Figures in the Open Air

Rural Pursuits: Figuring it Out

JiF commented on last night's post that he's attracted to figures in the open air. I well understand the allure. 

As most of you know, I couldn't paint a believable figure if my life depended upon it. But that's not the reason that I haven't essayed figures involved in country pursuits.

I have seen a lot of ever-finer craft from my peers these last ten years. Often it involves the figure, either indoors or out. It seems to me that there a lot of painters, really talented ones, who mistakenly think that if you slap a young girl into a costume, you can place her at any garden gate and have a painting worthy of Clausen or Bastien-Lepage.

Ah, 'twere it only so easy! The paintings by the nineteenth-century painters had a resonance for their viewers. They were true to conditions, costumes, labors, etc., because the artists knew what they were talking about, backwards and forwards. Nowadays, a girl at the gate, with tattoo and mantilla isn't resonant. It makes a pastiche of something that was honest.

At least in my time living in the country, I have rarely seen people on foot working in fields, tending flocks, etc. I did once see two very old brothers tedding in a field the size of a postage stamp. It was so unexpected, especially as they might well have been in their early nineties, that I almost couldn't process the information.

This speaks to my point: I don't think you can just insert people going about ancient chores unless you can do so in a plausible way. I only see farmers in huge, air-conditioned tractors these days. Nobody's swinging a scythe or, for that matter, dredging a ditch.

The first painting below is by Erik Werenskjold, painter and book illustrator. This painting is in Copenhagen, where I had the privilege of seeing it. I'd never heard of Werenskjold. For my money this is a masterwork.  

Erik Werenskjold, Dredging a Ditch

Anyone who's put up with me for any length of time knows that George Henry's Noon is a favorite of mine. I saw it at a show in London at the Barbican Art Gallery. It was my introduction to the Glasgow Boys.

George Henry, Noon

The paintings which follow are all ones I like, but not all for the same reason. They do share, for me at least, a real believability. I hope you like them. (If you find anyone doing these sorts of chores these days, call me and I'll be there to paint them). I already can sit in a pasture and watch a crow.

Henry Herbert LaThangue, In the Dauphiné

Henry Herbert LaThangue, Shaking Down Cider Apples

Rosa Bonheur, Ploughing in the Nivernais

Anton Mauve, In the Vegetable Garden

Ruger Donoho, La Marcellerie

George Clausen, Ploughing

Winslow Homer, Boys in a Pasture, MFA Boston

James Guthrie, To Pastures New

James Guthrie, Women Working in a Field

Henry Herbert LaThangue, Surrey Hayfield

Henry Herbert LaThangue, The Watersplash

Jules Bastien-Lepage, Les bles murs

Jules Bastien-Lepage, Pas Meche

Aleksi Gallen-Kallela, Boy and Crown