I was going to include a Morandi here--because of the way we focused on his painting in class on Tuesday evening. But I wanted you to have something new--or rather, something new/old--the Ryder above. It's thought to be from 1870-75--Ryder would have been in his mid-twenties. At the outset of his career--not one of the later paintings, with their mysterious shapes--shapes he discovered (found) in the course of working and reworking an image until something--well, something miraculous appeared. The late paintings are the ones he's remembered for. But it's always good to see where an artists begins. Look at the shifts in the whites here--the shapes that carry the narrative (is a cow in an ambiguous pasture a narrative? Are four bottles in the middle of a gray field a narrative?). Better, how does the paint itself tell its story...
If you look at the Barbizon painters from France, you'll see the source of Ryder's tonalism here. (And tone was always an crucial quality.) But the subtle way he uses warm and cool color is also distinctive. Maybe more the possibility of color... In this regard, we could compare him with George Inness--another wonderful American painter...
Gather--a set of meanings...
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