Brooklyn Pissarro

Union Street Bridge, Brooklyn. 12x16 inches, oil on linen canvas.  This view reminds me of paintings by Camille Pissarro.

 

A Blue Sea

The Mediterranean Sea at Cap Ferrat.  12x16 inches, oil on canvas panel.  I've always liked the words of Cezanne to Pissarro about painting the sea at L'Estaque: "red roofs against a blue sea," signifying the simplicity required for painting in the brilliant light of the south of France. 

Splotchy Shadows

The tractor road goes downhill below a high overhanging tree on the right so that what is visible on the ground when looking back up the road is a mix of grass tufts, gravel, rocks, and shadows.  It's hard to have all this make visual sense when the tree is not visible in the painting.  Camille Pissarro was criticized for placing across the bottom of his paintings the shadows cast by trees themselves not visible in the paintings.  In his case, his shadows are more uniform than my splotchy ones.  9x12 inches, oil on panel.

Back to Mauserts and Alfred Sisley

In the morning, I went back to Mauserts Pond at Clarksburg State Park.  What a magnificent place this is, especially for a landscape painter.  A beautiful pond, trees, mountains in the distance, big sky, and virtually no people.

I've been reading a lot about Alfred Sisley lately.  He is, I think, an underrated painter, mainly because we, today, look at his paintings through all the years and imitators that separate us from his time.  Who else was painting like Sisley back in 1872?  Monet, Pissarro, possibly Berthe Morisot and Renoir, and... Sisley was the only Impressionist who insisted on painting outdoors all-the-time.

I learned that he suffered a similar fate as Pissarro from the Franco-Prussian War.  Pissarro lost most of his paintings from the decade of the 1860s when the Prussians occupied his studio.  The same thing happened to Sisley, whose studio in Bougival was destroyed.  That's why there are few paintings by Sisley to be seen prior to 1870-71.

Shadow of a Car You Can't See in Brooklyn

A 12x16 oil on panel of Grand Avenue approaching St. Marks Avenue in Brooklyn.  The first thing I saw was the puddle of water.  I also liked the shadow of the car that you can't see.  The puddle is always like an eye of the sky in the ground.  Shadows of things you can't see have always appealed to me from the time (and earlier) that I read that Pissarro was criticized for introducing shadows of trees that were not visible into his paintings.  How unorthodox!

Sheep Hill, Joy and Salvation

A 9x12 oil on panel painted yesterday at a favorite spot at the top of Sheep Hill in Williamstown, MA.

Jack Lindsay quotes a letter from Cezanne to Bernard, in which the painter ends with the words: "Paint. There lies salvation."

Earlier in his biography, Lindsay, when writing about Pissarro's influence on Cezanne, says, "... there was an aspect of impressionism, which we may say developed decisively in 1869 in the work of Monet and Renoir at La Grenouilliere, that struck home with [Cezanne]--it's effect of a world of actual and potential joy.  G. Geffroy wrote that impressionism was born from an 'exaltation' of the senses.  The conviction of a quite new form of free and yet precise comprehension of nature, of a release into light and infinitely rich and subtle colour, had a liberating quality: the final ratification of that impulse to deny and defy the world of drab and restrictive conventions, and to get away untramelled into the free tracks of nature..."

A Student of Pissarro

An 8x10 pastel that takes up an old theme: looking into woods.  The late afternoon, autumn sun gently touches a few branches, tree limbs and leaves.  The view is from the top of Sheep Hill.

My current reading is a biography of Cezanne by Jack Lindsay.  He recounts how a peasant, who had a way with words, watched both Cezanne and Pissarro painting side-by-side.  The peasant said Pissarro 'dabbed' [piquait] and Cezanne 'smeared' [plaquait].   Pissarro was an important teacher for Cezanne.  Here's Lindsay's quote of another painter Le Bail on Pissarro's painting advice, which Cezanne adopted and is still quite relevant:

"Seek out for yourself a type nature which suits your temperament.  One should observe forms and colours in a motif rather than drawing.  It's not necessary to accentuate the forms.  They can be realized without that.  Accurate drawing is dry and destroys the impression of the whole, it annihilates all sensation.  Do not make the bounding line of things too definite; the brushstroke, the right shade of colour, and the right degree of brightness should create the drawing.  With a mass the main difficulty is not to give it an accurate outline, but to paint what is to be found within it.  Paint the essential character of things, try to express it with any sort of means you like, and don't worry about technique.

When painting look for a clear object, see what lies to right and left of it, and work at all sections simultaneously.  Don't work bit by bit but rather paint everything at once, applying paint all over, with brushstrokes of the right colour and brightness, and observe in each case which colours are near the object.  Use small brushstrokes and try to set down your observations directly.  The eye should not be fixed on one point but should note everything, and in so doing observe the reflections which colours throw on their surroundings.  Work at the same time on sky, water, twigs and ground, bring on everything evenly and go tackling everything without stopping again and again, till you've got what you want.  Cover the canvas in one sitting and work at this till you can find nothing more to add.  Observe accurately the aerial perspective, from foreground to horizon, the reflection of sky and foliage. Don't be afraid of applying paint, make your work gradually more perfect.

Don't proceed in accordance with rules and principles, but paint what you see and feel.  Paint strongly and unhesitatingly.  For it's best not to lose the first impression ... one must have only one master: nature.  One must always ask her counsel."