Thank you for your report!
We have received your report and it is currently under investigation by a forum moderator.
Week 94 Inspiration From Artist : WT Blandford Fletcher and Norman Rockwell.
Welcome to the forum.
Here you can discuss all things art with like-minded artists, join regular painting challenges, ask questions, buy and sell art materials and much more.
Make sure you sign in or register to join the discussions.
Hang on Studio Wall
This is a Studio member-only feature!
Join our Studio membership and save your favourite Painters Online content, from gallery artwork to step-by-step guides, to your own online mood boards. Create your go-to place for inspiration and learning. Plus, members can also enjoy a range of exciting features including monthly art videos and a digital magazine library.
If you are already a Studio member, simply login to your account.
Not a Studio member? Why not try our free 30-day trial - no commitment, no credit card required
Message
Posted
Wellcome to this week Inspiration From Artists the featuring artists this week are : William Toulon Blandford Fletcher and Norman Rockwell. I will open this evening with a introduction to WTB Fletcher and on Wednesday Tessa will introduce us to the artwork of Norman Rockwell.
William Toulon Blandford Fletcher 1858 - 1936: was a British artist and early member of the Newlyn School of Painters. Fletcher was born in London where his farther was a draper and upholster . Against his fathers wishes Fletcher studied art at the South Kensington School of Art from the age of 16 to 20, winning a Silver Medal and The Queens prize. During this time he met Stanhope Forbes with whom he continued a long friendship.
I hope you enjoy my selection of his artwork.
Posted
I like the work of the Newlyn group of painters. That first tree is wonderfully painted. I think we’ve seen quite a few artists painting this kind of scene and genre, and perhaps we get a bit blasé and find it rather dull, but then I think this was life and what was around them. I’m assuming that working people of this time, fishermen, farmers, labourers and their families probably never traveled more than a few miles from home and so life and experiences were limited.
A hard life well captured.
Edited
by Tessa Gwynne
Posted
Good point by Tessa, there were a whole swathe of artists producing this kind of work not just the Newlyn group. So perhaps we're too familiar with it. And, as has been said before, they turned what must have been a harsh life into the picturesque. That said, it's very skilled work. I particularly like the first painting, and the one with the children on the breakwater.
Posted
I agree with both of you we get into the same old same old mode , but when you think about what Tessa is saying their lives were very limited compared to ours. Most people lived and died within twenty miles of their birthplace unless they were in military service and very few traveled as much as modern folk do ,no holidays as such at the seaside let alone overseas . We hear of the grand tour but yet again it was a minority a example is in a book I have just finished set in North Yorkshire in late 1890 till mid 1930s a farm labour talking about his life the biggest event was he had three day off and went to a huge city York his whole family bragged about it for years apparently. In comparison my seven year old granddaughter has been to five countries look at the wealth of knowledge and the sights she has seen , my point is that she would have more to paint about. The skill some of these artists have is quite breathtaking when we look at the accuracy of the trees etc , they reproduce it as accurately as possible bit still retaining the look of a painting.
I have to admit to have a love of some old paintings that include trees and nature in general, having said that I find some a bit twee .
Posted
My views are much the same as those of Tessa and Lewis - I like the work of the Newlyn School of artists and his work is of a similar style and subject matter, although apparently he felt that Newlyn lacked subjects that appealed to him and after a year left ‘for pastures new’ and didn’t return to Cornwall. Of those posted above I also like best the one of the children by the breakwater.
Edited
by Jenny Harris
Posted
It's narrative painting, basically - told a story. That went out of fashion - maybe the first world war trampled too many illusions into the mud for this style of painting to retain its popularity, but I just look at the skill with which he painted that tree in the first image shown - and observe the way in which he's applied quite thick oil paint in one of the beach scenes - and any critical faculties get swamped in admiration.
I have seen paintings from the school and others of the period which could be described as twee - and all of these painters tended to brush and wash-up both the children in their paintings, and the homes in which they lived; life wasn't that clean and wholesome, and still isn't. How many painters of today - most of course don't paint narrative pictures, but some, stretching the genre a bit, do - will show the discarded tins of beans, empty or broken bottles, graffiti on the walls, the occasional used syringe, lining the pavements of our towns and cities? Well, some do, and this artist probably wouldn't have done: but I don't find his work in any way twee, or obvious; even if his themes are very familiar.
We live in a jaded time, in which artists and others can be criticized for what they haven't done, which some think they ought to have done - but as a simple old soul, I much prefer to judge them by what they HAVE done: and I think Mr Fletcher - whose work I did not know at all -was a very fine painter; and I'm grateful for this introduction to his work.
Posted
PS - a gallery director later dismissed one of his most famous works, The Eviction, as "not art ... it's illustration".
This was back in 1949, thus showing that gallery directors and art critics have been talking drivel for generations, and, without realizing it, following fashions - which is the very criticism, couched in various ways, they make of others; the worst thing you can possibly be is popular with the public: both Ken Howard and David Shepard (spelling probably off) suffered from this in their time.
These people don't really like painting - they don't have the visceral feeling for it that any real painter will have. They demand of it something other - something in which sentiment plays no part; so keen are they to dismiss sentiment that they're also suspicious of feelings, which can never be too refined and antiseptic for them. There is a cold void where their hearts ought to be, and an overheated labyrinth between their ears in which they regularly lose themselves.
Posted
The Beer, Devon, is the last painting shown?
I imagine it was painted on a quite rough canvas, and he has applied heavy layers of paint which is indeed laid down in horizontal strokes for the sea - he certainly painted it before the boats on the beach, as the paint has become somewhat transparent over time, and you can see the pattern of the sea through the red/orange sail - much the easier way to do it, another way being to leave a space for the subsequent sail so that the underpainting won't show through. In practice of course, sails aren't entirely opaque - or some aren't. It might be possible to see through them to some degree; but I don't suppose he intended that.
I think it's common practice to vary the direction of brush strokes to suit sea, or land, cliffs or mounds - to shape the paint: without comparing myself to Blandford Fletcher, as I understand he was known, I do tend to try to do that myself. It looks, in this painting, as if he didn't use much medium - the thickness of the paint has been allowed to provide a physical resemblance to the land or water being painted.
That's the sort of thing a critic, who doesn't paint (and few do) would not necessarily notice - or even care about; to a painter, such things matter; to some academics, too, though most art critics were not and usually are not academics - or painters - or worthy of attention.
