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Inspiration from Artists Week 52 Bonus Artist Edmund George Warren. Changed to Charles James Adams .
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Message
Posted
Welcome to this weekends bonus artist thread the featuring artist is Edmund George Warren, 1834 - 1909. A British landscapist who worked in both watercolour and oils. Warren’s meticulous detailed paintings predominantly of heavy wooded landscapes were almost photographic in there detail.
He was acknowledged to be the first landscape artist influenced by the Pre- Raphaelites ideas of colours and meticulous observance to detail.
His work became very popular in the late 1850, early 1860s .
The art critic John Ruskin stated that Warren was not a true Pre-Raphaelite because his landscapes owed more to “ cleverly depicted techniques “ than observation.
I hope you enjoy the artwork and I look forward to you views and choice of paintings.
Edited
by Paul (Dixie) Dean
Posted
Sorry folks I look and did not notice the above artist had already been featured .
Hopefully this one hasn’t , I’ve check back.
Charles James Adams 1859 - 1931 was a English landscape artist born in Gravesend Kent. He studied at Leicestershire School of Art where he won a Mulready Gold Medal for life Drawing from the Society of Arts London .
Edited
by Paul (Dixie) Dean
Posted
Don't THINK you've done this one before, but the trouble with genre paintings of this era is that there were an awful lot of them which featured the same themes: while I think Ruskin was a much better artist than critic, he had a point about those clevery depicted techniques, as opposed to observation - I think there's a lot to be said in favour of those clever techniques - that was very much how the studio-bound old masters painted, other than when they were painted portraits or figures.
Anyway - don't worry about it! You showed some works by Edmund George Warren that you hadn't shown before, and even the ones we'd seen before were well worth seeing again.
Posted
PS - comparisons are always invidious, but if I had to choose between a Warren and an Adams, based on the selections shown, I'd go for Warren every time - stronger colour, stronger drawing, and less tendency to idealize the rural life: which was pretty hard-going for those who had to actually live it.
Posted
Astonishing skills in both artists. As Robert noted, there's always a tendency to present these scenes as some kind of paradise, when, effectively, the people were living in slums. That aside, the landscapes are beautiful, I particularly like the logging painting.
These are the kind of paintings I tend to look at, note the artistic skill, and then move on quickly.
Posted
I agree they were both hugely skilful artists, and pleasing to look at. They are definitely ‘of their time’ but maybe we shouldn’t be so willing to skip past them as easily as we seem to!
The composition is excellent especially Adams, and the last painting of Warren chosen above just makes me want to be walking through it towards the coast.
Both good choices Dixie, and it’s good to have a quick reminder as we have seen so many over the year.
Posted
Thanks you folks , two excellent artists but as you say the scenes are contrived particularly when people were involved.
Becaus of this thread I’ve developed a interest in art history, that looking into what was used , how it was used etc my main interest is watercolour as that’s my medium. Apparently in the Victorian era it was not unusual for artist to stage the scene and take cloths etc for the farm workers to wear during the sitting. The sale of the paintings were mostly to the city folk who had a dream vision of the countryside, reality would have been to much and remained them of the squalid conditions there workers live in.
Edited
by Paul (Dixie) Dean
Posted
Oh dear! However I think you can’t fail to see the conditions people lived in in the last two paintings above. When living in Cardiff we used to visit quite regularly the Folk Museum at St Fagans which saved a lot of these old buildings. They were fascinating to look around and see how people lived and worked in very tough conditions, often with their farm animals with them.