Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer
In June of 1975, the movie Jaws opened and like most teenagers I went to see it with my friends on a Saturday afternoon when ticket prices at the Garden Theater were discounted. The author, Peter Benchley lived in town just a couple of blocks away on Library Place and he was rumored to have had a Great White Shark painted at the bottom of his swimming pool with all the money he made from the first Summer blockbuster in film history. I don’t know if that was the spark that led my friend Brian Trubee and I to sneak on down to the Community Park Swimming Club to paint a series of bloody handprints and a black shark fin above the colorful mural of swimming children and aqua colored waves that adorned the wall which surrounded it.
A patrolman with the township police department happened to be pulling in for a shift change when he noticed us completing our handiwork, red-handed, so to speak. My mother was friends with the Chief of Police and since we had no criminal record and we agreed to remove our improvement and restore the mural to its original condition, we were let off the hook, at least legally. My mother, however, had additional plans. She’d decided that since I had shown an interest in painting it might be an appropriate punishment for me to spend several days each week taking painting lessons at the Arts Council which was at that time housed in a converted barn at the Ettl Farm off of Rosedale Road. Both of my parents worked so I had to ride my bicycle from our home to class, giving up those precious hours of vacation freedom to stand at an easel in a room full of old ladies painting flowers.
The teacher was an 80-something woman who wore paint-stained overalls and Chuck Taylor high-tops and she moved with the alacrity of a squirrel from student to student to offer suggestions and praise. I was adamantly unimpressed with the flower arrangements she’d set up on a table in the center of the room and though I’d come with the required tubes of titanium white and raw umber, linseed oil and turpentine, a palette and a few sable brushes I’d only used on tank models before, I told her I wasn’t going to paint that.
“Paint whatever you want,” she told me and walked on to the next student without a second glance. I took her comment as a challenge and decided I’d show her what I could do and put all of my efforts into recreating a Roger Dean illustration I knew by heart.
My first real job was stocking books at Titles Unlimited just past the airport outside of town and I would wind up at the end of each week owing more money for books than I had earned unboxing and shelving them for the store’s owner. Most of the books I was drawn to were the big coffee table type with full page color plates; Frank Frazetta, Rene Magritte, Marcel Duchamp. I didn’t know much about art, but I knew what I liked. In the evenings, alone in my room, I would listen to either WPLJ from New York or WYSP out of Philadelphia and pore over the images while the music played a soundtrack to my adolescent life in the background.
During the preceding Winter my father and I had gone to the Princeton Public Library every Wednesday night to watch a series of films about the Impressionists; Monet and Manet, Seurat and Cezanne, Van Gogh and Degas. Those hours listening to the drone of the narration against the soft clacking of film reels unspooling in the hot air of the second-floor conference room were all I knew of art. I was naive and untrained but I had a sense of what an artist was and I took that small ember out to the studio with my backpack filled with painting supplies.
I set to put on canvas, in that sweltering north-lit loft, my first painting that wasn’t an act of teen-age vandalism. The teacher, Liz Ruggles, became a lifelong friend and as the Summer progressed, I gave in to her instruction. She took me under her wing and began to teach me not only in the technical aspects of putting paint onto canvas, but to open up the world of painters and art history beyond the glimpse I’d had in the library and my small collection of books. I didn’t know at the time about her reputation as one of the region’s most sought-after portrait painters, but rather as one of my first real adult friends whose interest in me was as a young artist. She must have seen some kind of talent in me to give me so much of her time and attention because there wasn’t anything else I had to offer beyond assembling stretchers and applying gesso to her giant canvases as a form of payment for her instruction.
She took me to all the museums and walked me through the giant halls, explaining the history of each school, and the connections between the historic advances in each genre. She was one of the New Hope School painters, only one generation removed from John Singer Sargent and his Schuylkill set. She’d studied at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts and knew every artist- or so it seemed- that we ever came across on those trips into the cities. I will never forget her kindness and patience with me so long ago and the love for art that she instilled in me so many years ago.
