on the spot that celebrated the wild beauty of the natural landscape. Clague’s adaptation of the Barbizon artists’ composition, style and technique to the representation of Louisiana resulted in a native landscape tradition. The paintings of Asher Brown Durand inspired a generation of American artists to revere landscape painting as the most elevated form of American art. Durand was one of the first American landscape painters to paint nature en plein air, directly on the spot, and often carried his large, heavy canvases and oil paints into deeply secluded parts of the forest to capture the atmospheric effects of light. Durand favored the landscape, highlighted by the harmonious “unadorned” relationship between man and nature. An important teacher, Durand’s students went on to paint all across the country. He implored American artists to first to nature,” arguing that the “go humblest rock could teach painters more than the finest art school. Forenoon is one of a pair of landscapes commissioned by the wealthy New Orleanian art collector James Robb, one of which Durand painted at daybreak, and the other at dusk. Stuart Davis adhered to tenets invoked by his teacher, Robert Henri, who advised students at the New York School of Art to capture in “life the raw.” Davis reinterpreted American subject matter such as jazz music and scenic landscapes in bright colors and flattened forms, leading the shift from realism to abstraction in American art during the first decades of the 20th century. Rocks, Gloucester is a pivotal transitional work for Davis, painted just as he started working in a more experimental style. The painting’s bold colors and fragmented shapes and forms play with our sense of scale and perspective. At first glance, the painting appears to show a relatively conventional—if brightly colored—mountainous landscape scene, but, upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the painting is in fact a closely cropped study of regularly sized coastal rocks and stones. Georgia O’Keeffe looked to nature as inspiration, painting flowers and the ancient hills of her adopted home in Abiquiú, New Mexico. She did not stray from representation, but applied photographic
on the spot that celebrated the wild beauty of the natural landscape. Clague’s adaptation of the Barbizon artists’ composition, style and technique to the representation of Louisiana resulted in a native landscape tradition. The paintings of Asher Brown Durand inspired a generation of American artists to revere landscape painting as the most elevated form of American art. Durand was one of the first American landscape painters to paint nature en plein air, directly on the spot, and often carried his large, heavy canvases and oil paints into deeply secluded parts of the forest to capture the atmospheric effects of light. Durand favored the “unadorned” landscape, highlighted by the harmonious relationship between man and nature. An important teacher, Durand’s students went on to paint all across the country. He implored American artists to “go first to nature,” arguing that the humblest rock could teach painters more than the finest art school. Forenoon is one of a pair of landscapes commissioned by the wealthy New Orleanian art collector James Robb, one of which Durand painted at daybreak, and the other at dusk. Stuart Davis adhered to tenets invoked by his teacher, Robert Henri, who advised students at the New York School of Art to capture “life in the raw.” Davis reinterpreted American subject matter such as jazz music and scenic landscapes in bright colors and flattened forms, leading the shift from realism to abstraction in American art during the first decades of the 20th century. Rocks, Gloucester is a pivotal transitional work for Davis, painted just as he started working in a more experimental style. The painting’s bold colors and fragmented shapes and forms play with our sense of scale and perspective. At first glance, the painting appears to show a relatively conventional—if brightly colored—mountainous landscape scene, but, upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the painting is in fact a closely cropped study of regularly sized coastal rocks and stones. Georgia O’Keeffe looked to nature as inspiration, painting flowers and the ancient hills of her adopted home in Abiquiú, New Mexico. She did not stray from representation, but applied photographic