process of drawing, underpainting, and the final glazing. She selected a nocturnal scene in order to show the clear transition from underpainting to a richer finished image once glazing is complete. After drawing out her composition, Lauren spent time building up the primarily monochromatic underpainting—often called the dead color stage. The choice of a nocturnal scene, according to Lauren, was successful in revealing the importance of determining the tonal values of the whole image in relation to the drawn arrangement. Lauren began painting concentric circles outward from the central full moon, deepening the color and warmth of the pigment as she progressed. Fr. Iain MacLellan, Director of the Chapel Art Center, noted that visitors were especially amazed by the quickness with which Lauren transformed pigment from her brush into naturalistic form, as if by magic! He stated that Lauren’s “apparent learnedness and deftness with pigments and brush” were especially impressive and exciting for viewers.

Lauren Sansaricq, View of Mt. Washington from the Saco River, 2012. Oil on artist’s board, 10 x 16 in.

Since the underpainting must dry before glazes can be applied, Lauren had prepared another panel ahead of time with the same composition in order to show visitors how to glaze a painting. As Lauren explained, glazing uses thin layers of transparent paint to enhance the colors and shadows of a painting in a way that creates richness but preserves the lightness or freshness of the paint.

This impressive demonstration provided an illuminating experience for visitors not only into the technical aspect of creating a painting and the extensive care and work that goes into each image, but also the intense emotional part of Lauren’s work. Fr. Iain mentioned that the demonstration revealed “the real purity of intent on the part of the artist. [Lauren] relayed in a quiet and forthright way… the fullness of the experiences she has had with the almost unsurpassable beauty of the brilliant moon at night.” One visitor’s question, which the artist found particularly inspiring, was in regard to the spiritual quality of her work. The visitor asked how Lauren’s technique enhanced this spiritual feeling. Lauren responded that her glazing technique and scumbling (glazing with a more opaque paint) would help call a viewer’s attention to one particular element of the painting. This element, as Lauren says, “should tell a story of the journey we are all on for enlightenment and ultimately the Truth.”

Lauren Sansaricq, View of Mt. Madison from the Androscoggin River, 2012. Oil on artist’s board, 7 ½ x 14 in.

Lauren’s technical prowess and reverence for nature as conveyed through painting reflect the ideals expressed by the nineteenth century American landscape painters of the Hudson River School. While the demonstration is especially significant for its illumination of Lauren’s own working process and personal connection to the subjects she depicts, it also reveals the important techniques, pigments, and types of brushes used by historic artists. This very special event, which so brilliantly supplemented the exhibition of her work, The Glimmer of Light, “became a living metaphor for how to enlighten others,” said Fr. Iain, and “how to bring light out of darkness with materials, methods, perception, and memory.”

Lauren Sansaricq, Autumn Afternoon. Oil on artist’s board, 8 x 12 in.

In addition to Lauren’s demonstration, the exhibition at Saint Anselm College was recently supplemented with a lecture by David Dearinger, Susan Morse Hilles Curator of Paintings & Sculpture at the Boston Athenaeum. Dr. Dearinger’s talk introduced the Hudson River School, focusing on the development of the art movement through the careers of three major artists—Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, and Frederic Church—all of whom found painting subjects and artistic inspiration in the Hudson River Valley and Catskill Mountains of New York State.

Lauren Sansaricq, View of the Mt. Washington Valley, 2012. Oil on artist’s board, 8 ¼ x 15 ¼ in.

The Glimmer of Light: Landscape Paintings by Lauren Sansaricq will be on view at the Alva de Mars Megan Chapel Art Center at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH, until December 6^th. We hope you will have an opportunity to visit the exhibition! To enjoy more of Lauren’s paintings, please view the PDF catalogue of the artist’s previous exhibition at Hawthorne Fine Art, Nature’s Poetry.

Lauren Sansaricq, Snow Scene in Jackson N.H., 2011. Oil on artist’s board, 6 1/4 x 4 in.

