American Drawings and Watercolors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
American Drawings and Watercolors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Author: Kevin J. Avery

Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 1588390608

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"The Metropolitan Museum began acquiring American drawings and watercolors in 1880, just ten years after its founding. Since then it has amassed more than 1,500 works executed by American artists during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in watercolor, pastel, chalk, ink, graphite, gouache, and charcoal. This volume documents the draftsmanship of more than 150 known artists before 1835 and that of about 60 unidentified artists of the period. It includes drawings and watercolors by such American masters as John Singleton Copley, John Trumbull, John Vanderlyn, Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand, George Inness, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Because the 504 works illustrate such a wide range of media, techniques, and styles, this publication is a veritable history of American drawing from the eighteenth through most of the nineteenth century."--Metropolitan Museum of Art website.

Audubon's Aviary
Audubon's Aviary

Author: Roberta Olson

Publisher: Rizzoli Publications

Published: 2012-10-16

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 0847834832

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A national treasure is celebrated in this landmark publication. The Birds of America is a monumental classic, but it has never been explored like this before. This important new volume presents all the dazzling watercolors that Audubon painted for these monumental engravings. We are familiar with the prints engraved by Robert Havell Jr., but Audubon’s Aviary illuminates the original masterpieces that were created by Audubon himself and tells the story behind their creation with fresh insights and engaging quotes from his writings. These powerful paintings—all newly photographed using state-of-the-art techniques—possess a startling immediacy, vibrancy, and fluidity that link natural history, art, and a respect for the environment. These watercolors transmit Audubon’s devotion to his craft with their inscriptions and layers of media wrought with a miniaturist’s attention to detail and their revolutionary compositions, which for the first time in history depicted all the birds life-size. Audubon is considered America’s first great watercolorist, introducing innovative approaches developed over a lifetime of study. Even judged alongside today’s technology, his dramatic tableaux remain some of the most spectacular natural history documents and visually arresting works of art ever produced.

John Singer Sargent Watercolors
John Singer Sargent Watercolors

Author: John Singer Sargent

Publisher: Mfa Publications

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 9780878467914

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John Singer Sargents approach to watercolour was unconventional. Disregarding late-nineteenth-century aesthetic standards that called for carefully delineated and composed landscapes filled with transparent washes, his confidently bold, dense strokes and loosely defined forms startled critics and fellow practitioners alike. One reviewer in England, where Sargent spent much of his adult life, called his work swagger watercolours. For Sargent, however, the watercolours were not so much about swagger as about a new way of thinking. In watercolour as opposed to oils his vision became more personal and his works more interconnected. Presenting nearly 100 works of art, this book is the first major publication of Sargents watercolours in twenty years. Each chapter highlights a different subject or theme that attracted the artists attention during his travels through Europe and the Middle East: sunlight on stone, figures reclining on grass, patterns of light and shadow. Insightful essays by the worlds leading experts enhance this book and introduce readers to the full sweep of Sargents accomplishments in the medium, in works that delight the eye as well as challenge our understanding of this prodigiously gifted artist.

Cézanne's Watercolors
Cézanne's Watercolors

Author: Matthew Thomas Simms

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

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Cézanne's watercolors exhibit not only kaleidoscopic arrays of translucent color but also very light graphite pencil lines that contrast strikingly with the soft watery touches of color. These drawn lines have been largely overlooked in previous studies of Cézanne's watercolors. In this ravishing book, Matthew Simms argues that it was the dialogue between drawing and painting--the movement between the pencil and the paintbrush--that attracted Cézanne to watercolor. Watercolor allowed Cézanne to express what he termed his "sensations" in two distinct modes that become a record of his shifting and spontaneous responses to his subject. Combining close visual analysis and examination of historical context, Simms focuses on the counterpoint of drawing and color in Cézanne's watercolors over the course of his career and as viewed in relation to his oil paintings. More than a tool for sketching or preparing for oil paintings, Simms contends, watercolor was a unique means of expression in its own right that allowed Cézanne to combine in one place the two otherwise opposed mediums of drawing and painting.

Thomas W. Schaller, Architect of Light
Thomas W. Schaller, Architect of Light

Author: Thomas Schaller

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2018-09-11

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1440350728

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Powerful Paintings from a Watercolor Master "The most nearly 'perfect' paintings to me are rarely the ones simply characterized by technical expertise. More often, they are the ones in which you can sense the beating heart of the artist just below the surface--flaws included." Twenty years into a career as architect and architectural illustrator, Thomas Schaller embarked upon a bold new path as a fine artist. Today he is one of the world's most accomplished watercolor artists, celebrated for his poignant treatment of light and its dynamic interplay with the natural and manmade landscape. The first and only collection of work from this popular contemporary artist, Thomas W. Schaller: Architect of Light features 150 of his finest paintings--buildings, bridges, boats, people and other scenes from around the world. In a series of essays, Schaller ruminates on his journey as an artist, what drives him, and the "truths" he's discovered along the way. He offers not only sage insight on composition, color and other technical aspects of painting, but also provocative perspective on more fundamental struggles for the artist, such as overcoming self-doubt and honing one's own, unique voice. Schaller's essays, like his art, shine with passion, authenticity, and the epiphanies that comprise his artistic constellation: discovering the power of breathing...the secret to "finding the art" in any subject...and how the quest for perfection led him to worry less about the final result to take greater joy in the process itself. It's a pivoting read for collector, art-lover and practicing artist alike, full of views to savor and enlighten.

The Touch of the Artist
The Touch of the Artist

Author: National Gallery of Art (U.S.)

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13:

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The Woodner family collection, founded by the collector Ian Woodner, presents European drawing from its first flowering in the early Renaissance to the early years of the 20th-century.

American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent
American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent

Author: Kathleen A. Foster

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2017-01-01

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 030022589X

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The fascinating story of the transformation of American watercolor practice between 1866 and 1925 The formation of the American Watercolor Society in 1866 by a small, dedicated group of painters transformed the perception of what had long been considered a marginal medium. Artists of all ages, styles, and backgrounds took up watercolor in the 1870s, inspiring younger generations of impressionists and modernists. By the 1920s many would claim it as "the American medium." This engaging and comprehensive book tells the definitive story of the metamorphosis of American watercolor practice between 1866 and 1925, identifying the artist constituencies and social forces that drove the new popularity of the medium. The major artists of the movement - Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, William Trost Richards, Thomas Moran, Thomas Eakins, Charles Prendergast, Childe Hassam, Edward Hopper, Charles Demuth, and many others - are represented with lavish color illustrations. The result is a fresh and beautiful look at watercolor's central place in American art and culture.