Paintbox Leaves: Autumnal
Inspiration from Cole to Wyeth
September 25, 2010 - January 16,
2011
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The Paintbox Leaf
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- ...it would be worth the while to get a specimen leaf
from each changing tree...outline it, and copy its color exactly, with
paint, in a book.... Or if I could preserve the leaves themselves, unfaded,
it would be better still.
- Thoreau
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- Leaves, on canvas and in real life, have been admired
for their colors, studied by natural scientists, lauded and lamented by
poets, compared (in their life cycle) to the human condition, and collected
by leaf peepers for albums and crafts. In the mid-nineteenth century, painters,
writers, their patrons, and other nature lovers romanticized the connections
between picturesque scenery and art. They admired outdoor views that reminded
them of paintings and paintings that reminded them of being outdoors. Either
reverie could conjure interrelated associations trees and their leaves
with aesthetics, science, literature, spirituality, popular culture and
tourism.
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- Just as Jasper Cropsey (often called America's Painter
of Autumn) collected and displayed leaves to authenticate their vivid palettes,
many artists show us the intimacy and physicality of shifting depicting
of landscape vistas to relating with the leaf itself. We move closer and
pay attention to the leaves; and, like the figures in these paintings,
may be inspired to seek them along wooded lanes as colorful raw material
for art and science projects, or home decoration.
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Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966)
- Jack Frost, 1936
- Oil on board
- The Haggin Museum, Stockton, California Art
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- The legend of Jack Frost painting the leaves persisted
despite the fact that even in the 19th century many people pointed out
that leaves change before the first freeze. Parrish's last magazine cover
for Collier's, featuring himself as the elf, is a visual
reference to the correlation between leaves in nature looking painted and
being depicted in paintings. The notion that the colors of fall leaves
come from a paintbox dates back, in print, to the early years of the Hudson
River School, appearing in a poem by William Cullen Bryant the year before
Thomas Cole's 1825 trip to the Catskills:
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- In these bright walks; the sweet southwest, at play,
- Flies, rustling, when the painted leaves are strown
- Along the winding way.
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- Lloyd Mifflin (1846-1921)
- Untitled (Branch of
Leaves and Berries), 1873
- Oil on panel
- Collection of William and Abigail Gerdts
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- Mifflin studied with Thomas Moran and toured Europe,
returning in 1873 just before he painted this fall branch, probably a sprig
of tupelo entwined with ivy. His care in rendering botanical details reveals
his training and concern for accuracy. Mifflin did not need to support
himself painting and in the 1890s turned his major efforts to poetry.
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- ...through the haunted silence, sounds
- The feathery falling of the withered leaf,
- Faint as the patter of a phantom step,,,
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- Ellen Robbins (1828-1905)
- Autumn Leaves, n.d.
- Watercolor on paper
- Collection of William and Abigail Gerdts
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- Robbins' attention to detail suggests more than passing
botanical interest, emphasizes the individuality of each leaf and implies
symbolic overtones that had largely disappeared from landscape painting
after the Civil War. The insect holes she carefully delineated are as much
about accurate rendering as about the imperfection of the physical world.
Fall leaves could still convey poetic associations of the life cycles of
nature and humanity.
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- Successful for a woman artist of her time, Robbins supported
herself selling paintings of autumn leaves and flowers and teaching watercolor.
She displayed in museums and World's Fairs; and Louis Prang reproduced
her work as chromolithograph cards at a time when only paintings and prints
could capture the colors of autumn.
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- Ellen Bowditch Thayer Fisher (1847-1911)
- Fall Leaves and Acorns,
1885
- Watercolor on board
- Courtesy of Beverly Sacks Fine Art, Inc.
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- Ellen Fisher and her artist brother Abbott Thayer spent
much of their childhood near Keene, New Hampshire, surrounded by beautiful
leaves, trees, and mountains. By 1867, they had moved to Brooklyn, close
to the New York City art scene. Fisher specialized in floral watercolors
that showed enough skill to land her a contract with Louis Prang in the
mid-1880s. By that time, his company was printing huge numbers of colorful
greeting cards, a new product Prang almost single-handedly developed, in
addition to the educational cards, decorative plaques and large prints
he had been making since the 1860s. The polished feel of Fisher's decorative
oak leaf composition, with a touch of green from a pine branch, marks it
as the type of image she would have sold to Prang for a fancy greeting
card.
