Sunday 1 April 2012

 Walberswick, Children Paddling, Philip Wilson Steer (1891)

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. 

4 comments:

scrumptious days said...

What a lovely sounding exhibition, I do love Pont Aven school of painting, just wish I could afford one!
I'm so glad your enjoying the soda bread. Jude x

Lucille said...

The tortured soul?

mary said...

Jude, that soda bread is just too tempting.

Lucille. 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.

Cait O'Connor said...

I love the children paddling pic too.and agree with you about Roderic O'Connor