Aaron Holland Fine Art

William McGregor Paxton
American
1869-1941

To fully appreciate great art we need to ask ourselves while viewing it “what can I take away from this experience?”. What is the artist trying to tell the viewer? If art has taught us nothing else, it should have taught us to be sensitive observers.

The turn of the century (circa 1900) is my favorite period in art history. As I have alluded to previously, it was a time of worldwide artistic revolution and revitalization. The new painting approach of the Impressionists, the technical mastery of the traditional schools of painting, and modern advancements of painting pigments met at once to create an environment ripe for growth. Very few of the artists who painted during that era were untouched by the influences at hand.

William McGregor Paxton could be summarized as an Academic painter with Impressionistic color, although his paintings often show a restraint uncharacteristic to the Impressionists.

He was an accomplished portrait painter- among other notable clients, he painted the U.S. President, which attests to his capabilities. He was also an accomplished figurative painter (meaning that he painted the whole person, and not just the upper torso and head as in a portrait). Paxton was also a notable Instructor, and an important link to the Boston School painters (student of Dennis Miller Bunker). All of these accomplishments combine to make him a great painter who stands out in his day.

I especially appreciate the way Paxton captures the most mundane aspects of human existence. When an artist paints a person(s) performing a routine activity it is called “a Genre” scene. If we were to try to convey to a viewer a hundred years from now what it feels/looks like to live in the present day, would they understand from just looking at the picture?

Although I don’t readily identify with his choice of subjects or their daily activities, I empathize immediately with what Paxton is trying to convey. I have an idea of what it was like for Paxton and his acquaintances to have lived. I might have overlooked Paxton as a personal favorite if I were only judging his work based on these criteria. However, there are certain other qualities in Paxton’s work that are so far beyond being average that I am drawn to his “expert-ness” and exclaim him as one of the Greats in his field.

Painting the human figure is arguably one of the most difficult things to do well in the fine arts. It is said that if you can draw the human figure, you can draw anything. If you look at how well the hands are painted in any painting, it is often a good indicator of how well that artist can draw. William Paxton not only paints them well, but uses them to express emotion through body language and thus communicates with the viewer. As a portrait painter you might also expect his faces to be well painted. Look also at how he handles the different textures and fabrics throughout his pictures…

Yet for all of this, it is his refined and tasteful sense of color that I find most appealing, as well as his delicate rendering of light and atmosphere.

Louis Comfort Tiffany
American
1848 – 1933

I was privileged to have been able to work in the Stained Glass Industry for about 5 years. I will never look at Stained Glass the same again…

Stained Glass is an interesting medium to work in, in that it is a combination of art and construction, of both beauty and function. However, there are definite limitations within the art medium of stained glass, namely:

-There cannot be a piece of glass much bigger than 12” without it breaking eventually because of all the downward pressure on the window.

-the lead lines must connect (in other words, there cannot be a random line that stops in the middle of the glass).

-Generally speaking, there shouldn’t be a 90 degree angle in glass (it extremely difficult to cut and snap the shape, and it is very likely to crack if done so).

-When a window gets bigger than a certain size (lets say about 4 feet) you need to support it with horizontal “re-bars” to reinforce the window (because lead becomes soft in the sun).

These are some of the “rules” that pose a challenge to the artist trying to create in stained glass. If a glass artist can make it so that these “limitations” are not distracting, or are even desirable qualities, then you know that they are very gifted indeed.

Louis Comfort Tiffany is most remembered for his “Tiffany Lamps,” but really those were a byproduct of his more important “Windows” which were commissioned for churches and private residences all over the East Coast of the United States. The famous Tiffany Lamps came about as a way to utilize all of the small pieces of glass that were virtually unusable otherwise, and would collect in boxes unceasingly. Tiffany was a shrewd businessman.

Louis Comfort Tiffany’s studio was the leading Glass Studio during his lifetime, although John LaFarge was a noteworthy rival. Tiffany Studios employed dozens of the best craftsmen and designers available, and Tiffany himself was a creative genius.