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- Alan Gussow (1931-1997)
- Beech Leaves -- Flat Brookville,1974
- Oil on canvas
- Courtesy of Babcock Galleries
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- Gussow had an almost religious devotion to the act of
looking. His subject matter, though abstract, was deeply connected to his
Hudson Valley surroundings and environmental activism. In the 1960s he
protested against the proposed Storm King Mountain power plant. Bringing
monumentality to the genre of leaf study, he wrote,
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- Landscape paintings can serve an important function,
directing us earthward, reminding us of seasons, of times of day.
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- Gussow's love of his material and preservation concerns
ally him with Thomas Cole, who expressed fears about the disappearing wilderness
in the same region 150 years before. Each in his own way, both artists
were consummate observers of nature -- Gussow almost nose to leaf.
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- Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837-1908)
- Early Autumn on Long Island, c. 1886-90
- Oil on canvas
- Courtesy of Godel & Co., Inc., New York
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- Bricher is one of several artists in Paintbox Leaves
who became famous for their autumn scenes. In Bricher's case, his name
recognition was aided by a number of chromolithograph reproductions by
Louis Prang, such as Early Autumn on Esopus Creek, N.Y. and Late
Autumn in the White Mountains (both available in 1866). Titles like
these reveal sensitivity to nuances of the autumn season that were also
significant to his audience. In "early autumn," the grass is
still green, and the woman has been collecting flowers. Her pensive gaze
across the Long Island Sound seems a clear reflection on the close of summer.
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- John F. Folinsbee (1892-1972)
- In the Leaves (Beth and Joan), c. 1922-23
- Oil on board
- Collection of John F. Folinsbee Art Trust
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- Folinsbee's Impressionist study of his daughters raking
and playing in a pile of leaves is a perfect example of the intimacy of
shifting from the depiction of landscape vistas to a relationship with
the leaf itself. Before the "lawn" re-emerged as an ideal in
the late 19th century, people raked leaves because they wanted to use them,
not tidy the yard. Increasingly, as suburban leaves peak and fall, grass
cultivating homeowners want them to disappear. Folinsbee's daughters are
helping with the chore and having fun at the same time. In many parts of
the United States, this is a familiar scene of childhood. The artist, who
studied with the Art Students League at Woodstock, was one of Pennsylvania's
New Hope Impressionists.
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- Brad Stroman (b. 1949)
- Beauty Contestant,
2005
- Acrylic on panel
- Collection of Kathy and Jim Taylor
- Courtesy of Lynden Gallery, Elizabeth, Pennsylvania
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- Like Ellen Robbins in the 19th century, Stroman has made
autumn leaves a primary subject, celebrating the fragile beauty of their
imperfections, isolating and framing them in a dynamic balance with deliberately
artificial compositions. His paintings are shrines-an encouragement to
meditate on our commonality as living things. His art is influenced by
Japanese aesthetic and the philosophy of wabi-sabi, the philosophical
acceptance of universal transience; and he sees the life cycle as a positive
force despite our ephemeral nature, analogous to leaves.
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- Andrew Stevovich (b. 1948)
- Autumn Leaves , 1987
- Oil on linen
- Collection of Mr. and Mrs. David Friedman
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- Stevovich is fascinated by early Renaissance art, and
two of its stylistic qualities he finds so compelling, luminous pigments
and abstracted linearity, also make the leaf form an ideal subject for
this artist. In Autumn Leaves, the female figure pauses in the act
of comparing her most recently collected leaf specimens (apparently oak)
with an earlier example she pressed in an album or journal. That leaf is
green but now all she finds are autumnal versions, a clear reference to
the passage of time. In the album and in the past, she and the leaf were
young. Recognition of this significance contributes to the tension of the
man's averted gaze.
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- William Trost Richards (1833-1905)
- Autumn Scene , 1876
- Oil on canvas
- Hope Davis Fine Art
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- Richards is best remembered for coastal watercolors painted
with a Pre-Raphaelite precision for detail but during the 1870s he produced
a series of works, many of the White Mountains, that showed his Hudson
River School roots. Here, the tiny figures holding bouquets of leaves and
strolling under tall, half-bare trees are integral to the subject. Autumn
Scene is one of two paintings by Richards showing a woman and a
child collecting fall leaves. He may intend their contrasting ages to be
an autumnal reference to time passing.
