Sometimes artists, like musicians, are called on to replay their “greatest hits” (or “hit”).

François Marius Granet was a French painter, originally from the Provençal town of Aix. He studied there in a free art school run by the landscape painter M. Constantin. Granet went to Paris, where he had the opportunity to study with a pupil of Jacques-Louis David, and then with David himself.

Granet, who was quite devout, was drawn to spend much time among the Capuchin monks, both in Paris and later in Rome. While in Rome, he painted the choir of the Capuchin Church in striking one-point perspective and in the muted tones and subtle value changes that were hallmarks of his work (above, top, with detail; high res version on the Met Museum website).

The painting was enormously well received in the Paris Salon of 1819, so much so that he would eventually paint sixteen replicas of it — some with slightly different lighting, vantage point and position of figures (images above, third and fourth down).

(Painting replicas of one’s own paintings is not uncommon in the history of art; see my post on Gilbert Stuart.)

I personally love the way Granet has represented the pictures and their frames on the sides of the chamber.

The original was purchased by Napoleon’s sister, despite the fact that it had been painted in part as a reaction to Napoleon’s banishment of the Capuchin order from the church of the Immaculate Conception during the occupation of Rome.

Granet went on to become quite successful, and was appointed curator of the Louvre museum, and later Keeper of Pictures at Versailles. His work was admired by Ingres, who painted a portrait of Granet.

Granet retired to his native Aix-en-Provence. He donated much of his collection to the town when he died, and the Musee Granet there is named in his honor.

Though he did of course paint other subjects, including a number of watercolors and views of Rome and the surrounding countryside, Granet frequently repeated the theme of muted, dimly lit interiors and arches within arches, often carrying forward the one-point perspective and overall compositional theme of his “greatest hit”.

Thomas Paquette is a painter from western Pennsylvania, whose work I have showcased before here on Lines and Colors, and who remains a personal favorite among contemporary landscape painters.

Paquette’s landscapes not only have a beautiful sense of color and light, but they are painted with a particularly appealing quality of edges. There is something about the interplay of Paquette’s edges and areas of color that I find consistently fascinating. The accentuated edges seem to simultaneously divide areas of color and unify the painting as a whole, in addition to acting as an element of texture.

A new exhibition of Paquette’s paintings devoted to wilderness areas has been assembled to mark the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. The exhibition, titled On Natures’s Terms, opens at the Wildling Museum in Solvang, CA, this Friday, January 17, 2014.

The exhibition will be on display in California until April 7, 2014. It then moves to the Regina A. Quick Center Art Museum in St. Bonaventure, NY for a run from August 31 – November 22, 2014, and then to Evansville Museum of Art, Science and History in Evansville, IN, where it will be on display from December 14, 2014 to March 8, 2015.

There is a catalog of the exhibition available directly from the artist, and signed on request. You can also find more information on the Eyeful Press website. In both places you can see a PDF preview of the book (or here). You can also preview some of the work in the show here.

I haven’t seen the catalog yet, but I have Paquette’s previous book of small gouache paintings, and it is quite beautiful.

This is another fascinating aspect of Paquette’s work, his oil paintings are sometimes large in scale (perhaps 5×3′), but his small gouache paintings are sometimes as small as 2 or 3 inches to a side (images above, bottom two). The exhibition and the catalog feature some of both. As I described back in 2007, his small gouache paintings are what I was originally drawn to — at first thinking they were larger than they are.

While you’re on Paquette’s website, look through some of his other oils, both large and small, and the selection of gouache paintings. You can also find some process and interview videos with Paquette on YouTube.

If you have a chance to see On Nature’s Terms on person at one of its venues, I highly recommend you do.