Elizabeth “Liz” Ruggles
1915-2013
“I’ve a rich experience in the past, both teaching and learning from my students, but I do believe that my best canvas is the one I’m going to start tomorrow. It is fun to live in hope.” –Elizabeth Ruggles
With the Summer upon us again I am carried back through the years to those days in the atelier and the smell of oils, the sounds of paint brushes and palette knives against canvas in the mote filled air, and I can see the images as clearly in my mind’s eye today as I did in life so many years ago. Art- or at least our appreciation of it- is very personal and while I doubt that any two people enjoy the same paintings in the same way, it is always a pleasure to share that appreciation with other like-minded folks when the chance presents itself.
These are- in no particular order- my five favorite painters.
Fairfield Porter- American 1907-1975
Edvard Munch- Norwegian 1863-1944
Camille Pissarro- French 1830-1903
Thomas Eakins- American 1844-1916
Jamie Wyeth- American 1946-
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Those are real art. Not the trash that is bandied about today that isn’t.
Renoir’s Two Sisters. Saw it at the Art Institute in Chicago and the colors just jump out at you. What a genius.
Good choices, Hardscrabble.
I always appreciated Frank Tuning, who was the art teacher at Burns Union High School for many years. I’ve been friends with his son, Andrew, for many years.
http://www.franktuningwatercolors.com/
Maude Lewis
She was a folk artist from Nova Scotia.
A great movie too!
https://fsharetv.co/movie/maudie-episode-1-tt3721954
Ah, bless you my child. Love that you are an artist and the story of how you came to be. Your teacher was the kind of woman we need more of although there are lots out there. Seems you like the Impressionists, color and light.
I love Degas….
Caravaggio….
Sorolla
?h=235&w=325&la=en&hash=A3CF51D1CFAE7C1D0BB0B8AA11F8599F26D21738
Millais
Waterhouse
and one of my fav Western Artists….Howard Terpening
This was for you.
I know and I love you for doing this…it was wonderful…
What a crock! HF gets LOVE … all I get is cookies or, actually, the promise of cookies. Or, was it cake?
Just be glad it wasn’t about poetry.
Stuck, be thankful that by the Grace of God you haven’t yet gotten what you fucking deserve.
Indeed. God is merciful beyond my wildest imagination.
Stucky- Where the heck is Llpoh?
Strudel, apfel strudel….and cheesecake.
Thiebaud is one hundred years old….damn
I wanted to say something about what you said in another post yesterday, and then I forgot. You said —
“No, a cunt is actually a beautiful thing. Life springs from cunts, as does happiness and pleasure.”
That’s one of the most beautiful, inspirational, life-affirming quotes I have ever read on TBP. Thank yeeew!
Gotta go do yard work for the rest of the day …
Stucky…
Why, thank you.
To HSF:
My first exposures to art as a child were the illustrated classics like Treasure Island and The Yearling. Andrew Wyeth’s dad, NC Wyeth illustrated many childrens classics, as did Howard Pyle, Harvey Dunn and many other great illustrators. I would bury myself in those beautiful illustrations and get lost in them.
NC Wyeth
When I was a kid we lived in France, so I got to visit the Louvre and several other famous museums throughout Europe, my parents were very much into great art and great culture so us kiddies had many fabulous opportunities to see the great artists and their works in the flesh.
I remember standing in front of the Mona Lisa and feeling underwhelmed and then, just around the corner from her… there it was, Delacroix’s The Death of Sardanpalus, in all its blood thirsty glory. I was transfixed. The death , the gore, the nudity, the violence, the fabulous reds…oh my. My childish heart was transfixed.
Delacroix
Many years later, me in college, majoring in Marine Biology. My love of he ocean and all things marine were the reasons for the choice of major.
Stanley Meltzoff
I had to take an elective so I signed up for life drawing and….I was hooked. I won’t got too deeply into my career(s)because internet, but I do believe AP shared that info with you.
Masterpieces…
Monet
Homer
Sargeant
Remington
Yard work or Hard work?
Terpning is so excellent.
HDS, thank you for this post. I had the amazing privilege to take lessons with a wonderful artist,
Kirk inspired me and all of his students to really learn how to see what we were painting, how the darks would give the lights life. His favorite artist is John Singer Sargent. I seen a Sargent painting at the Omaha Art Museum, Mrs Abott is the title. I loved how he painted the folds and light effects of the gown she wears.
I painted for several years– most of my “lessons” were from William Alexander and Bob Ross on PBS saturday mornings.
I was privileged with a mother-in-law who was an art afficionado so when my wife and I would visit with her it often entailed trips to museums, galleries and private collections.