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- Brad Stroman (b. 1949)
- October, 2009
- Acrylic on panel
- Courtesy of Brad Stroman, Lynden Gallery, Elizabethtown,
PA
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- Stroman sees the sycamore leaf portrayed here as "still
very powerful despite its Autumn folds and creases.... a metaphor for Man's
search for understanding of our own experience..." Developing an artistic
style in harmony with this philosophy that all things are "incomplete,
impermanent, and imperfect," he creates compositions in which lush
painted surfaces become artificial stages for arrangements of natural objects
isolated from their environments.
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- Clive Smith (b. 1967)
- natural and artificial markings #8, 2008
- Watercolor and graphite on paper
- Courtesy Marlborough Gallery, New York
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- Smith painted live models in his New York City studio
before buying a house in Dutchess County, where, he says, "spending
time living, gardening and walking in the spectacular nature of the Hudson
Valley started to make me question and work with the infinite colors and
shapes of nature, especially in the fall." In this piece, the intense
colors of the setting heighten the contrast between watercolor and graphite,
orange and gold leaves and monochrome model. Forewarned by the artist,
we see in the title's reference to markings and the woman's fur hat another
rite of autumn-hunting season. Her "markers" include the hat
and a jacket with its own leaf pattern, a static, pale reflection of the
"real" ones. Initially seduced by the beauty of the image, we
start to wonder what her role is, what Smith is saying about human interaction
with nature -- a nature that he has rendered artificial.
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- Debra Bermingham (b. 1953)
- October, 1997
- Oil on panel
- Oddo-Parks Collection, Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery,
NY
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- Bermingham's painting is a perfect example of how Luminism
has persisted from late Hudson River School to contemporary American art
and why it is perfectly suited to the reverie associated with autumn. Upstairs,
John Kensett (Woodland Waterfall, c. 1885) and Jervis McEntee (An
Adirondack Lake, c. 1860) straddle the concept of "bleak autumn,"
with their subdued skies contrasted with a few brilliant splashes of orange
paint to represent foliage. In this tree portrait Bermingham reverses the
traditional late autumn mood: peak foliage has clearly passed, but the
painting is not fully somber. She highlights the remaining yellow leaves
clinging to the branches with a brilliant blue sky, which speaks to Indian
Summer. The crisp, clear look of the painting conjures the most beautiful
of summer days.
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- Louis Remy Mignot (1831-1870)
- Autumn Landscape,
1859
- Oil on canvas mounted on panel
- Collection of Erik Davies
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- Mignot, a South Carolinian who painted Dutch-influenced
snowscapes, found it difficult to feel at home in the New York art world
on the eve of the Civil War. He began a series of more typical autumn subjects,
some set in upstate New York. In this painting, the stilt roots, curving
trunk, and dainty branches of his yellow birch, certainly not the most
glamorous fall tree to paint, are so individualized that we sense the interest
and affection in his observation.
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William Hart (1823-1894)
- Autumn in the Catskills,
c. 1865
- Oil on canvas
- Private Collection
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- Known for peaceful scenes in which mountains and forests
were tamed by grazing cows, Hart also painted loving portraits of autumn
trees, sometimes so close the leaves look painted one by one, as in this
Catskill view. The fall landscape in the Hudson River Valley and adjacent
Catskill Mountains was famous enough to attract international travelers.
In 1881 a tour guide for British travelers advised, "In the autumn
when its well timbered banks are clothed with those rich and glorious tintsthen
is the time to see the Hudson."
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- William Hart (1823-1894)
- Autumn Scenery, 1872
- Oil on panel
- Private Collection
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- Like many Hudson River School painters, Hart kept a studio
in New York City and took the train to the Catskills, Lake George, or the
White Mountains in summer and early fall. The popular appreciation of autumn
leaves suggests that artists' preference for scenes like this was practical
as well as personal. Hart's attention to light, reflections and the cool
tones in the sky make the orange and red of his trees seem even brighter.
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- Lois Dodd (b. 1927)
- Red Woods, 1977
- Oil on masonite
- Courtesy Alexandre Gallery, New York
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- Like William Hart 100 years before, contemporary artist
Lois Dodd drenches her paintings in light. Both artists incorporate specific
natural observations-leaning tree trunks, bright orange and gold foliage.
