Scale is an interesting aspect of painting and drawing. I’m always fascinated when artists choose to work at both relatively large and relatively small size, particularly when working with the same subject matter (see my posts about Thomas Paquette and his large oils and very small guoache paintings).

Philadelphia area painter Larry Francis also paints fairly large oils (perhaps 48×60″; 121x152cm), and small gouache paintings (around 11×14″; 27x35cm) . His subject matter, which is consistent in both types of paintings, includes an interesting range of ordinary subjects in and around Philadelphia.

By “ordinary” I mean commonplace scenes that would not be thought of as particularly scenic, like images of suburban houses and yards, typical city street corners, small sections of parks, neighborhood stores, bridges and other views, the like of which we pass by every day without thinking.

This, of course, is one of the things that art does best, to wake us to more alert observation of our surroundings and remind us that the ordinary is extraodinary, the commonplace worthy of notice and appreciation.

Even Francis’ views of the Schuylkill river, which could have been chosen from more scenic vantage points, instead are often views of bridges and bridge piers, the kind of view commuters might glance at without noticing day after day as they make their routine trips into center city along the river drives.

I particularly like his paintings of Schuylkill river bridges, which perhaps can be thought of as in the tradition of Thomas Eakins, who often included Schuylkill river bridges in his portrayals of scullers. Eakins obviously couldn’t have painted the Route 1 expressway bridge (foreground of the image at top, larger version here), though I have to think he might have included it had it existed at the time.

Francis consistently reveals beauty in the ordinary, with geometric arrangements of houses and commercial buildings arrayed in planes of light, broken with dappled shadows from vegetation and the horizontal bands of color in streets and sidewalks.

I was struck but the issue of scale because I had encountered an oil painting of his at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he is an instructor, showing a view of the Schuylkill river from the same vantage point as the one above, though wider in aspect and much larger in size, perhaps 4’x12′ (121x365cm). I was struck by the painting, and delighted to have the chance to see his small gouache paintings of the same area at his current show at the Gross McCleaf Gallery, which is focused in particular on his small gouaches.

I was also glad I had a chance to meet the artist at the opening, and I asked him about his approach. I had made an assumption because of the finessed attention to detail, and the unhurried feeling of relaxed observation evident in these small works, that he was working, at least in part, from photographic reference. He paints these gouache paintings on location, however, working perhaps two paintings a day to catch the different states of light, and returning to the scene two or three times to finish them.

Those in the Philadelphia area still have a chance to catch the show at the Gross McCleaf Gallery, which runs until this Saturday, January 24, 2009.

Charles Henri Joseph Leickert was a painter who would have been well suited to painting scenes of the freezing weather we’re currently experiencing in much of the United States.

Leickert was a Belgian born painter who lived and worked most of his life in the Netherlands. He specialized in winter landscapes, often with a “street scene” kind of view down a frozen river, lake or canal (image above with detail, larger version here). Most of his frozen river or lake paintings portrayed bustling activity, in which the citizenry would be out skating, ice fishing, pushing sleds filled with goods, and otherwise utilizing the frozen surface as a street.

He romanticized his scenes, frequently with towering dark clouds or brilliant dramatic lighting. He reveled in the eye candy of architectural details and the textures of brick, tile and stone.

He did balance out his oeuvre with images of summer, painting similar river or street scenes teeming with warm weather activity, and framing them with similarly dramatic skies filled with billowing clouds.

Leickert moved the Hague at a young age, and studied there under several Dutch landscape painters, including Andreas Schelfhout, who had a similar speciality in winter scenes, which had proved to be more popular than his other subjects.

The 19th Century Dutch art market seemed to have an appetite for winter scenes in which life appeared to go blithely on in spite of the cold.

Get the skates out.

Andrew Wyeth, an American realist painter who in some ways epitomized the conflict between late 20th Century Modernism and the Realist tradition, died today in his sleep in his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania at the age of 91.

Wyeth was the son of the great American illustrator N.C. Wyeth. Those familiar with the elder Wyeth’s work will know that he cast a mighty big shadow. Son Andrew, one of five children, differentiated himself from his father by working in watercolor and tempera instead of oil, replacing his father’s bold colors with a subdued, almost suppressed palette, and emphasizing texture in place of color.

His quiet depictions of the Brandywine Valley countryside and the area around the family’s summer home in Maine, along with his often melancholy portrayals of residents of those areas, made him prominent as one of the public’s most admired American artists in the 20th Century.

Of course that very popularity, and the simple matter of his realist (though sometimes surreal) subject matter, and traditionalist technique, made him a target for derision among modernist critics, who denigrated classical traditions with a vengeance during their time of dominating the art world. Though his early watercolors were well received, and Christina’s World was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art, the modernists eventually felt the need to tear him down. They hurled at Wyeth the intended insult of calling him a “mere illustrator”, as though there were no more vehement way to say “not an artist”, and in the process, of course, belittling his father’s accomplishments.

Wyeth quietly persisted in the face of the post-war Modernist tides, and continued his pursuit of contemplative scenes, keen observation and command of the somewhat arcane techniques of egg tempera, a demanding and difficult to master medium that predates oil painting by centuries.

It didn’t hurt, of course, that Wyeth’s paintings were in demand and sold for high figures during the artist’s lifetime (a relatively rare thing in the history of art); and he became one of the best known American artists ever, eclipsing his father’s fame from previous generations. Wyeth eventually had the last laugh, as a good deal critical attention eventually came into line the popular acclaim after the Modernist wave had crashed and the fab foam began receding under the currents of the return of traditional artistic values.

I personally run hot and cold on Andrew Wyeth’s work, finding less appeal in his major tempera paintings than in his intimate and informal watercolors and drawings, particularly those of the Brandywine Valley, near where I grew up. Wyeth at his best was a keen eye and a careful observer, letting nature guide his hand. His figure paintings and drawings almost always included something of the countryside, or the rustic buildings and interiors associated with it, as an integral co-subject, more than simply a backdrop.

The painting above, Dryad, painted in 2000 (more detail and info here), reverses that situation; in a way sublimating the figure and nominal subject of the painting, model Senna Moore, to Wyeth’s intensely focused rendering of a great oak on his Chadds Ford property that had been split open by lightning.

Admittedly, I have trouble viewing Andrew Wyeth without making comparisons with his father. Because of the high regard I have for his work, N.C. Wyeth is my favorite illustrator and one of my favorite painters in general, it’s a difficult and probably unfair comparison.

If you want to see Andrew Wyeth’s work in the context of his artistic family, the Brandywine River Museum, near his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, has a terrific collection of work by Andrew, his artistically inclined sisters, his son, Jamie, also a noted artist, and, of course, his father, N.C. Wyeth. (If anyone puts the lie to the phrase “mere illustration”, it’s N.C. Wyeth, who was to my mind one of the finest American painters, period.)

There is also a nice, and inexpensive, book that puts the three generations of Wyeth’s, N.C., Andrew and Jamie, in one volume, An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art: N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, James Wyeth.

For more, see my post on Andrew Wyeth from 2006.

Addendum: Katherine Tyrrell has an extensive Squidoo Lens of information and resources relating to Andrew Wyeth.