Two of these trips are fantastic memories–one was the BarnesFoundation personal collection which was jaw dropping. Second only to the Louvre itself in impressionist masterpieces. To stand a foot away ( behind the ropes) and view originals of paintings I had only seen in books was overwhelming ( Matisse, Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Renoir, Van Gogh etc.. one after another.)
The second trip of wonderful memory, was to Philly when the Salvador Dali collection was touring the country. We entered and immediately see Rodin’s “The Thinker” sculpture.. and the Dali exhibit took hours it was so large in room after room.
The Barnes collection also includes artistic sculpture, jewelry, wood craft.. and the arboretum outside with fantastic gardens, exotic plats/trees/flowers/bushes and trellises was majestic..I think the collection has mostly been broken up but here’s a link to what it entailed…..
https://collection.barnesfoundation.org/
Considering how and where I was raised, I’ve always been especially drawn to the early western artists, such as Catlin, Remington and Russell –
George Catlin?ts=1459229076
Frederic Remington
Charles M. Russell
Love all of them!
This is real art. Andy War Hole. (sp?)
This sold for $120,000 least year. It’s not a painting. It’s actually a banana. Duct taped to a wall. I believe the duct tape still exists. I suspect the banana rotted away.
It’s gotta be (((money laundering))).
They love combining satanic inversion and money laundering.
https://images.app.goo.gl/zDL7az7W2CGg82Do7
Worthington Whittredge
I can see Long’s Peak from my home. I also like Edward Hopper.
My last piece of shit contribution.
Some a-hole named Frank Bowling painted this in 1971. It’s called “Africa to Australia”. WTF?
” … historically significant work …. one of the artist’s most celebrated exhibitions, …. monumental …. distinct sections of stained color are grounded by the outline of a map, an orchestration of the emotive potential of paint to communicate a visual experience of uniquely sensuous immediacy …. the visual fusion of epic time and boundless space.”
Yeah, whatever you say fuktard.
.
.
https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artwork/91658/Frank-Bowling-Africa-to-Australia
You want POS? Nothing beats “Voice of Fire”:
The purchase of Voice of Fire by the National Gallery of Canada for its permanent collection in 1989 at a cost of $1.8 million caused controversy. Some residents mocked the purchase with striped T-shirts and ties that mimicked the painting.
Controversy ensued once more a few years later in 1992 when Voice of Fire had been discovered as being hung upside down after it had been loaned and then bought. Despite this controversy, the painting remains in ownership of the gallery.
http://www.barnettnewman.com/voice-of-fire/
From the title you’d think it would be white South Africans escaping to Australia before they get slaughtered. Like J.M. Coetzee.
I took an elective art history class. It was interesting to see about when it became politicized by perverts. If you have to explain something, it is not art.
Fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God.
Man’s ability to reason, conceive and create combined with the gift of free will sets us apart from the rest of His creation.
The most important part is to personally know Him who has created us and to use our special Super powers for good and not evil to reflect the glory of our creator to a dead and dying world.
I think the intellectual dinosaurs penned some paeans to the dead and dying world. It’s still dying strong some 65 million years later. In another 65 million years, when the hardware blight is killing all of borganity, the definitive paeans will be coded for the age of ages. Every day I ask myself, “What would Al Gore do publicly?”
What would Al ” Dumb As A Two By Four ” Gore say publicly…without a doubt something stupid
Thank you for sharing this. While I do not know art, I too, do know what I like. It is necessary to reflect upon works of life from western culture in times such as these.
An art connoisseur, a writer with an extremely good vocabulary, and a homesteader. The Hardscrabble Renaissance Man.
The only painter I ever understood was Norman Rockwell. Of course, I think poetry is word salad. Art is just not my thing, but I admire those who truly appreciate it.
I don’t understand your waycizm. Come to Jesus, my son.
Must be. A clean set of blueprints is more my cup of tea.
I totally respect ‘clean set of blueprints’. I think I did that chemical blueprint thing once back in my public school days. Maybe a cylinder with a sheet inside and 15 minutes later. I believed I was inheriting the American dream at the time. ‘Twas something special, the Modern West.
I’d heard this chick praised for that bit, but never seen it. As expected, it’s a bunch of horseshit. The Left just likes her because she’s young & skinny & photogenic.