Up until then, stained glass windows were created using tints (colored transparent glass), and any attempt to convey form was done using paint. For example to make a red robe one would use a red tinted glass, and the folds in the robe would be painted with black paint . Tiffany was dissatisfied with this, and experimented heavily to find a better solution to match his vision for how a window should look. His answer was to invent a glass that “looked like drapery” and therefore didn’t need to be painted. He felt that the glass should speak for itself. Not only was the glass more interesting, but it was a “purist” approach to working in glass. In fact, a typical Tiffany window with figures, is only painted in the hands and faces. Tiffany went on to create many different kinds of glass that suited almost every aspect of a scene, foliage, sky, trees, clouds, flowers, etc… He turned the stained glass world on its head, and by so doing set a new standard.

Tiffany wasn’t content there, he started playing with the idea of creating the illusion of “depth” in the two-dimensional windows. He started layering the pieces of glass (or “plating“, as its called) to create a feeling of softness. Because the lead-lines create a visually ‘hard line’ these stacked pieces, which physically are behind other pieces of glass are softened in appearance, and give an extra dimension.

Another one of Tiffany’s contributions to the art world was his idea of bringing a pure “landscape” into a church setting. Most churches at that time wanted a symbolic reminder of their beliefs in the accepted iconic fashions. Tiffany did create many “Religious Windows,” but also offered what is known today as a “Landscape Window”. Even without any overtly religious symbolism, these beautifully detailed landscapes referred to Creation in a way that many people identified with strongly; not to mention that the Landscapes were very decorative and kept the environment a little more informal. This had not been attempted hithertofore, but in my opinion it was to be his finest contribution.

Aldro Thompson Hibbard
American
1886-1972

It is difficult to paint a landscape well. The weather is often uncooperative; The light conditions change rapidly; The wind blows at inconvenient times; No two days are exactly alike; And it takes a long time just to cover a canvas with paint and small brushes.

Take all of those variables, and add to them the difficulty of trying to place an accurate drawing on a blank canvas, mixing color, identifying light and shadows, and above all trying to create a work of art, and you start to see some of the challenges of landscape painting. Painting in winter makes it doubly so!

“Snow and oil paint are a hopeless combination” Aldro Hibbard would say casually about the ocassional gust of wind and snow upon the canvas.

Aldro received a Paige Traveling Scholarship to travel and paint freely in Europe for two years when he was in his twenties; he was the only American to ever receive the honor. Although the trip was cut short due to the outbreak of the first World War in Europe, it was an event that deeply impacted his approach to art, nature…and life. He was influenced by the Impressionists and took this view of painting back to the mainland when he returned 14 months later.

Few things in life that are worthwhile come easily, a fact I am sure Hibbard was well aware of. Aldro Hibbard felt it was important to paint the landscape completely on location because he knew that these “challenges” showed up in a picture and help to give it “authenticity”. I suppose he also felt it was important to paint on location because he was friends with several of the leading plein air painters who likewise felt it was important. He painted en plein air for almost 50 years, though rarely strayed further than his two favorite locations in Vermont and Massachusetts.

Hibbard’s early pictures show the broken-brushwork typically found in Impressionist paintings, but he later developed an original approach that was simplified and efficient- more appropriate to the environments he was fond of painting (cold and snow).

Perhaps likened to Jazz (in music), Hibbard and his friends were responsible for helping to create one of the first unique American art forms(in painting) that was recognized world wide; It was a broad style that was fast and loose, but realistic; one where the colors were recognizable almost immediately. It was an art form that was exclusively American in subject, and gave a sense of the people’s values towards hard work and determination, but also their sensitivity to beauty.

Peder Mork Monsted
Danish
(1859-1941)

What does it mean to be the “product of a generation” I wondered…?

“It means that you are in agreement with the ideas and values of the time you grew up in…The idea is that generally-accepted ideas change over time, and it is not fair to judge someone who lived hundreds of years ago by today’s standards…” – answer quoted from Wiki-Answers

Peder Mork Monsted is said to be a product of his generation. If that is true, then in order to understand him, it is important to know what the generation was like that he lived in. Another way to look at this is to look at the type of paintings that Monsted painted, and you will see the type of things that appealed to the average person at that time.

Peder Mork Monsted was born shortly after 50 of the most remarkable years that Denmark had ever seen, known today as their Golden Age. Although artistically isolated from other countries, Denmark produced a body of paintings collectively, that was very similar in feel and temperament, if not technique.

