For a long time, my only impression of Santiago Rusiñol was of the painting Interior of a Café (images above, second down), which is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I liked the painting, with its odd emotional and visual tone and interesting use of value relationahips, but I didn’t follow up on the artist for some time. I only later discovered that it was not the most representational example of Rusiñol’s work.

Santiago Rusiñol i Prats was a painter from Catalonia, one of the autonomous communities of Spain, who was active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Though he painted a number of portraits and interiors, he is most associated with his landscapes, and in particular, his views of gardens.

These range from brilliantly sunlit, bringing to mind the garden scenes of Sorolla, to dark, muted and emotionally atmospheric, moving into the realm of symbolism.

You will sometimes see Rusiñol confusingly described as a “modernist”. Though he associated with, and was apparently influential on, Pablo Picasso, the term in this case does not refer to the 20th century Modernism of Paris, but to the turn of the century Modernisme movement, centered in Barcelona, and Modernista artists and architects (like Gaudí) who were more closely associated with Art Nouveau.

Originally from St. Louis and now based in Burlington, Vermont, where he and his wife recently opened a gallery, Mark Boedges is a plein air painter who finds similar geometric strength in compositions of creeks strewn with ics age boulders and trainyards lined with freight cars or ships at harbor.

In all of his plein air subjects, as well as still life, he delves into variations in the play of light and value, seeking both dramatic contrasts and muted close relationships.

His website features a selection of his work (note the link at bottom for “More Paintings”). Be sure to click on the images for larger versions, because, like fellow Vermont painter Richard Schmid, much of the appeal in Boedges’ work is in his handling of edges and texture, and my smaller sample images here don’t convey that as well as the larger versions on his site (see the detail crop of the first image at top, second down). I suspect they would reveal even more visual charm were they reproduced larger.

I’ve linked below to some articles that go into a little more detail than his website bio. You will also find additional images, including still life, on the site of Robert Paul Galleries.

[Suggestion courtesy of Tom Jackson]