Janet Fish is an American painter whose still life paintings seem to radiate color. Using a high chroma palette, in combinations that in lesser hands might fall into the garish, Fish produces harmonious compositions that vibrate with energy and light.

She often chooses as her subjects objects that are translucent, transparent or reflective, in particular colored glass. She surrounds these with flowers, bright cloth patterns and other objects in brilliant hues, balanced with strategically placed rich darks, and somehow manages to tame those wild arrays of color into images that seem at once preternaturally intense and perfectly naturalistic.

Fish is widely recognized and her work is in the collections of major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

There are a few catalogs and collections of her work; Janet Fish: Paintings by Vincent Katz is in print and readily available.

Fish is represented by the DC Moore Gallery in NY, which also showcases a nice selection of her work online. I’ve listed other galleries and additional resources below.

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing some of her works in person. They are often fairly large in scale and striking.

In rooms in which there are works by several artists, hers inevitably stand out and command your attention. Unlike many contemporary works about which that can be said, Fish’s paintings also reward extended viewing; small areas can be looked at in detail as wonderfully arranged shapes of color and tone. Her command of the arrangement of elements of color can be seen even more clearly in her graphic work.

Though he was considered part of the Hudson River School of artists, it was for his evocation of the drama of the landscape in the western United States that Thomas Moran is best known.

His watercolor location sketches of the landscape in Wyoming (image above, 4th down), along with photographs by William Henry Jackson, were instrumental in convincing Congress to create the first U.S. national park at Yellowstone.

Born in England, his family emigrated to the U.S. to an area near (now part of) Philadelphia in 1844 when Moran was 7. He started his art career as an apprentice in an engraving firm, quitting to join his brother Edward who was already established as an artist. He painted landscapes in the area around PHiladelphia (image above, top: Tohickon Creek, Bucks County) and established a reputation as a landscape artist.

At one point, Moran had the opportunity to study in England, where he encountered the dramatic landscapes of J.M.W. Turner. They would remain an influence in Moran’s mature work, particularly in his seascapes.

Moran became an illustrator for magazines. An assignment for an article in Scribner’s Magazine led to his opportunity to chronicle the wild beauty of Yellowstone in the summer of 1871.

On his way to Yellowstone, Moran embarked from the train in Green River, where the otherworldly rocky landscape would become the subject of several future works, including the striking Green River Cliffs, Wyoming, painted in 1881 (image above, second from top). This painting was just acquired by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, a gift of patrons.

Moran painted in many other places, areas of the Rocky Mountains, the grand Tetons (where Mt. Moran is now named for him), Europe, Florida and Long Island, where he later settled and painted many of his dramatic seascapes.

I particularly enjoy his beautiful series of luminescent views of Venice (above, bottom).

Moran’s paintings are large in scale, and the small images I’ve posted above don’t begin to do them justice. If you can’t visit a museum where you can see his work in person, at least look for some larger reproductions.

One of the best selections online is The Athenaeum (note links to three pages of thumbnails linked at top, click image on detail page for larger image). There is also a more quickly accessed selection on Wikimedia Commons. I’ve listed other resources below.

This book on Thomas Moran is well reviewed on Amazon, but I haven’t seen it myself; there is also a book of his Field Sketches.

[News of NGA acquisition via ArtDaily]