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More American Still Life Painters

Hannah Brown Skeele 1829 - 1901

  • Still Life with Strawberries (1863) (Art Across America, plate 3.20)
  • Vase of Morning Glories (AAR Volume 10, Number 2, page 145)

The oval shape of Still Life with Strawberries (1863) itself is a striking geometric form. Skeele is unusual among American still life painters in that she uses elaborately carved bowls. The silver bowl in Strawberries is covered with silver leaves; in Morning Glories, the vase is full of porcelain grapes. These are virtually still lifes within still lifes. Her painting has a modular quality, with the contents of containers seeming like separate regions within the larger painting.

Her painting develops a striking harmony of red and silver. Skeele has an unusual compositional sense. It reminds one directly of Raphaelle Peale, and his ability to make unusual geometric patterns out of the most spartan objects. Raphaelle painted both morning glories and strawberries, so the subject matter here also echoes the Peale tradition. Skeele is nowhere as minimalist as Peale, however. She is not an artist of "abundance", as in the Dutch tradition, concentrating on a handful of objects in the Peale tradition. But these objects are full of detail.

In Vase of Morning Glories, there are three different kinds of morning glories. Each has a different colored flower, white, pink or blue, and each flower has a slightly different shape. There is also a variety of leaves. All three varieties have the same size bloom, so the variations are subtle. They add interest and complexity to the work. Skeele also shows what the flowers look like in unopened buds. She captures many different stages in the buds' growth, virtually a whole botanical guide to the growth of morning glory flowers. All three varieties of morning glory are white outside, so all the buds are principally white, but several also have markings of blue or pink related to their inside colors. This too shows detailed botanical observation. Skeele loves to show the geometric patterns formed by the curved tendrils. They make complex curves. One remembers the patterns formed by Peale's Watermelon with Morning Glories (1813).

William Joseph McCloskey 1859 - 1941

  • Apples (1896) (Art Across America, plate 3.227)
  • Oranges and Wrappers (AAR Volume 7, Number 1, page 65)

It was apparently a common practice to wrap citrus fruits in paper in that era. It suggests that each orange was a precious jewel, sold separately as a special treat. Today one sees huge piles of oranges in a grocery; such an approach was apparently not favored then. Apparently this is still how the Japanese sell apples: each one wrapped as a gourmet delight. One sees wrapped citrus fruit in John F. Peto. However, they did not emphasize the details of the wrapper the way McCloskey did. The endless folds and curves of the paper are painted with detailed observation. In some ways the papers are in the tradition of the "curved white objects" that are so important in Peale school art. However, they tend to be even more elaborate. Peale school "curved objects" tend to have one over all form: non symmetric, but still one whole pattern. The papers in McCloskey have many regions and folds, each with its own detailed network of creases, tears and curves. The overall pattern of each paper is far too complex to be easily seen as a single gestalt. Instead, the eye wanders over each very detailed section. It is like a map of the world, with each region representing a different country. It is so like, and unlike, the Peale school objects. It might have its roots in them as a visual object, but it has also grown, multiplied and become more elaborate.

It is impossible to wrap a flat object, such as a piece of paper, on a curved surface, such as an orange. This can be stated and proved in mathematically rigorous fashion, by invoking the Gaussian curvature of the surface. We see the practical results of this in McCloskey's pictures, with all the numerous small folds and creases used to get the paper to wrap around the sphere of the orange. We can see the bulge of the orange inside. In Apples (1896), McCloskey also looks at papers lining baskets. These have similar difficulties, lining the inner curved surface of the basket, and McCloskey also shows all of their folds in detail.

McCloskey also like big projecting folds of paper, sticking out either from the rim of a basket, or serving as handles to wrapped citrus fruits. These protruding bunches of paper have a vigorous propulsive quality. They can be centered around a series of straight lines, formed by folds in the paper. If the baskets and rounded oranges are female symbols, these straight protrusions can be seen as male imagery.

McCloskey often worked within the Peale tradition of fruit on a table. He also used the Split Level convention of fruit spilled from a basket. Even his Peale-like fruit on a table looks as if it had spilled and rolled from some now not visible container. It does not look as if it had been arranged by someone into neat geometric patterns, as in the work of the Peale family. McCloskey liked highly reflective surfaces. They tend to be very dark, and just reflect back a hint of the color of the fruit placed on them. He also used inky black backgrounds, which form a dramatic contrast to the white of the paper.