Dodd also takes obvious relish in her flattened and abstracted compositions,
which, in their asymmetry and compressed point of view, reflect the longstanding
influence of Japanese design and aesthetics on the development of modern
taste.
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- Dodd created these two paintings nearly a decade apart.
She has said, "There is something about knowing a place. Over time
you keep changing, you see things differently. And the various places I
love to paint change as well."
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- Lois Dodd (b. 1927)
- Japanese Red Maple in October, 1986
- Oil on masonite
- Courtesy Alexandre Gallery, New York
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- Dodd says she is constantly on the lookout for subjects
that appeal to her. This maple branch is part of a series of window paintings.
Here the mullions form a grid, a foil for the bright exuberance of the
branches outside. Experiencing nature through windows is an apt metaphor
for modern culture, but in Dodd's case, the windows are part of a rural
landscape she has gazed upon and painted for decades. The specificity of
Dodd's title makes it clear the subject interests her and recalls a John
Burroughs' quote, well-known in the early 20th-century:
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- A Maple before your window in October, when the sun
shines upon it will make up for a good deal of the light it has excluded;
it fills the room with a soft golden glow.
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- Janet Fish (b. 1938)
- Autumn Dusk, 1990
- Oil on canvas
- Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York Art
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- Fish has frequently painted in Vermont, surrounded by
that state's mountains and valleys. Here, she arranges some pears and nuts
in the shadow of a huge spray of maple leaves on a blanket or tablecloth,
with distant hills glimpsed behind. It may be part of a picnic, or more
likely just an artistic arrangement in her studio window -- either way,
she focuses on lush depiction of the surfaces and colors before her. The
mood is content and the composition luxurious with visual delights. Though
the leaves are starting to dry out and curl -- a situation deplored by
Victorian leaf collectors but captured in loving detail by Fish-the artist
is not making metaphorical statements about the season with a motif that
could very easily serve as a memento mori, a reminder of death.
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- John B. Duffey (1828/9-1876)
- October, c. 1861
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of William and Abigail Gerdts
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- Still life paintings of autumn leaves feature specimens
that have fallen or been plucked from the tree, as opposed to landscapes
of trees in fine foliage. This distinction suggests the passage of time
-- early versus late fall -- which makes the still lifes more somber. Combining
both genres, Duffey set his painting outdoors, as if he just discovered
the leaves and flowers lying on the ground. He depicts at least two kinds
of leaves, including maple, intertwined with a stem of bottle gentian,
an early fall flower. Despite the fact that the botanical subjects lie
fading on the ground, the gentian raises its head beyond the horizon and
is silhouetted against the sky. "To a Fringed Gentian" was one
of William Cullen Bryant 's most famous poems, so it is tempting to think
Duffey depicted this related flower, not merely because it blooms in October,
but for its association with the great American poet of nature.
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- Mark Innerst (b. 1957)
- Bird Sanctuary, 2010
- Acrylic on panel
- Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York
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- Innerst's swirling branches, a riot of thick autumnal
color, suggest the height of the season, before leaves have fallen, when
trees remain a haven for birds. His golden tones evoke the Luminist painters
but the leaves' whirling patterns of color and shadow suggest a kind of
Thomas Cole-like romanticism. In marked contrast to the low horizons of
his early landscapes, this perspective is not entirely clear -- perhaps
a cropped view of trees obscuring the sky or a look upward through the
dense thicket of leaves.
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- Robert Reid (1829-1901)
- The Last Leaves of the Season, c. 1915
- Oil on canvas
- Courtesy of Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York
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- In the long history of allegorical autumn paintings,
figures often set up the contrast between youth and old age. Reid shows
a woman actively collecting leaves from branches, rather than ones already
fallen, heightening the mood of inevitability, of time passing too quickly.
But the fall light that dapples her white dress lightens this mood, even
as it lightens the Impressionist palette with its rays. Riotous brushstrokes
completely surround her, so much so that she actually seems to be floating
in a frame of the leaves she is gathering -- one hand outstretched, the
other arm holding her bounty. Like picking flowers, collecting leaves was
a way to interact with nature's painted beauty, to bring the outdoors inside.
Women's magazines like Godey's Ladies' Book and Arthur's
Home Magazine seasonally reminded women it was time to gather leaves.
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