Read Full Post »

Reflections on an American Romantic: A Fresh Look at Douglas Arthur Teed (1860-1929)

Two of Hawthorne Fine Art’s newest additions illustrate the experimental changes yet steadfast spirituality of Douglas Arthur Teed’s oeuvre. Teed’s career developed during important transitions from Hudson River School landscape painting, through Tonalism and Impressionism, and even touched on Symbolist and early twentieth century Modernist trends. Teed studied in both the United States and Europe, and traveled in northern Africa and India, experiencing both emerging artistic movements and “exotic” locations that contributed to his late-career Orientalist subjects. Maple Sugar (1883) demonstrates the artist’s transition from finely detailed, carefully observed Hudson River School style to quickly rendered Barbizon-inspired Tonalism. Italian Landscape (1917) is a late work that revives Teed’s earlier Tonalist paintings that were widely successful. Most importantly, both works capture Teed’s intense Romanticism and reverence for nature. The range of Teed’s oeuvre as it spanned the transition from Romanticism to Modernism makes the artist a remarkable figure in American landscape painting

Douglas Arthur Teed, Maple Sugar, 1883. Click to enlarge

Douglas Arthur Teed, Italian Landscape, 1917. Click to enlarge

Douglas Arthur Teed was born on February 21, 1860 in New Hartford, NY (near Utica) to Fidelia M. Rowe and Cyrus R. Teed. Growing up, Teed was surrounded by his father’s spiritual fervor. Cyrus Teed developed a following in New York, and eventually left his family to found a religious sect in Florida called Koreshan Unity. Although Douglas Teed never converted to Koreshanity like his father, these ideas of spirituality were reflected in his mystical and sometimes mysterious works, especially later in his career. Douglas Teed generally had an idealistic perception of the world, and he believed in the spirituality found in God-created nature. The artist thought paintings should be more than aesthetically pleasing; they should create an allegory for this spirituality.

Teed began painting as a young boy, and opened his first studio at age 14. His work always focused on a Romantic depiction of nature, stemming from the Hudson River School tradition that was so prevalent in New York State. When his mother died, Teed went to live in Binghamton, New York, where he built a studio (1889). Teed’s early technique living in upstate New York focused on delicate, faithful representations of nature based on the artist’s own close observation of his subjects. However, Teed also spent time in the studio of George Inness, most likely in the early 1880s. Inness was a convert to the Barbizon movement that originated in France in and near Fontainebleau, and focused heavily on Swedenborgian spirituality as reflected in the peace and harmony of nature. HFA’s Homeward Bound from 1865 is a striking example of Inness’s early transition to Tonalism.

George Inness, Homeward Bound, 1865. Click to enlarge

After working with George Inness and experiencing Inness’s transition to American Barbizon painting, Teed painted Maple Sugar (1883). This charming image of a forest interior that nearly qualifies as genre painting captures Teed’s close observation of nature in the texture of the tree bark and the hazy atmosphere of the snowy forest on a dreary winter day. However, the thick impasto that appears in the tree trunks and in the dash of white snow on the roof of the cabin reveals the influence of Inness’s more rapid paint application in the Tonalist manner. Despite this move toward a Tonalist manner of painting, Teed still infuses this composition with his Romantic sensibility and reverence for nature. The monumental size of the trees dwarfs the figures and cabin, sheltering them in a cathedral-like embrace, while the subject of extracting resources from the environment alludes to a harmony between man and nature.

In 1890, Douglas Teed traveled to Italy for further study. The artist attempted classical depictions of the Roman Compagna, but also conveyed his Romantic sensibility through Tonalist depictions of the Italian landscape. While in Europe, Teed attended the Universal Expositions in both Paris (1891) and Munich (1892) where he would have viewed contemporary European paintings, and paintings by Americans living in Europe. After this, Teed eventually began incorporating Impressionist techniques into his manner of painting. One critic described Teed’s paintings in 1905: “Mr. Teed’s landscapes are said to recall the soft effects of Corot, though his style is so original that it would hardly be correct to speak of any other artist. His genre work is superb, and whether he finds inspiration in the warm tones of Southern Europe or the cooler tints of the more temperate zones, his work displays the same qualities of breadth and individuality.”[1]

In 1897, Teed married Ms. George E. C. Earle and moved to Hallstead, PA, where he built a studio (referred to by neighbors as “Teed’s Castle”) overlooking the Susquehanna River. Between 1907 and 1911 Douglas and George Teed visited Egypt, Morocco, India, and Algeria, where the artist developed his interest in Orientalism. Teed had already created Orientalist works based on reproductions of paintings by European Orientalists, but after this trip he began creating his own original Orientalist paintings. These paintings combine this Romantic and exotic perception of Africa and the Near East with Impressionist painting techniques, since Teed had never trained in the academic painting style.

