I love it when exhibitions include paintings that are like old friends I haven't met for ages. I've always liked Children Paddling - the sparkling water and the little girls with their skirts tucked into their knickers - but I hadn't seen it in quite a while so it was a pleasure to come across it at Compton Verney a couple of days ago.
Wilson Steer was rather too advanced for Victorian England and his paintings didn't sell, so in the 1890s he had to revert to a more traditional style.
Les Pommiers à Damiette, Armand Guillaumin (1893)
On the other hand, Guillaumin was a French railway worker who won 100,000 francs on the lottery. So he could paint however he liked and thumb his nose at the market. You can tell that he was a friend of van Gogh.
Yellow Landscape, Roderic O'Conor (1892)
And as Irish artist Roderic O'Conor was also blessed with a private income, he was free to paint green and pink skies. It intrigues me that his wonderful Yellow Landscape from Pont Aven has all the ingredients of a van Gogh ... the cornfields, the cypresses, the thick paint ... but there's something indefinably missing.
Yellow Landscape, Roderic O'Conor (1892)
And as Irish artist Roderic O'Conor was also blessed with a private income, he was free to paint green and pink skies. It intrigues me that his wonderful Yellow Landscape from Pont Aven has all the ingredients of a van Gogh ... the cornfields, the cypresses, the thick paint ... but there's something indefinably missing.
What a lovely sounding exhibition, I do love Pont Aven school of painting, just wish I could afford one!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad your enjoying the soda bread. Jude x
The tortured soul?
ReplyDeleteJude, that soda bread is just too tempting.
ReplyDeleteLucille. I'm not sure I believe the tortured soul myth. I think it's all in the paint. But it's funny, you look across the room and think Van Gogh - and then realise it isn't.
I love the children paddling pic too.and agree with you about Roderic O'Connor
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