Studying Nature at the South Downs.
And last but not least, I will talk about some other artworks in my modest art collection. In this post I will present a couple of watercolours related to each other in terms of the location depicted and the artist's purpose, although both were painted with a significant temporal distance of at least 135 years. Both paintings have a connection with Portobello Road, although the first one has nothing to do with the outdoor market. I received it at my London home a few weeks before my departure from this wonderful land. It was posted to me by a friend, the Welsh artist Chris Thomas, as a leaving present. It's a view from Winchester Old Hill on the South Downs, and it was painted in 2019.
For over twenty years Chris taught drawing and painting at the Spanish school in Portobello Road, where he is still an institution. In his youth he studied art at Cardiff College of Art and graduated with a degree in painting from Birmingham Polytechnic. Since then he has exhibited in Britain and abroad, both in solo and group exhibitions. Today his artwork is mainly in private collections in Britain and in Spain.
Chris Thomas currently lives and exhibits in Wanstead, East London. For a decade he traveled throughout Asia and Latin America, working and painting. He has lived in Japan and Tibet. The experiences he lived then are often echoed in his artwork. As an artist he is primarily concerned with drawing. In his artworks he uses simple materials, charcoal, ink, pencils, etc., anything that can make a mark on the paper. "I'm a simple man and I use simple materials", L.S. Lowry used to say. But he was not a simple man, but an extraordinary one. Just like Chris.
References: https://www.christhomasart.co.uk
Chris Thomas himself explains about this painting: "It's the view from Winchester Old Hill on the South Downs Way. I worked it up from photographs I took and memory. The South Downs are a lovely part of the country and have a particular English resonance".
Since Victorian times and even before, the Old Winchester Hill has been a popular place of beauty. The views across the valley to Beacon Hill and to the sea are spectacular. The South Downs, with its rolling chalk downlands and the wooded heath of the National Park, is a landscape rich in folklore and legends that has inspired generations of writers and artists to appreciate its beauty and variety of plant and animal species.
One of the artists who painted in the South Downs area was the great English landscape painter John Constable. “No two days are alike”, he said, “nor even two hours, neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of the world', and he continued, “willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts and brickwork. I love such things. These scenes made me a painter”.
After spending several years training in the picturesque tradition of the landscape and in the Gainsborough manner, Constable developed his own style by trying to depict the landscape more directly and realistically, often completing numerous primary sketches before undertaking a large canvas. Constable was therefore inspired directly by nature, trying to capture a moment in time, and testing his compositions on sketches first.
Constable used to paint in the places he knew and loved best, in particular Suffolk and Hampstead. There he made lots of preliminary sketches. He served as a source of inspiration for a new generation of artists.
His studies of nature encouraged other young artists to draw inspiration from nature in order to perfect the depiction of trees, clouds and foliage. In this way we should appreciate our next artwork, an original watercolour from the 19th century. This second artwork I will talk about in this post was painted not far from the place of the one by Chris Thomas. The watercolour now is a study of an elm tree, an artist's sketch in the style of Constable's drawings.
Elm at Marwell, Oct. 26 18… Watercolour on paper by J. C.?
According to the artist's inscription at the base of the drawing, this noble Elm stood allegedly located in Marwell Parkland, an area also at the western end of South Downs National Park. More specifically, in Colden Common Park, Hampshire, not very far from Winchester. Nowadays Marwell is a massive wildlife park turned into a zoo. An adult elm like the one in this watercolour can reach 30 metres in height. Today, what remains of that huge elm in Marwell is a large trunk with hardly any branches or leaves.
The following inscriptions appear on the back of the drawing: "J.C. April 1884. 'Vegetable' - An Elm in October", as well as some initials and pencil drawings. The dimensions of this piece are 177 x 242 mm.
This type of sketches or studies from nature were made possible by the new drawing and painting materials that artists had at their disposal since the end of the 18th century, and also thanks to improved ways of travelling. Watercolour became a very suitable expressive medium to capture what nature could offer the artist, and to his training. It was particularly suitable for recording nature in the open air, its fluidity and transparency being ideal for suggesting the transience of seasons and weather.
Early 18th century topographical artists had conventionally represented trees using squiggles and zigzags. These indicated the general appearance of a tree rather than the detail of specific types of tree. But as early as 1771 the drawing master Alexander Cozens published The shape, skeleton and foliage of 32 species of Trees for the use of Painting and Drawing, illustrating the visible character of various species of trees. Nearly 80 years later the artist and drawing master, James Duffield Harding, published Lessons on Trees (1850). Harding recalled how difficult he had found it to draw trees as a student and had vowed that if he became an artist he would share such secrets.
These sketches of trees, like the one in this watercolour, were mainly for the artist's own use. Exercises in observing the natural world, to improve his ability to observe and his skill as an artist.
Comentarios
Publicar un comentario