For the remainder of his career, Teed continued to experiment with different painting styles, always infusing his subjects with a sense of mysticism. In 1917, the year Italian Landscape was painted, George Earl Teed died, resulting in Douglas Teed’s relocation to Detroit. Despite his personal loss, Teed was financially successful in Detroit, selling his paintings for high prices to wealthy industrialists. His buyers preferred established art forms like Tonalism and Impressionism, manners in which Teed continued to work. Italian Landscape is an example of the Barbizon-inspired Italian landscapes Teed began painting after his trip to Italy in 1890, yet it is dated much later. Teed managed to balance experimental and highly mystical paintings with more widely accepted manners throughout the changing artistic movements in the early twentieth century. Italian Landscape, therefore, is a later example of Teed’s devotion to a Romantic manner of painting that captured a divine sense of harmony in nature. In this image, the sun hangs low over the horizon line, bathing the landscape in a glowing light and silhouetting the distant Italian architecture. A lone figure stands in the middle ground taking in the scene while simultaneously becoming a part of nature to the painting’s viewer.

Teed continued to paint subjects related to his foreign travels throughout his career, leading one writer to ask the artist if he found it difficult to remember the details. Teed responded, “On the contrary, I have a much better perspective now of what I saw there. Also, as the superfluous details leave my memory, the really important ones stand out all the more clearly.”[2] Interestingly, Thomas Cole (1801-1848), the founder of the Hudson River School of landscape painting, made a similar argument almost a century earlier. Cole stated, “…I never succeed in painting scenes, however beautiful, immediately on returning from them. I must wait for time to draw a veil over the common details, the unessential parts, which shall leave the great features, whether the beautiful or the sublime dominant in the mind.”[3] These similar attitudes to the profound effects of nature and subject matter connect Douglas Teed’s constantly developing style with the foundation of American Romanticism as put forward by Thomas Cole and the first generation of Hudson River School artists.

---

[1] Lucie Page Borden, “Distinguished Artist at Estero,” The Flaming Sword (May 30, 1905): 14; Quoted in Pamela Beecher, Douglas Arthur Teed: An American Romantic, 1860-1929 (Elmira, NY: Arnot Art Museum, 1982), 28.

[2] Velmas Stevens Hitchcock, “Color, Clay and Crafty,” Club Woman, Vol. 19 (September, 1926): 25; Quoted in Beecher, 31.

[3] Cole to Asher B. Durand, Catskill, 4 January 1838, NYSL; quoted in Noble, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 185.

Read Full Post »

Summer Reading: American Paintings & American Prose

Happy summer, everyone! Hawthorne Fine Art is proud to announce the second installment of Summer Reading: American Paintings & American Prose, which may serve as a charming companion to your peaceful summer moments.

This beautifully illustrated catalogue presents highlights from HFA’s inventory, thoughtfully paired with segments of historic and contemporary writing. Paintings include images of the American West, tranquil winter scenes, and a fiery sunset painted by contemporary artist Lauren Sansaricq. The accompanying prose varies from beautifully descriptive and meditative passages, to excerpts that raise issues of environmental conservation. Jennifer Krieger, Managing Partner of Hawthorne Fine Art, writes in her introduction, “While we can still behold and appreciate the sites and vistas that attracted artists to paint our native scenery over a hundred years ago, we must strengthen our dedication to and our efforts in pre­serving them.”

Two recent acquisitions included in this catalogue are In the Arctic by William Bradford (1823­­–1892) and Summer Idyll in the Hudson Valley by William Hart (1823–1894). Bradford, who grew up on the Massachusetts coast during the height of the New Bedford whaling industry, consistently showed interest in and talent for depicting whaleships. After befriending Frederic Church (1826–1900), who is known for his adventurous expeditions to South American and the Arctic, Bradford was inspired to travel. He sailed for Labrador for the first time in 1861, and continued to return throughout the 1860s. However, the artist’s most epic voyage occurred in 1869 when funding from New York art collector and banker LeGrand Lockwood allowed Bradford to travel further into the Arctic. Traveling a total of 5000 miles during this three-month journey, Bradford sketched icebergs, glaciers, and polar bears, and completed his travelogue, The Arctic Region, published in 1873. In the Arctic (1875), which typifies the Romantic preoccupation with exploring the outer limits of civilization, is an important example of the crystalline Arctic vistas that Bradford continued to produce during the mid-1870s to illustrate his 1869 expedition. This image is paired with an exciting description of Frederic Church’s arctic expedition written by Reverend Louis Legrand Noble, who is best known for his biography of Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole (1801–1848).

