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Inspiration from Artists Week 67 : Edward Wesson and Toulouse Lautrec.
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Message
Posted
Welcome to week 67 of Inspiration fromArtists theis week’s featuring artists are :
Edward Wesson and Toulouse Lautrec.
Alan has kindly offered to introduce Edward Wesson for which I’m grateful as his knowledge of Wesson is far better than mine .
On Wednesday Lew will introduce us to Toulouse Lautrec, I’m looking forward to this as I know so little about this famous artist.
Have a good week everyone and please let me have more names for the thread as I will be updating the list later in the week .
Posted
Edward Wesson RI RSMA (1910 - 1983)
Wesson was a prolific watercolour artist, known for his simple, yet elegant paintings of the Thames, and the Norfolk landscape to name just two - his love of water and sailing boats remained with him throughout his life.
Simplicity is the key to his success, both in style and composition, which sounds simple enough to achieve but is anything but. I personally can’t master this style of watercolour, it looks simple and he made it look simple, his colours are always so pure, not a sign of a muddy mix to be seen… Wesson attributed this to working with a limited palette.
I have an original signed pen and wash of ‘Spritsail Barges at Pin Mill’ which I bought at auction. Wesson loved painting these wonderful boats and they are the most collectible of all his subjects. I’ll post this later in the week!
He also painted in oils, but he’s better known for his watercolours. Often referred to alongside Edward Seago, similar in style to some degree, both masters of their craft! He wrote many informative articles in both The Artist and Leisure Painter.
In 1982 he wrote his autobiography ‘My Corner of the Field’, which are now very collectible and expensive!
I hope you enjoy my selection, there are so many to choose from.
Posted
Thanks for the introduction Alan , how right you are about his work looking so simple but it’s not until you try it out yourself thst you realise just how difficult it is . Like many a new artist I thought his work was easy to copy , soon ended up with a muddy poodle on the paper, simply complicated is how I would describe it. I like all of his work but my real passion for his work is in the maritime paintings, he make boats, barges , ships etc look so deceptively simple very few strokes and he had a wonderful looking Thames barge . What I would give to be able to do that but I never will be able too unless I can go back thirty or more years and begin again. I will look through his work and select some that I particularly like .
I had to force myself to stop adding more, so many that are so beautifully done.
Edited
by Paul (Dixie) Dean
Posted
He was a wonderful artist, who died far too soon. He was, by the way, the great inspiration of our own Alan Owen, who paints in ways inspired by Wesson (but also in his very own way). I'm trying to remember (failing, obviously!) the name of a painter who paints in the Wesson style, and has produced at least one DVD of his work - he uses the trademark Wesson mop .... it'll come to me (eventually!). Steve someone?
Wesson has been profoundly influential on any number of watercolourists; perhaps more so than Edward Seago; his watercolours are fantastic - I can't call many of his oils to mind, but he excelled in watercolour with his strong shapes and bold images. The thing I take from him is this - watercolour takes two elements: water, and colour. Wesson's watercolours are full of strong colour - and this is a hallmark of Hilder, Seago, and others too: the water is their medium, not the most dominant element in their paintings - their emphasis is on colour, every time. Watery watercolours can work, but so rarely do (in my opinion): Wesson used powerful earth tones and pigments, sepia, blacks, umbers, strong blues: and I think that's where his appeal most strongly lies.
Posted
Wesson used a limited palette of eight paints: winsor blue, ultramarine, cobalt blue, burnt umber, burnt sienna, light red, raw sienna, and cadmium yellow or winsor yellow.
This tends to vary between articles… these are his colours as featured in The Artist magazine some years ago… 1962 to be precise!
Ultramarine, Cobalt blue, Burnt umber, Burnt sienna, Raw sienna, Lemon yellow, Vermilion,
Alizarin crimson, Payne's grey - this looks more like the Wesson’s palette that I’m familiar with!
The great man himself, in his studio.
Edited
by Alan Bickley
Posted
Oh - Paul: I don't know much about Steve Hall: I do have one of his DVDs though, thanks to the generosity of Alan Owen. And on Wesson's palette - people might be surprised by the absence of black, but Paynes Grey does seem to be indicated in much of his work: and as he's got Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna, he could certainly have made a good range of intense blacks. I have a particular painting of his in mind, not shown above, in which he painted a cottage or small house with the most marvellous misty-blue (not watery blue) slate roof - I'll see if I can find it online. He did paint an enormous number of pictures in a 50-year long career - even his paler pictures, with colours melting into the sky, never look weak. He left us quite a while ago now, but is one of those English watercolourists whose reputation seems to grow down the years.