Louis Charles Moeller 1855 - 1930

  • Reading the News (1901) (300 Years of American Art, page 490)
  • Two Friends (AAR Volume 6, Number 4, page 20)

Abbott Fuller Graves 1859 - 1936

  • The Chrysanthemum Show (1886) (Painters of the Humble Truth, plate 23)
  • Roses in a Wicker Basket (AAR Volume 6, Number 6, page 30)
  • View From Marblehead (AAR Volume 7, Number 2, page 9)
  • Flirtation (c1900) (AAR Volume 7, Number 1, page 49)
  • The Basketmakers (c1903 - 1905) (AAR Volume 6, Number 4, page 60)

Although Graves has some signs of being an impressionist in his landscapes, a still life like Roses in a Wicker Basket is quite sharp focused. There is a bit of soft focus in the background leaves, in some of the small bunches of blue flowers, and in some of the fallen petals, but most of the main roses are clear as crystal. Even here, however, the focus is not as sharp as the Peale tradition. The flower petals that have fallen on the polished, reflective surface of the table are marvelously rich. Graves seems to have studied such predecessors as William Mason Brown, when it comes to the painting of the wicker basket itself. The basket is flawless, has a uniform surface, and is made up of rhythmically repeated geometric elements of the weave: all Brown traditions. Just as in The Chrysanthemum Show, there is an effect of a great abundance of one type of flower, a joyous overflowing far beyond a person's expectations of floral richness.

William Sidney Mount 1807 - 1868

  • Spray of Fuchsia (1859) (AAR Volume 8, Number 3, page 22)

Martin John Heade 1819 - 1904

  • Sunset Harbor at Rio (1864) (AAR Volume 6, Number 6, page 126)
  • Roses in a Crystal Vase (AAR Volume 9, Number 1, page 4)
  • Magnolia Flower (c1888) (Painters of the Humble Truth, plate 13)

John La Farge 1835 - 1910

  • Flowers on a Window Ledge (c1862) (Painters of the Humble Truth, plate 15)
  • Yellow Roses in a Blue Glass Vase (c1879) (AAR Volume 6, Number 6, page 33)

Charles Grant Beauregard

  • Red Carnation in a Glass of Water (c1880's) (AAR Volume 10, Number 2, page 151)

The La Farge school often painted beautiful, slightly soft focus flowers, whose stems were in a clear vase full of water. They were not the only still life painters to do so - Severin Roesen used glass vases too, on occasion - but such an approach seems paradigmatic for their school. The glass vases and the water are usually painted in virtuosic fashion, and yet in a manner that emphasizes sheer visual beauty. The whole point of the school is to please viewers as much as possible with the joy and beauty of the flowers. The spirit is similar, and somewhat parallel to, their contemporaries the Impressionists. Everything in La Farge school paintings is pleasingly irregular. Geometry is not emphasized. The flower arrangements tend not to show obvious symmetry. Vases and glasses are not shown at angles that makes them into pure geometric patterns. Instead, they are shown gently to one side. This makes them look like real life glasses.

Beauregard's painting is the simplest possible of all La Farge school paintings, in terms of its design pattern. It shows just one flower, on a long stem. And the "vase" is just a simple glass with water in it. Despite this ultimate reduction in terms of Design Pattern, there is nothing minimalist about Beauregard's actual painting. Both the flower and the water are painted with the sensuous splendor and detail we associate with the La Farge school. The flower head is titled on one side, showing the elegant irregularity of La Farge.

Lucy Drake Marlow 1890 - 1978

  • Oriental Composition with Bearded Iris and Daffodil (1922) (AAR Volume 9, Number 6, page 48)

Marlow's picture sets up a series of echoes: the flowers, the vase and to a lesser degree, the background tapestry all have the same sort of brocade like design. Irises are especially good at making linear patterns. They have beautifully branched stems, and these branching patterns can be the focus of attention in any picture that contains them. The irises themselves make geometric patterns, as so do the pointed leaves. One can see a series of triangles in the irises' arrangement.

Clara L. Deike 1881 - 1964

  • Still Life (1931) (AAR Volume 6, Number 6, page 39)

Deike's Still Life (1931) shows some similarity to the work of Blanche Lazell. Both painters take flowers, and turn them into abstract geometrical shapes, rounded in both cases. Both then leave these shapes in recognizable patterns of bouquets and vases - there is no cubist rearrangement of space. Both painters also favor bright primary colors.