William Bradford, In the Arctic

William Hart’s Summer Idyll in the Hudson Valley (1849) is a rare and very early example of the finely detailed, bucolic American landscapes for which the artist was best known. Completed while the artist was still living in Albany, NY, this painting is one of few extant works from the period prior to Hart’s move to New York City in 1853. This pastoral vision of America as a New Eden was popularized by the American Art Union, which promoted and disseminated works by young American landscape painters such as Hart, John F. Kensett, Frederic E. Church, and Jasper F. Cropsey in the 1840s and early 1850s. The Italianate building that appears nestled within a group of trees at the water’s edge is typical of the “Tuscan” villas that replaced the Federal style mansions of the previous era. Leading the Romantic architectural movement were landscape architects Andrew Jackson Downing and Alexander Jackson Davis. Downing and Davis called for “natural” architecture following English Gothic and Italian Renaissance models, which strived for harmonious integration within the landscape, unlike box-shaped Federal houses. Hart’s painting appears alongside a segment of Thomas Cole’s “Essay on American Scenery” (1836), in which Cole calls for deeper attention to the aesthetics of scenery amid the Edenic paradise of America.

William Hart, Summer Idyll in the Hudson Valley

To view more exciting paintings and their accompanying prose, you may view Summer Reading in its entirety on the Hawthorne Fine Art website. The catalogue is also available in hard copy and may be requested on our catalogue page.

Read Full Post »

Connoisseurship and the Hudson River School

On September 14th, gallery owner, Jennifer Krieger, presented a lecture by invitation to the Atlanta Art Forum, a dedicated group of Georgia art collectors. She spoke on the importance of connoisseurship in the collection of Hudson River School paintings. We have copied below for your enjoyment a partial text of her presentation, so you may also hear her thoughts on building the ideal collection of paintings from our country’s first indigenous art movement.

 

       

                                                                                                                                              Jonathan Sturges            Luman Reed               Elias Magoon

In advising you on how best to assemble a quality collection of Hudson River School paintings, I urge you to study with me the original patrons of the movement, revisit their time, and try to extract the wisdom that led them to making better choices. There were three major contemporary patrons of the Hudson River School movement: Luman Reed, Jonathan Sturges and the Reverend Elias Magoon. Each left a distinct and indelible mark on the art market and left us clues to approach collecting the best examples of the movement. Prior to their debut, most early American collectors turned to Old Master paintings, but Reed, Sturges and Magoon were smart to recognize the benefit of personally knowing the artists whose works they collected. They were also excited by the creative fervor of the landscape painters they encountered and became eager to support their artistic ambitions.

Luman Reed became not only a patron of, but also a great friend to Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, William Sidney Mount, Samuel F.B. Morse and others. Born at Green River in Columbia County, New York to a family of farmers, Reed later came to New York City and became successful as an entrepreneur in the business of wholesale dry goods. He was able to retire at the early age of 48 in 1832 and decided to use part of his fortune to put together an esteemed art collection and share it with the public. He wanted to establish with his collection what he called “The New York Gallery of Fine Arts” and took to installing it on the 3^rd Floor of his Greenwich Street townhouse. In this space, he held the first meetings of the Sketch Club. Now known as the Century Association, the club began in Reed’s home with meetings that united a group of the leading artists, writers, and collectors, who would discuss the intellectual and aesthetic currents of their time.

Reed created a comprehensive plan to direct the course of his commissions and used the architecture of his townhouse as the optimal backdrop. He commissioned Asher B. Durand to paint portraits of the first seven presidents. This series simultaneously gave the collection a historic importance and established a distinguished line of leadership to mark our nation’s early development. Reed also had in mind one grand piece de resistance, and that was Thomas Cole’s major allegorical work Course of an Empire, which included grand and spirited scenes of a civilization’s hopeful progress, eventual demise, and implied rebirth. He commissioned Cole to paint it for the then lofty sum of $5,000. Painted on a grand scale with painstaking details, this was an extremely ambitious project for Cole.  Unfortunately Luman Reed was not able to see the cycle completed, as he died suddenly and prematurely in 1836. Cole and his colleagues were devastated, but Cole pushed on and completed the Course of an Empire. Through the gracious will of Reed’s wife and the guidance of his great friend, the series and Reed’s entire intact collection eventually made its way into the collection of the New York Historical Society of which it remains an integral part today.

