Stock Schlueter is a painter from northern California, who excels at capturing the light and atmosphere of that region, as well as more exotic locations from his travels.

Previously a watercolor artist, Schlueter switched to oils, and works both on location and in the studio for his landscapes. His website has a portfolio of both plein air and studio work, as well as a selection of portraits.

On his blog, you will find both, often reproduced larger, along with descriptions of the locations and conditions for the individual paintings.

I particularlry enjoy some of Schlueter’s more unusual subjects, like industrial night scenes and weathered old trucks in snow.

I had the pleasure today of re-watching one of David Dunlop’s informative episodes of Landscapes Through Time (which I profiled previously here on Lines and Colors).

In this segment, he visited the famous chalk cliffs of Étretat, on the northwestern coast of France, where several generations of painters have been drawn to paint the dramatic geological features and beautiful sea. Dunlop discussed the different approaches taken by Eugene Delacroix, a Romantic painter, Gustave Courbet, a painter of Realism, and Claude Monet, the archetypal Impressionist painter.

I thought it might be interesting to compare some paintings by those artists, as well as two others, Gustave Loiseau, a Post-Impressionist, and Eugéne Boudin.

Boudin was Monet’s first teacher, and introduced Monet to the importance of painting en plein air along the coastline near Étretat and La Havre, where Boudin painted and Monet grew up.

Monet, known for painting the same subject multiple times in differing conditions, painted the cliffs at Éretat numerous times, and from both sides of the headland. Some of his canvases from there are among his best known works.

(Images above: Eugene Delacroix [1,2], Gustave Courbet [3,4,5], Eugene Boudin [6, 7, 8], Gustave Loiseau [9], Claude Monet [10-16])