Carl Sprinchorn 1887 - 1971

  • Roses From Chateau-sur-Mer (1936) (AAR Volume 10, Number 2, page 44)

Henrietta Shore 1880 - 1963

  • Clivea (c1930) (AAR Volume 6, Number 4, page 4)

Ida Ten Eyck O'Keeffe 1899 - 1961

  • Banana Tree Leaves (1939) (AAR Volume 6, Number 6, page 49)

This composition shows banana leaves erupting like a fountain from the stalk. It monumentalizes these leaves, in the Georgia O'Keeffe tradition. The background of the painting is in green, yellow, brown and black, the colors used for the leaves and stalks. These are also the archetypal colors of "Mammal Fruits", fruits designed by nature and evolution to appeal to the eyes of mammals such as monkeys, horses, pigs and bats. There is much sense of mystery from the darkened regions of the background. They look as if a storm were brewing in the distance, a huge tropical thunderstorm. The leaves have the buoyant quality that banana leaves have in real life. The leaves are slightly abstracted. They have tremendous variety if shape, being sometimes cut, and crinkled up underneath, just like real banana leaves. O'Keeffe has also picked up on their slight waviness, where the edges of the leaf sometimes curved slightly downward then upward over their length. The curves occur over large distances, just as in real bananas. They also have great variety of color. She also gets their ribbed effect, and the way some sections flap right over the rest of the leaf. However, this painting slightly changes their shape to fit in to O'Keeffe's abstract design. A painter like Raphaelle Peale would have been more exact with the leaves' shape, and also with their glossy surfaces.

Robert Gribbrock 1906 - 1971

  • Epiphyllum (1953) (AAR Volume 9, Number 6, Front Cover, page 5)

Gribbrock's work shows the close ties that exist between the Monumental Flower painters, and the abstract painters. Artists like O'Keeffe and Dove belonged to both schools. Gribbrock was a student of abstractionists Emil Bistram. He painted Epiphyllum, a giant cactus flower floating in space over the Southwest, like one of O'Keeffe's large flowers. Gribbrock's flower is fairly realistically rendered. It is not subtly distorted, like O'Keeffe's, to form abstract patterns. I have seen it dozens of times, on the cover of the American Art Review, and never get tired of looking at it. For a painter today who is entirely obscure, it certainly is a beautiful image.

Jessie Arms Botke 1883 - 1971

  • White Peacocks (c1930) (AAR Volume 9, Number 1, page 25)
  • White Peacocks and Barringtonia (AAR Volume 7, Number 4, page 21)
  • Cockatoo and Datura (AAR Volume 7, Number 2, page 43)

Cornelis Botke 1887 - 1954

  • Untitled Still Life (AAR Volume 10, Number 3, page 41)

Cornelis Botke's work looks much more conservative than his wife's. Untitled Still Life shows zinnias in a brass bowl. The painting is especially good at capturing the texture and shape of the zinnia petals, which stand out stiff and slightly curved in the many layers deep flower heads. Botke is far more clear focused than his Impressionist predecessors, or the Carlsen school. The use of a brass bowl and tapestry backgrounds vaguely recalls Carlsen, but the shininess of the bowl and the clear focus and bright colors of the zinnias seem much brighter than Carlsen's palette. Zinnias, like other members of the Compositae, have their own, special pigments that are chemically distinct. They give zinnias a unique color range, and Botke has caught their colors with considerable flair. Botke has been careful to include many different shapes and colors of zinnias. This is following an American still life tradition of including numerous different varieties of a plant in a single painting. The picture becomes virtually a botany lesson; and the interest of the picture is greatly expanded by all the variation from flower to flower.

The shininess of the bowl seems designed to give pleasure. People love looking at really shiny objects, and Botke is trying to recreate this experience on canvas. The Peale school tended to use porcelain, La Farge and his followers glass vases, and the Carlsen school duller brass objects. So Botke's brass bowl is one of the shiniest brass vessels in any American painting. There is not a tradition of representing this sort of brass bowl, despite their popularity in real life. Botke is of a later generation from any of these schools; one wonders if this sort of object were newly available during his era.

The tapestry behind the flowers also shows flowers. It is a 2D design, that recalls to a degree the essentially 2D quality of his wife's paintings. The long vines hanging down on both sides of the tapestry recall the many pendant objects in Jessie's paintings, such as the peacocks' tails.

