I would also posit that some of the work we see today where the artist copies a photograph can look dead, or maybe better to say, not animated with life's spirit. I would go so far to say that the greatest Masters where the spark of life is so obvious in their works are drawing from both of these great "truths" internally. I like the thought that the two can co-exist albiet always with some tension - there is the observable natural history of science and the hidden truth of philosophy/spirituality - something beyond what can be seen and observed. I would hypothesize that this is why Darwin abandoned his faith in later years - that the internal tension was too great and he opted for pure observable science. These naturalists/artists were as mesmerized by the "truth of rational thinking and science" as "truth to nature". Audubon's birds are incredibly detailed life-like studies and I think express the "truth to nature" as expressed by both Druand AND Ruskin, yet he painted most (if not all?) of his paintings from dead specimens. I have wondered about the intersection/link between the "Naturalist" and the "Artist" in men such as Audubon and Darwin (and we can put Fidelia Bridges in this category?) that was much more predominant in earlier eras. I really appreciate all these wonderful thoughts. Achieving that sort of truth is quite different what we would think of as photographic copying, and I think trying to recapture the mindset at its philosophical foundations is the first step to understanding these early works, much less trying to replicate them. Illustrations for bird books are a modern form of this kind of idealism. It's not something you can entirely see on your retinas. Durand also speaks in spiritual terms, and regards a nature study as almost like a page from a Divine book, or what he called a "transcript of Nature."įrom a philosophical point of view, Durand was a Transcendentalist or a Platonic idealist, so his idea was that truth is something beyond the veil of appearances, more what we would think of as the perfect type of a given plant or cloud or rock formation. Durand says that an exact reproduction of nature's infinite detail is impossible - one can't capture every leaf, so he talks about "representing" the patterns of growth and the botanical detail in the terms possible in paint. It's interesting to read both Ruskin and A.B. Tom and Sesco, you both raise some wonderful questions about "truth to nature." I suppose the term is a sort of shorthand for what these artists were after. Dinotopia / World Beneath Podcast, Episode 14.Speed Chapter 6: "Academic and Conventional".The Backgrounds of "Ghost in the Shell".Dinotopia: The World Beneath-Final Episode.Nearly-Notan Gouache with Yellow Underpainting.GJ Book Club, Chapter 7: "The Study of Drawing".Rare Video of Illustrator Arthur William Brown.GJ Book Club, Chapter 8-Line Drawing: Practical.Exhibit Review: Benjamin-Constant in Montreal."Color and Light" in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.Gérôme on Truth, Illustration, and Photography.Dan Gurney's Sons Drive His Cars at Indy.For those customers who appreciate quality and want to own an artist's work as it was meant to be enjoyed we are here for you.Each canvas reproduction may vary slightly in brush details due to the nature of being hand painted, so no two paintings are the same. Hand crafted means unique to every owner.Painting comes with a Certificate of Authenticity.100% hand painted oil painting on artist grade canvas.No printing or digital imaging techniques are used.Every painting is painted by an experienced artist.
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