It’s always interesting to look at the particular subject matter that artists find compelling. Some look to traditional subjects and perhaps put them into focus with their own point of view, others look for unique subjects, or variations and twists on traditional themes.

Lindsay Goodwin is a young painter from California, who lived in Paris and travelled in Europe before returning to the U.S., who has a chosen to focus on restaurant interiors as subjects for her colorful, painterly images.

It makes a lot of sense in terms of a choice of subject; restaurant interiors are intentionally designed to be interesting, welcoming and often utilize carefully chosen, attractive colors. In addition, restaurant interiors are arrayed with visually appealing objects like glassware, vases and flower arrangements.

The subject also offers quite a range, from ornate and elaborate formal dining rooms to intimate bistros and informal bed and breakfast tables, as well as a range of location and nationality. (The image at top is of the restaurant in a hotel in Crillon le Brave in Provence, France; home to another artist I’ve written about on Lines and Colors, Julian Merrow-Smith).

Goodwin’s subject matter also extends to related subject matter like hotels, opera houses and classic theaters, and includes dining rooms in private homes. There are also figurative and portrait pieces, and somewhat more traditional building exteriors.

It’s easy to see influences from Sargent, Edmund Tarbell, William Merritt Chase, and other American Impressionists in her approach.

Goodwin’s work has been featured in Southwest Art Magazine and the current issue of American Art Collector.

Pierre-Auguste Cot is one of those painters known primarily by one popular image, in this case The Storm, above, a commissioned image that Cot exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1880.

The painting has become part of pop high-culture (not quite pop culture) and has often been visually referenced or parodied, as in this portrait of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow by Edward Sorel.

Cot was a French Classical Academic painter, whose legacy also includes one other painting that retains popular appeal to this day, Springtime. Both of these works are of the idyllic, classical tradition in which the subjects and their surroundings are idealized. There is a Baroque feeling of fantasy/romance to them that accounts in large part for their popularity, in addition to Cot’s confident handling and strong figure work (not to mention a bit of sexy suggestion).

Cot studied under several French Academic masters, including William-Adolphe Bouguereau. As with Bouguereau, Cot’s work was very popular in his own time, but fell into disdain during the systematic disparagement of academic art by the moderninst establishment in the latter half of the 20th Century.

The Storm is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (I found a close-up of it that someone posted on Flickr). Springtime, although privately owned, was also on display there for a number of years, though I don’t know if it is still hanging at the Met.

There are also some of Cot’s other works reproduced in books and on the net, though few of the portraits that were actually his primary focus.