Leon Carroll 18? - 19?

  • Tiger Lilies (c1930) (AAR Volume 10, Number 3, page 160)

Carroll's paintings are far more Constructivist than most others of the Monumental Flower School. Tiger Lilies (c1930) is made up of circles, ellipses and straight lines. In fact, the composition is so vibrant considered purely as an abstract design, that it is a bit difficult to see what the painting actually represents. Carroll's uses of natural forms to make geometric patterns recalls the Art Deco of his time; not the paintings labeled Deco, but the furniture, clocks, screens, pottery and other geometric objects in the Deco tradition. Carroll worked as an interior designer, so presumably he had plenty of contact with Deco furnishings. Carroll's work also recalls that of the Russian Constructivist Rodchenko, who also loved circular arcs in his paintings. Carroll's work is a dazzling expression of high energy, and it amazing that his work could be largely forgotten for so long. His painting fits in as much into the traditions of abstract art, as it does into that of flower or still life painting. The brown circular spots on the petals look like the "regions within regions" that were a key part of Kandinsky's aesthetic. His painting also reminds one of Arthur Dove's abstractions based on plants.

The way the lily stamens rise up and fan out, recalls the Fountain motifs that were so popular in Deco grillwork. The painting is made of similar objects, that repeat in regular rhythmic patterns: the anthers, the petals, the stamens. These rhythmic effects look like an attempt to capture the rhythms of music visually. Such visual symphonies were an important part of abstract art. The circular petals look like a freeze frame from an abstract color film by Walter Ruttman or Oskar Fischinger, showing geometric objects on the move. In fact, all the objects of the picture look dynamic, as if they are in the process of rapid movement around on the canvas.

Charles Courtney Curran 1861 - 1942

  • By the Lily Pond (1908) (AAR Volume 10, Number 3, page 26)
  • On the Summit (1918) (AAR Volume 6, Number 6, page 53)

Francis Day 1863 - 1942

  • Symphony (AAR Volume 6, Number 6, page 59)

Francis Day liked pictures of upper middle class women playing music. In Symphony the beautiful young wife is playing the piano, while her handsome young husband and little girl look on listening. Both the wife and husband are dressed to the teeth in fancy clothes, and they are in the family's well appointed library. Day's pictures certainly convey an image of idealized life. The family images and feelings are universal, so is the love of music, while the upper middle class trappings are a fantasy of security. Day's women look far more intellectually accomplished than those of Paxton. They are musically skilled, and suppliers of culture to their grateful homes.

Samuel Coleman 1832 - 1920

  • Springflowers, Granby Meadows (c1859-1860) (AAR Volume 6, Number 6, page 65)
  • Afternoon on Lake George (1863) (AAR Volume 7, Number 1, Inside Front Cover)
  • Emigrant Train Fording Medicine Bow Creek (1870) (AAR Volume 6, Number 6, page 127)
  • Venice (AAR Volume 7, Number 4, page 6)

Samuel Coleman was a spectacular landscape painter. Many of his works are in the same Turner inspired tradition as Edward Moran's.

Coleman occasionally did still lifes. They are flower paintings, and do not seem close to the work of any other painter. Morning Glories shows a mastery of composition.

William Momberger 1829 - 1895

  • Indian Attacked by Bear (1860) (AAR Volume 6, Number 6, page 76)

This painting shows the Indian as a heroic figure, fighting for his life against a ferocious bear. His pose recalls those of the fallen warriors in Benjamin West's historical canvases, such as The Death of General West (17XX). The Indian also has the huge muscles of a noble hero, such as those in Michaelangelo. The Indian's horse is also a noble animal, worthy of its heroic rider. His frenzied look and angularly twisted torso also remind one of the horses in West's paintings, such as Death on a Pale Horse (17XX). The foliage of the grasses seem to be wracked by winds, and in the background a storm seems to be coming on.

Lilly Martin Spencer 1822 - 1902

  • Youth and Age (1848) (AAR Volume 6, Number 6, page 80)
  • The Jolly Washerwoman (1851) (AAR Volume 6, Number 6, page 96)

Spencer was a genre painter, like William Sidney Mount. Like him, the objects included in her paintings can often be considered as a "still life". The objects in The Jolly Washerwoman (1851) are relentlessly circular, although they are mixed in with the rectangular wooden washboard and tabletops. Like Mount, Spencer depicted a world made out of wood. There is also something Chardin like about Spencer's painting of homely kitchen items.

