As fond as I am of the French Impressionists, I’m drawn even more to painters at the edges of their circle; painters who were influenced by their approach, like the so-called “American Impressionists”, or predecessors, like Gustav Courbet or Camille Corot and other members of the Barbizon School, who presaged and influenced the Impressionists in their break from the academic traditions.

A little know counterpart to the French artists of the Barbizon school was a group of Italian painters in Florence and surrounding Tuscany called the Macchiaioli (pronounced mah-key-ay-OH-li) who were active around the same time.

The middle of the 19th century was a time of revolution and political upheaval in many parts of Europe, and the artistic revolutions of time were part of the same social fabric. The artists who were most influential in forming the Macchiaioli, however, were directly involved in uprisings, joining other intellectuals and idealists who fought to wrest a united Italian state from the smaller independent areas that were often under the control of foreign powers.

Though that goal was eventually reached, the artists soon realized that their ideal democratic state was not to be a reality (politics is always politics, after all, and personal power trumps idealism), and turned their revolutionary zeal to freeing themselves from the restraints of academic formalism in their paintings.

They retreated to the countryside around Florence, feeling themselves inheritors of the Renaissance that bloomed there, and began to devote themselves to directly capturing the countryside in plein air paintings, using bold patches of color known as “macchia”, meaning splotch or spot, from which the name of their school is derived.

They often worked with a strong chiaroscuro, accented by dappled areas; isolating brighter colors into these spots and leading to effects that seem like sparkles of light.

In their use of broken color, brilliant sunlight, plein air painting and the direct observation of landscape, they were direct forerunners of the Impressionists, though the Macchiaioli received little notice and are only in recent years being rediscovered. Notable members of the circle included Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega and Telemarco Signorini, along with Gusieppe Abbati, Vincenzo Cablanca and others.

I think they are wonderful painters and I’ll try to feature some of them individually on lines and colors in the future.

(Image above: Silvestro Lega, larger version here)

Nick Dudka is a contemporary German born artist, currently living in Russia, who has become a modern proponent of the traditional Tibetan Buddhist art of the thangka, or scroll painting.

After formal training in Western art in Ulan-Ude, Russia and at the Academy of Art in Kiev, Dudka became interested in the spiritual and artistic traditions of Tibetan Buddhism and studied thangka painting over many years, in numerous visits to Mongolia, Nepal and India.

Thangkas are painted on linen or cotton, and occasionally silk, prepared with animal glue and talcum, stitched along the edges and stretched on a frame. This is similar in some respects to the European tradition of painting on cotton or linen canvas stretched on a frame and prepared with animal skin glue and chalk whiting (gesso). The pigments are from sources like malachite and cinnabar, and are mixed with animal glue and ox bile.

The galleries on Dudka’s site include some of his preliminary charcoal drawings.

Thangkas are most often of religious subjects, portraits of Buddhas, and stories from the lives of other religious figures. The images are a striking mixture of figurative and decorative elements. Alive with intricate detail, swirling eddies of texture and color are contrasted with anchored elements of preternatural stillness. Fierce, tranquil or blissful deities gaze out at you from amidst the push and pull of these polar forces of stillness and motion.

The image shown at left, and in detail at bottom, is of Palden Lhamo, a fierce protector diety, and one of the few female figures in the major group. She is the Tibetan version of the goddess known as Shri Devi in India.

The figures are sometimes cast as giants atop small floating islands, in streams swirling with their own eddies and currents, and arrays of lotus blossoms, all indicative of elements in Buddhist teachings. The stylized clouds that often fill the backgrounds also have suggestions of swirling moment, suggesting invisible currents in the air, along with dramatic roiling masses of flame, smoke or other elements, intertwined with the flowing robes and garments of the figures.

In contrast to all of the movement and dynamics are large decorative elements, often surrounding the figures with large golden “halos” that are tempting to compare to the halos surrounding religious figures in European art.

I don’t know enough about thangka painting to make an informed comparison between Dudka’s contemporary versions and traditional paintings. You can see some traditional Thangka paintings on Exotic India, Buddahnet and Circle of Bliss.

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