Arvid Mauritz Lindström was a Swedish landscape painter active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He studied in Stockholm, Munich and Paris and lived in England for a number of years.
His landscapes are richly textural and atmospherically evocative of time and place.
Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge, Roman School,
I have seen this beautiful still life at times attributed to Caravaggio (Michelangelo Marisi), or to a follower of his.
Sotheby’s made no such direct claim when the painting passed through their auction house in 2013, referring to it instead as attributed to an unnamed artist of the Roman School, but the extensive notes on their page devoted to the item mention Carvaggio more than a dozen times.
It does seem similar in nature to a still life painting of a basket of fruit acknowledged to be by Caravaggio, but there are also other paintings from the time and place that also appear to be in a similar style that are attributed to “a follower of Caravaggio“.
Regardless of the painting’s attribution, it is clearly an extraordinary still life, with an tactile presence that must be palpable in person.
There is a Wikipedia page devoted to the painting, though it inexplicably contains a poorly reproduced image.
Justin Gerard is an illustrator based in Georgia who works in the publishing, gaming and film industries. I first profiled him in 2009, and pointed out my admiration for his richly imaginative dragons. Since then, in the midst of his other work, he has been creating a series of equally imaginative “Monster of the Month” illustrations.
Gerard’s monsters are wonderfully over-the-top and beautifully rendered in the fantasy art/concept art vein of dramatic imagery. He can somehow make them simultaneously gruesome and visually charming.
There is a portfolio of his work on the GalleryGerard website. You will find more examples on his ArtStation portfolio, in which you will also find close-up crops and preliminary drawings for many of his Monster of the Month images.
Gerard is regular contributor to the Muddy Colors website and among his articles you can find walkthroughs and descriptions of technique.
Justin Gerard is married to illustrator Annie Stegg Gerard, who I have also previously profiled.
At the Gate (Am Thor), Max Klinger; etching and engraving; roughy 18 x 12″ (45 x 31 cm). Link is to the impression the collection of the National Gallery, DC, whih has both a downloadable and zoomable version of the image (and no longer requires an account to download high-res images). There is also a zoomable version on the Google Art Project.
Max Klinger was a German Symbolist artist active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Though he was also a painter, Klinger was known primarily for his graphics in the form of etchings, drypoint, aquatint and engraving — sometimes combining multiple techniques in a single plate, as he did here.
This print is from a series titled A Love, Opus X, which he dedicated to Arnold Böcklin, a Swiss Symbolist by whom he was greatly influenced — to the point of doing a beautiful etching version of Böcklin’s famous painting Isle of the Dead.
Since I last wrote about illustrator and concept artist Chase Stone back in 2014, he has created a new website, and has posted new work there as well as on the site of his artist’s representative, Richard Solomon.
Stone works primarily in the areas of fantasy and science fiction, his dramatic highly realized approach bringing a visceral presence to both genres.
I particularly enjoy his illustrations for the Magic The Gathering set: Amonkhet, which are an imaginatively stylized take on Egyptian gods. He also paints great dragons, as well as dinosaurs and pterosaurs.
His website galleries are divided into Trading Card, Editorial and Book illustration. He also has prints of many of his pieces available on InPrint. His gallery on the Richard Solomon site includes a brief bio and mention of his process.
For more, see my previous post on Chase Stone.