"Thomas Cole: The Course of Empire: The Consummation of Empire (1858.3)". New-York Historical Society. http://www.nyhistory.org/node/62674

Jonathan Sturges respectfully took Reed’s mantle both as a principal of Reed’s business enterprise and as a grand patron of the Hudson River School. Born to humble circumstances in Southport, CT, Sturges was also a self-made man who worked his way up as a clerk in a local grocery store in Fredericksburg, VA, at the age of 17 to become Reed’s chief protégé and eventual successor in New York. He shared with Reed a love of the Hudson River School and became a friend and supporter of these artists, a member and host of the Sketch Club meetings, as well as an honorary member of the National Academy of Design by 1838.

He commissioned some of the most vitally important works of the Hudson River School. These included Cole’s View on the Catskill, which purposefully omitted the railroad’s existence in the scene in order the make an environmental statement. This important commission soon became overshadowed a decade later by an even greater project. In 1848, upon the death of Thomas Cole, Jonathan Sturges enlisted Asher B. Durand to paint a commemorative portrait of their mutual friend Thomas Cole titled Kindred Spirits. He was inspired by the tender eulogy that the poet William Cullen Bryant delivered at Cole’s funeral and chose to portray the poet and painter side by side overarched by a nave of trees atop Kaaterskill Falls.

"Thomas Cole: View on the Catskill—Early Autumn (95.13.3)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/95.13.3 (August 2009)

The intellectual pursuit of beauty was also a distinct accomplishment of another grand patron, the Reverend Elias Magoon. A Baptist minister from Albany, NY, Magoon was actively engaged as both an art collector and theorist. Magoon amassed a collection of 3000 paintings, many of which were direct commissions from Church, Durand, Cole, Cropsey, and others.  At the same time, he advanced his own theories on the art of landscape paint through his compilation The Homebook of the Picturesque, which included a grouping of essays by himself and such distinguished authors as James Fennimore Cooper and Washington Irving alongside illustrations of American scenery by Kensett, Weir, Gignoux, Cropsey and other of his favorite landscape painters. He published the volume in 1851 and dedicated it to Asher B. Durand.

In addition to advancing his aesthetic agenda, Magoon also served an important role as a trustee of Vassar College and was appointed by the founder Matthew Vassar to be the chairman of the committee charged with establishing the school’s art gallery. Shortly after, Matthew Vassar journeyed to Albany to see Magoon’s collection, which he purchased and installed as the basis of the college collection, now known as one of the finest in the country.

It was this assortment of Magoon’s treasures of the Hudson River School which were small and precious in scale, which I encountered as a student of Vassar, in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Gallery, that encouraged me as a student to study the Hudson River School and eventually dedicate my career to uncovering its hidden gems.

I realize that it is difficult to approach the collecting of Hudson River School paintings in the same manner as Reed, Sturges and Magoon, but there are clues and insights we can gleam from their appreciation of the movement and I’d like to outline them as follows:

1.  To approach the movement holistically and understand the ideas behind the forms. Hone your vision to discern in the landscapes the aesthetic categories of the sublime, picturesque, and beautiful.
2. Get to know each of the artists intimately through a comprehensive study of his or her body of work, know their favorite subjects, and their best years of production.
3. Read the surrounding literature of the period, the prose and poetry, to gain insight into the aesthetic ideas that inspired the artists most and understand the various dimensions of their artistic agenda.
4. Visit the sites they depicted, as their passion for the landscape is infectious and the best collections are born with passion and a keenness of vision.

Portrait Image Credits: 1.)”Asher B. Durand: Jonathan Sturges”. http://www.artchive.com/web_gallery/A/Asher-Brown-Durand/Jonathan-Sturges.html  ; 2.) “Asher B. Durand: Luman Reed (63.36)”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/63.36 (October 2009); 3.) “Elias Magoon”. A Brief Guide to Vassar’s Charter Trustees. Vassar College, 2004. http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/trustees/a-brief-guide-to-vassars-charter-trustees.html

Read Full Post »