The landscape was the defining subject in the artwork. The artists went into the countryside looking for the best way to capture their beloved country. The problem that many of them faced is that their beloved Denmark was all but gone. Their aim was to paint a romantic feeling about the countryside in a simple, straightforward, unpretentious way (like the Danish people), with unsurpassed clarity of light and attention to detail. However, there was almost no unspoiled landscape left for them to paint. I think Monsted recognized that it was not necessary to capture only the pristine landscape, but also the people who inhabit it involved in a daily routine.

The artists of the Danish Golden Age, and Monsted himself, never let technique become a distraction from the portrayal of their countryside; it is always subordinated to let the viewer see the subject clearly. The colors are most often clean, tasteful, with an emphasis on sunlight, the quality of day, and ethereal effects.

Lord Frederick Leighton
English
1830-1896

“There is no mistake now about what people in this country like…; whether I shall conform to that taste is another question.” wrote Leighton in a letter to his father.

Many artists in Victorian England avoided religious subject matter, as it did little to help their commercial success or endear them to the public; Frederick Leighton, however, considered it an important part of his artistic career, painting perhaps a dozen or so in his lifetime.

Leighton was following an English Protestant form of painting religious subjects, preferring to depict an imaginary scene rather than one specifically written about in the Bible. "The Star of Bethleham" (pictured) is a good example of Leighton’s form of storytelling, and reflects this approach to his subject.

The picture depicts a magi standing on his house looking East, having left a party which is still going on in the house below. Although the scene was never in the Bible, we know who the magi is and what his ultimate role is in the Gospels. In this way, the artist invites the viewer to take part in the story, and interact with the characters.

He carefully arranges all the elements for optimal visual impact, colors the mood with lighting- the sky, creates dramatic value contrast to heighten the emotion, and uses obvious but meaningful supporting symbolism. Leighton was a deliberate and meticulous craftsmen, and rarely made technical mistakes.

Although he usually focused on fashionable motifs, this is the type of picture that I really admire in Leighton.

In his lifetime, Leighton was elected to the highest office an artist could attain in England: the President of the Royal Academy, which is accompanied with the honor of being Knighted. Leighton was regarded as the foremost painter in England for much of his career, although when this painting was displayed at the Royal Academy exhibition it was poorly hung and did not sell.

Alfred Sisley
English
1839-1899

The Impressionists were innovators. To put it simply, they were the first artists to paint pictures completely outside, from start to finish. The critics were at first cold to their efforts, and left them little opportunity to exhibit or sell work.

In order to understand this scenario, you must first imagine that you have never seen an Impressionist painting before. The public and critics were used to highly-polished, carefully-delineated paintings that were uniformly colored, usually in deep brownish and golden tones. In addition to this, they were almost always finished in the studio, wheras the Impressionists were exclusively plein air.

Like the other founders of the Impressionist movement, Alfred Sisley was concerned with capturing the ‘immediacy” and “impression” of a landscape scene, as well as capturing temporal outdoor effects. This approach, which utilized a primary palette, yielded high key paintings that were painted very broadly, often with short, choppy brush strokes. This “new painting style” (Impressionism) seemed at first “unfinished’ to many viewers.
Throughout Sisley’s career he grappled with the challenge of how to portray motion in his work, which gave rise to very original brushstrokes; The trees, sky (clouds) and waters suggest this “movement” in many of his paintings. Sisley was also a gifted colorist, though not surprisingly, he tended towards Tonalism in his mature work.

Alfred Sisley was a man who faced an unforeseeable loss of wealth soon after he was married and had started a family; he faced steady opposition from people in power; his paintings received constant criticism; he was in continual poverty after losing his wealth, and he witnessed the success of his peers(the other members of the Impressionists) while he remained overshadowed. If Sisley became bitter who could blame him? How many of us would just give up, and stop trying?

Yet, here is where we see Sisley at his best!

In lieu of the troubles he must have faced everyday, we do not see darkness, doom, or gloom in his paintings, but we see brilliant light, beautiful color combinations, and tranquility. This is where I see Sisley’s strength. Sisley favored quiet, pastoral scenes and ordinary rural views, instead of industrialized scenes, and chose to view the landscape as a place where man lives in harmony with it, not a place dominated by man.

Sisley and his family eventually moved away from the expenses of Paris and settled in a small village near Fontainebleau, where they spent the remainder of their days in quiet contentment.