Boy, I tell ya – how could I live without poetry? Perfectly fucking happily, that’s how. We kiss the asses of artists and ignore the farmers and butchers and bakers and truckers. Here’s my proposal: the poetry lovers go 60 days without food and I’ll go 60 days without poetry. Then we’ll compare notes.
Hate poetry? How are you on limericks?
There once was a man from Sassafrass
Whose balls were made of brass
And when they banged together
They played stormy weather and…
fire shot out of his ass…
Ah yes, limericks…”There once was a man from Nantuckett…”
Well sure, limericks. Anything where his duck was so long he could suck it. Most poetry these days is poetry slam shit. It’s like Nikki Giovanni. Gobbledegook.
There was a young lady from Madras
Who had a most beautiful ass.
It was not pink as you might think
But was gray, had long ears,
And ate grass.
But what about Pieter Bruegal?
It’s how. Not what.
“Food, anything…” Technocracy? Well, “death.”
Has food been under assault by ‘non-artists’? Is it accelerating? Even before the trend became topical, greasy spoons that creasy booms in your guts after you made the mistake of eating there were not uncommon.
One of today’s quotes. Bastiat.
We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say we want no religion at all. We object to state-enforced equality. Then they say we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.
More art. More how. Less “shoemakers,” as my grandfather used to say. Don’t hold your breath.
Bob Dole was leaving a Georgetown café one night, when approached by a scantily clad woman, who proceeded to rub against him in a very provocative way. Cooing into his ear she whispered “For two hundred dollars I will do anything that you can say in three words.”
Bob Dole said without much hesitation, “Paint my house”.
All the old places and names and faces gone like “teardrops in the rain”. Yet those images survive for at least a while in our memories, and for a bit longer in those great works of art. Thank you Marc.
Mark, you have reminded me of my 6th grade teacher, Elizabeth Clow. Every week she put a different famous piece of artwork in the front right hand side of the class. We were expected to learn about the artist, the style of art, and the period and history of each piece. I can still vividly remember, “Starry Night by Van Gogh, “Young Hare” by Albrecht Durer….. Gauguin, Monet, Picasso, N.C.Wyeth, Remington, Maxfield Parrish et al. She did the same with classical music. Ode to Joy, Blue Danube, Night on Bald Mountain, American in Paris………
She instilled a love and appeciation of the arts in me that exists to this day.
Are there still Mrs. Clow’s out there? God I hope so……
For this red nick country bumpkin to be able to experience a few tours through the major museums of London and Paris and experience the works on display there was truly an experience of a life time.
I have a full size copy of Picasso’s Sunflowers and two of the Ruben nudes on the wall now.
Did have several more from a chance encounter many years ago with a amazing painting reproduction effort that went to the European museums and made a deal to use a laser scanner on some select paintings, and brought the digital data back to Toronto where they had a printer they designed, which copied the painting exactly, precisely for the color AND brush stroke and put in a proper expensive frame.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The exquisite fine detail in this one painting has stuck with me for a few decades.
You have great taste. Waterhouse is one of my favorite painters, I have many favorites.
John William Waterhouse
The Lady of Shalott
The painting is based on Tennyson’s poem, The Lady of Shalott, about a cursed young woman imprisoned in a tower….
And here is a song of Tennyson’s poem….
MyG- Waterhouse is awesome, unfortunately some of my favorite paintings are old Dutch works listed as painter unknown. Jean-Francois Millet paintings are another fave for peasants working the land.
BL…There are so many great artworks, many created by the great army of unknown painters. I just bask in the beauty and feast my eyes….
Albrecht Durer
So many great painters but one vote for Paul Detfelsen and beautiful country scenes.
You should post those images that you love….it’s allowed and encouraged…
Rosa Bonheur
The Horse Fair
MyG-I would never have guessed that you, HSF and I have VERY similar taste in art. Great minds and all. heh…….
There is something special about the girl’s face in, “Girl with a Pearl Earring”. Vermeer is outstanding also.
She deserves her reputation. She really captures livestock like someone that has to know them.
BL: I’m not surprised, also because great minds…
Ken: Ah, so you know her work? Bravo.
So far, I’m voting for the topless chicks in the lily pads – even though I’ve always liked Caravaggio.
Iska….a budding Waterhouse fan….who knew. The painting is titled Hylas and the Nymphs.
