Pierre Commarmond was a French landscape painter and poster artist, most recognized for his delightful railroad travel posters created in the 1920s and 30s.
I particulary enjoy posters of this kind; their flat colors and strong design elements remind me of color woodcuts.
I believe many of the original paintings for these were done in gouache.
Stephanie Law is a watercolor painter from California. Her work ranges from straightforward botanical art to fantastical imaginings with a botanical feel, to stylized animal and plant forms, to fairie images that evoke a feeling of 19th century European illustrators like Rackham and Dulac.
Her watercolor paintings often incorporate elements of metal leaf and ink, and they are sometimes set off in custom frames that she forms into stylized dimesional elements complementary to her images.
Many of her works are circular in shape. I’m not sure if this is for a reason other than a fondness for that form on her part. Most are part of a series.
Her website features galleries in a number of clategories. There is also a store with prints, original art, books and other items. In addition, there is a set off section of her site devoted to her botanical art.
Law has a YouTube channel that features videos of her process.
Ukrainian painter Artem Rogowoi works primarily in oil, often augmented with gold leaf. He also does smaller studies in gouache in which he plays with expressionistic color schemes.
Rogowoi studied at the Kharkiv State Art College and the Kharkiv Academy of Design and Arts. His work has been featured in numerous exhibition in Ukraine, the U.S. and Australia.
I can’t find a dedicated website for him, but some of the sites listed below have bio information as well as examples of his work. [Note: some of the images on the sites linked below could be considered NSFW.]
Frank Sherwin was a British artist active in the early to mid 20th century. He is best known for his delightful travel posters, as well as his traditional watercolors.
He also painted watercolors for a number of “carriage prints” (images above, bottom, with details). These were horizontal format banners displayed in railway cars for the entertainment of passengers, much the way ads are often displayed in a row above the windows in subway trains and busses here in the U.S.
Genoveva, Ludwig Richter, watercolor on paper, roughly 12 x 7 in (31 x 18 cm); in the collectin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has both a zoomable and downloadable version of th elarge image.
This painting by 19th century German painter and printmaker Adrian Ludwig Richter depicts the legend of Genoveva, a woman falsely accused of adultry while her husband was off to war. Condemmed to death, she sought refuge in the forest of Ardennes, where she and her son found shelter in a cave and were fed by a deer for six years.
In the version of the painting in the images above, bottom, I’ve done something I’ve often complained about others doing: taking an image of an artwork and cranking up the saturation to make it look “better” and “more modern”. Hopefully, in this case, I’ve done so judiciously with the intention of giving an indication of what I think the painting may have looked like when originally painted.
It’s my understanding that many watercolors from the 19th century are faded, partly from exposure to light for pigments that were less than lightfast, and partly from exposure to sulpher compounds from the pollution caused by the burgeoning industrial age, which interacted in particular with lead-based whites, yellows and reds. I’m just guessing that the painting was originally more vibrant than it is at present (perhaps even more than my rough approximation).
Winter Landscape>, Stepan Kolesnikoff, gouache
Another wonderful winter gouache painting by Stepan Kolesnikoff. As far as I have been able to tell, Kolesnikoff was born in Ukraine when it was considered part of the Russian Federation, and after studying and working in Russia for a time, settled in what is now Serbia.
Happy Winter Solstice!
