British Watercolors at Getty
'Long Ship's Lighthouse, Land's End' by Joseph Mallord William Turner
“Luminous Paper: British Watercolors and Drawings,” on view through Oct. 23, features the work of some of the most famous British artists, including J.M.W. Turner, William Blake and Samuel Palmer.
“Key works have been added to the Getty’s collection in the last few years as part of an ongoing initiative to build our holdings of British drawings and watercolors to better represent the wider European tradition,” said associate curator Julian Brooks. “Many of these works have been recently acquired and we’re thrilled to be publicly displaying them for the first time in generations.”
'Durham Cathedral and Castle' by Thomas Girtin
Among the recent acquisitions is Durham Cathedral and Castle(about 1800) by Thomas Girtin, a dramatic view of a medieval cathedral and castle set on a rocky outcrop above the water, amid the moving light of a bright, cloudy sky. Girtin died of tuberculosis at the age of 27, two years after making this drawing. His rival J.M.W. Turner is reputed to have said “Had poor Tom lived, I would have starved.”
Another is View of the Church of Our Lady of Hanswijk, Mechelen (1831) by Thomas Shotter Boys, a central figure in Anglo-French artistic exchange of the period, and one of the most sophisticated practitioners of watercolor. He excelled in capturing effects of atmosphere and mood.
“I think this is one of his greatest works. It’s just so perfect—every touch has something to say,” Brooks said. “The very calm water is achieved by scratching through the watercolor to the white paper, and the gray in the sky almost makes you want to reach for your umbrella.”
In the early 1700s watercolor painting was seen as an amateur pastime unworthy of true painters, but toward the end of the century British artists started to make watercolors designed to compete directly with oil paintings. They were bigger, with strong colors and dramatic compositions. The “exhibition watercolor” attracted new audiences of collectors and produced some of the most technically complex and powerful works in the medium.
To gather motifs and material for their exhibited works, British artists of the 1700s and 1800s often made sketching trips. Equipped with sketchbooks and portable boxes containing dry cakes of watercolor pigment and, later, moist versions and tubes, artists could easily capture the elements and effects of nature in color. Luminous Paper: British Watercolors and Drawings includes a sketchbook filled on a tour of northern England and Scotland by artist William Bell Scott and a paint box of the era, in addition to other books and letters from the collection of the Getty Research Institute.
Complementing Luminous Paper: British Watercolors and Drawings is a loan installation of three contemporary watercolors by British artist David Hockney, bringing the tradition of the exhibition watercolor into the present day. His colorful and personal landscapes of the Yorkshire countryside of his youth show his ceaseless experimentation with artistic technique and demonstrate that watercolor as a medium is alive and well in the 21st century.
Alan Shields
Alan Shields, Watercolor, thread on multi-layered handmade paper
Alan Shields, Watercolor, thread on multi-layered handmade paper
Alan Shields, Something Goin’ On & On
A fascinating solo exhibition of the work by Alan Shields (1944-2005) was presented by Greenburg Van Doren Gallery, NYC, which inaugurated their representation of the artist’s estate. Exploring multiple materials, Shields painted, dyed, wove, sewed and sculpted his works into interactive forms on canvas or paper. The show combines large hanging pieces, sculptured forms, and flat works using a strong palette of circles, spirals, pyramids, biomorphic and natural forms.
Shield’s watercolors were on thick handmade paper, and then enhanced by sewn lines, as a method of introducing linear elements along with the areas of watercolor. Sometimes there is an embossed effect as strips of handmade paper are overlaid on the paper with additions of beads and linear sewing.
Alan Shields, Watercolor, block printing, glitter, stitching on handmade paper
Shields work was produced in the wake of Minimalism in the ‘60s in New York as he adapted his materials and techniques in painting,installation work and printmaking.
His longtime friend, the curator Jill Brienza showed a selection of work from the ‘70s and ‘80s that distills and reflects the entirety of Shields work which spanned four decades.
The exhibition was on view from April 28th to June 24th, 2011. A fully illustrated catalogue featuring an essay by Bob Nickas was published on the occasion of the exhibition. Alan Shields was born in Herington, Kansas in 1944 and died in Shelter Island, New York in 2005. He was educated at Kansas State University and participated in Summer Theatre Workshops at the University of Maine. He was the recipient of a 1973 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Alan Shields, New Shadow Old Legs4, watercolor plus
Solo museum exhibitions include Alan Shields: Stirring up the Waters, The Parrish Museum of Art, Southampton, NY (2007), Alan Shields: A Survey, The Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS (1999), and 1968-1983: The Work of Alan Shields, The Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis, TN (1983). His works are included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Tate Collection, London, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art among many others.
John Marin
- John Marin in his Studio, Photo by George Daniell
John Marin: Modernism at Midcentury
An exhibition of the work of John Marin at the Portland Museum of Art focuses on the innovative work which he developed after moving to northern Maine in 1933. This is the period when his work was inspired both by the coast of Maine and by the architecture of Manhattan. During this time he developed the vibrant, abstract works which contributed to his significant reputation.
The exhibit shows the interrelationship between his watercolors, sketchbooks and oil paintings of the late period of his career. From early in his career (1917) Marin was influenced by the rocky shores and islands of Maine. But it was when he came to Cape Split in 1933 that he realized how this untamed terrain of northern Maine would be a major inspiration for a body of work.
The exhibition features 54 works and runs from June 23-October 10, 2011. Major loans from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C. and other museums and private collections have made this exhibition possible.
- Cape Split, 1940. oil
Marin was based both in New York and New Jersey and then followed a path to Maine, like many artists. But Marin came to Maine with a Modernist perspective, unlike many of his predecessors. When he was spending summers in Cape Split, he confronted a very raw and unspoiled landscape. He saw the possibilities of translating these ephemeral patterns of waves into visionary compositions which reflected upon some of the characteristics of mid-century American art.
Although Marin’s primary production was in watercolor, he also began to work in oil alongside his compostions in watercolor. With the oil offering a more viscous texture and intense saturation and the watercolor providing an immediacy and fluidity, Marin used both outlets to explore his abstracted compositions.
- Top of Radio City, New York City, 1937
Even as the sea was a seminal focus for his work in the period after 1933, he still explored the New York skyline, and specific sites in New Jersey, and these compositions increased in abstraction as they utilized geometric patterns and a kind of calligraphic imagery.
In his book, “Art and Culture: Critical Essays” Clement Greenberg, an American essayist and renown critic of the Modernist era, wrote “It is quite possible Marin is the greatest living painter.”
Born in 1870, the artist died in 1953. The exhibition will travel to the Amon Carter Museum in Texas.