Seems ol’ Hylas was Hercules’ boyfriend and when the Argo landed, Hylas trotted off to fetch some water and while doing so was beguiled and captured by the naiads. Some tales have him staying with the naiads by choice and other tales have the naiads drowning him….
Waterhouse seemed fascinated with the concept of dangerous women….or half women…
Here he’s painted a non-threatening mermaid, combing her hair, most likely in preparation for luring some young lad to his death…
When you can paint the feminine form and flawless skin tone like Waterhouse, you are a PAINTER.
When you can paint the feminine form and flawless skin tone like Waterhouse, you are a PAINTER.
You are an artist, a true artist. Art incorporates sculpture.
The contemporary art scene, like the contemporary music scene, is devoid of talent, originality and skill. Shock and noise, celebrity and banality and mediocrity are venerated while those with true ability are ignored. You gotta have a gimmick, you gotta get the attention of the right people, the name of the game is advertising and to hell with quality or working to become great. A musician like Quinton Marsalis had to work to gain mastery of his instrument. Hacks like Mylie Cyrus hang out their asses, no mastery, skill or talent required. She’s paid millions, Quinton gets thousands.
The obscene amounts paid for colorful squiggles is money laundering and status signaling. You are rarified, above the hoi polloi and so very, very au courant when you pay money for a banana stuck to a wall or a can of the ‘artist’s’ shit that sells for $300,000.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/piero-manzoni
If anyone ever gets the chance the Buffalo Bill Center of the West Museum complex is absolutely incredible.
https://centerofthewest.org/
The art exhibit wing is huge and world class. It was named after Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who also created the Buffalo Bill sculpture in front of the complex.
https://centerofthewest.org/our-museums/western-art/
I should not be surprised that so many people I find interesting in here also appreciate painting.
The Horse Fair by Rosa Bonheur is one of many that are exquisite. She dressed up as a guy for an entire year incognito, making horse sketches before she finally painted her masterpiece. Incredible story, incredible work of art.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horse_Fair
“I didn’t know much about art, but I knew what I liked.”
-HSF
This gentleman is a true raconteur and aficionado.
I like Rembrandt type realism, and Percy Bysshe Shelley type light Romantic verse – that rhymes…
A funky Presbyterian preacher named Francis Schaffer in the 60’s through the 80s (he founded an institute in Switzerland called LaBrie) wrote several books and produced videos about art and paintings. He attempted to show the evolution (an de-evolution) of western civilization through art, and how it has fallen below “the line of despair”.
One of the points he made was how modern art removed nature. Many times, art is crap. And that’s what we have today. These are beautiful and stunning.
“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
Phil. 4:8 KJV
It’s Francis Schaeffer and his book about art and culture is “How Shall We Then Live?”
The church I was attending at the time bought the book and film and we studies it for several months. IMHO, it is the VERY BEST critique of art & culture of all time.
And you can see the entire study on Youtube!!
Another great dive into art…
I especially liked this one, the broken Egyptian jasper face.
Sublime.
“Technically” Manet, Seurat and Van Gogh would not generally be considered “impressionists”. Manet is “sui generis”; Seurat and Van Gogh are “post-impressionists”.
True. I think a lot of things get lumped in generationally rather than by influences. Manet had more in common with Rafael than Monet. But that was an amazing era for creativity, like there was something in the plein-air.
The B3RG*-Evil Fucker’s dreamscape; their favorite painting in the Prado by genius Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
http://sczooland.blogspot.com/2009/04/triumph-of-death-ad-1562-peter-brugel.html
Technical difficulties, so sorry.
The B3RG*-Evil Fucker’s dreamscape; their favorite painting in the Prado by genius Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
The Triumph of Death. (1562)
Frank Weston Benson’s “My Daughter Elizabeth”
Thomas Hart Benton “Persephone”
Ivan Shishkin landscapes, especially “At the Dacha”, the first of his paintings I ever saw at auction.
Canadian Group of Seven – impossible to pick a favorite because the style/perspective is provacative, almost transportive
Ivan Aivazovsky’s seascapes – does anything convey the power of the sea like his paintings? I don’t believe anyone has come close to the kind of technique it takes to paint waves and light on the water like him.
Thanks for an uplifting, interesting and beautiful diversion from the mundane bad news which surrounds us daily!