Thomas Cole: Study for Catskill Creek

Thomas Cole. Study for Catskill Creek. Oil on Wood. 1844/45. National Gallery of Art. Avalon Fund.
There's a wonderful permanent installation in the east wing at the National Gallery of Art in DC, Small French paintings. But there are also a few gems by American painters such as Church and Cole. This one is really special.

Comments

Hanny said…
I really like this one. It's almost like a window showing an actual dawn.
December 20, 2010 at 4:38 PM
Gary Keimig said…
Nice blog. I signed onto your blog following the Columbia. I think that is a great idea project and do hope you will follow through with it and post you progression. Would love to follow it
January 15, 2011 at 6:21 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My favorite love poem - West Wind 2 by Mary Oliver

Image
for Dan on Valentine's Day West Wind 2 by Mary Oliver You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me. Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and your heart, and your heart's little intelligence, and listen to  me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a  dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the sharp rocks --- when you feel the mist on your mouth and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls plunging and steaming---then row, row for your life toward it. Still Waters. ©2010. Lisa McShane.
Read more

My favorite art inventory system

Image
Over the past couple of years I've looked at and played with a lot of computer programs for keeping track of artwork. Here are past blog posts on the subject: Art Inventory Systems, here's what I've tried and then this Update on Art Inventory Systems Alyson Stanfield has also written about this riveting subject on her great blog here . I come to these systems with built-in bias. I prefer a FileMaker based system to an Access based system because I think it's a more powerful and smoother software to use. I'd worked for a nonprofit that used Filemaker and it's what I know. I also prefer a system without goofy graphics. I'm an artist. I care how things look. If I open up software every couple of days I would like it to be clean and simple and not ugly. But computers evolve and the next direction is to the cloud. That is a system where software doesn't live on your computer but you access it via the internet. I operate on 3 devices: my iMac in my ...
Read more

How to Make Linen Panels

Image
Surfaces, brushes, paints and mediums. Those are the materials of an oil painter. Each of those elements are important to the finished product. One of the very best painting surfaces is an oil or alkyd primed linen mounted to a panel. For my larger paintings I stretch linen or canvas over wood bars, size the fabric and then prime the surface with an oil primer. But for smaller paintings I prefer the linen panels for several reasons: Less fragile. When you're storing or moving paintings, this is important. Easy to handle. A nice stable surface with no movement. There is no flex when you paint on it and later, that makes them more archival. You can achieve a gorgeous surface effect. You have more frames to choose from (and yes, panels must be framed!) Linen panels seem complicated to make but they're not. It's easier than stretching canvas or linen and a much higher quality surface than buying stretched canvas. And the beauty of making your own panels is that once you...
Read more