George Loftus Noyes was an American painter, born in Canada of American parents, who started painting at an early age, and became a noted landscape painter in the Boston area just after the turn of the 20th Century.

Noyes studied with English artist George Bartlett in Boston, and later studied in Paris at the ateliers of Gustave Courtois, Joseph-Paul Blanc and Paul-Louis Delance. It was there that he joined in the new enthusiasm among French painters for painting “en plein air“, and was undoubtedly influenced by the French Impressionist works making headlines at the time.

Noyes was able to exhibit successfully at the Paris Salon, and on his return to Boston, established himself as a landscape painter, painting many coastal paintings. Noyes was one of the first painters to paint Cape Cod. He also painted in the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont.

Noyes is generally mentioned in association the the Boston School, though I can’t find any indication if he was in direct contact with artists of “The Ten American Painters” like Tarbell or Twatchman, of if he was in contact with the Cos Cob or Old Lyme art colonies.

He did travel and and paint with Frederic Edwin Chruch, including a painting trip to Mexico.

Noyes was also a teacher, whose Summer class students included Henry Peck, Clifford Warren Ashley and N.C. Wyeth.

Tragically, much of his work was lost in a barn fire. I’ve found a few reproductions showing a bit of variety in his approach over time. In the image above, The Gorge, which I assume is of the mountains in New England, he reminds me a bit of Daniel Garber’s paintings of the Pennsylvania countryside.

William Degouve de Nuncques was a French-born Belgian Symbolist painter.

He was self-taught, though his style was influenced friends and roommates Jan Toorop and Henry de Groux.

His art was particularly shaped by his contact with the group of Symbolist poets to whom he was introduced by Juliette Massin, also an artist, who he married in 1894.

His paintings are often of representational scenes, landscapes, views of buildings and parks, but strongly tinged with a poetic softness and muted colors. He frequently chose to depict the subtle lighting of mist, dusk or night. He traveled and painted extensively in Austria, Italy and France and was at one time part of the group of painters known as “Les XX” (“The twenty”).

His painting The Pink House (image above, bottom left) is said to have inspired René Magritte’s famous Empire of Light paintings (also here). (Here’s an article about that notion on The Blue Lantern.)

Someone has put together a short video of some of Degouve de Nuncques’ work, set to a bit of Bach.

Paint the Parks 2009 it the third installment of an annual competition sponsored by PaintAmerica, a non-profit association ‘devoted to providing opportunities for artists all across America”.

They sponsor two artist competitions, PaintAmerica Top100, which happens in the fall, and Paint the Parks100, for which the call for entries deadline is May 31, 2009.

The competition is designed to highlight the U.S. National Parks, and the entries must be realistic (to some degree) representations of scenes from one of the 390 areas supervised by the National Parks Service (the inclusion of National Monuments and Historic sites expends the possibilities considerably).

The current entry form hasn’t been posted yet, so I don’t know the entry fee, but you can download a Regions Map from this page that lists the eligible National Parks, Monuments and Historic sites.

There are prizes for each of three national regions, and a grand prize, a $10,000 Purchase Award. There is also a Mini Competition with a $5,000 Grand Prize for paintings of 180 square inches or less. There are more details here.

Winning paintings will be be featured in a touring exhibition and online, providing additional exposure.

There is a PaintAmerica blog, on which you can find more information, as well as see paintings from last years winners from both competitions.

(Image above: Robert Gunn, Thomas Marcotti, Robert Highsmith)

[Via Nita Leland (whose latest book is Confident Color)]