Louis Ritman 1889 - 1963

  • Lady by the Window (1918) (AAR Volume 9, Number 1, page 23)

Louis Ritman's Lady by the Window (1918) has the rich color of a Fauvist painting. There is both a large plant, and a vase of flowers; Ritman's work has the aspect of a still life. Such large plants are very rare in the European Fauve tradition; apparently European painters were scared of such large trees indoors. Ritman is made of sterner stuff, and shows us a tree which is central in the composition.

Rhoda Holmes Nicholls 1854 - 1930

  • Song of the Throstle (AAR Volume 8, Number 3, page 11)
  • The Clothes Pin (c1890's) (AAR Volume 9, Number 1, page 42)

Nicholls' painting The Clothes Pin (c1890's) captures a wonderful moment, that of people playing with animals. Despite the popularity of such events in real life, they are rarely depicted on canvas. Pictures of dogs tend to show them all alone, and imply that they are part of someone's hunting retinue. I've never especially cared for this. Nicholls' work shows a woman moving a clothes pin along on a string. Her pet dog is just fascinated by this, and watching every movement with intensity and joy. The woman is clearly moving the pin slowly. She is balanced and braced by her other hand, resting on a rock; this is the sort of bracing humans do, when they are trying to hold their bodies still. You have to do this when playing string games with animals; keeping your body still emphasizes the slow motion of the clothes pin. Humans do this unconsciously, when playing. Nicholls has also caught the titled head of the dog, paused in inquiry; and his curved tail, which is probably wagging joyfully. The woman is nice looking, and dressed in a bright blue dress that is of pleasing color. But she is not the dressed to the teeth society beauty of so many painters of this generation. Instead, she looks like a nice young woman, taking a break from her washing work to play with her dog. She has a big smile beaming down on the dog.

Nicholls' work is a riot of color, in the impressionist manner. In addition to the blue dress, there is the red ground, perhaps covered by autumn leaves, and the yellow and green background. The white dog and the woman's black shoes and stockings add white and black areas to the painting. Otherwise, it is mainly in primary colors. The painting is not made up of impressionist dot work or blurred focus; instead it is composed of many small regions, almost like Cézanne. Each has its own color, slightly different from its neighbors. Together they make up a huge mosaic. Many of the regions seem to be horizontal brush strokes, of various shapes. They repeat colors throughout on section of the painting; i.e., the lower foreground if full of repeated purple brushstrokes, and other of a salmon or coral color. This use of repeated color brush strokes rather recalls Monet.

The basket work is depicted with more geometric precision than in many parts of Nicholls' work. This suggests she was influenced by the many precise paintings of baskets in American still life tradition, such as William Mason Brown. Even here, the actual wicker of the basket is painted with the repeated strokes of many colors. Combined with the detailed modeling of the black lines separating the weave, this is a marvelously colored portrait of the basket.

Earl Horter 1883 - 1940

  • The Chrysler Building Under Construction (1931) (AAR Volume 7, Number 1, page 127)
  • Untitled Still Life (AAR Volume 9, Number 1, page 45)

Earl Horter is perhaps best known for his Precisionist paintings. But his still life is a cubist work in the style of Picasso. Horter like tall, thin, vertical rectangles in his compositions - and lots of them. While many cubist paintings feature triangles or nearly square rectangles, Horter favored the vertical. Even the handle of a pitcher curves up and forms a vertical rectangular hold. I've never seen a pitcher do this in real life: the effect in the picture is as if the handle has been distorted for the sake of geometric style. The wine bottle in the picture also forms a sharp vertical. The lettering on the bottle is elongated to form similar rectangles. Horter includes two different outlines, both the left and right side of a table leg, and two different outline shapes for the stem of a wine glass. These lines are curved ornamentation on basically vertical structures, and fit in with the grammar of Horter's composition.

Stanton MacDonald-Wright 1890 - 1973

  • Still Life Synchromy (1917) (Painters of the Humble Truth, plate 27)
  • Canyon Synchromy (Orange) (c1919 - 1920) (Art Across America, plate 3.250)
  • Cubist Still Life (1954) (AAR Volume 10, Number 2, page 7)

Still Life Synchromy (1917) shows the S like curves of undulating color, familiar also in the Synchromist works of Morgan Russell. His paintings are also full of overlapping colored triangles.

Paul de Longpré 1855 - 1911

  • Roses La France and Jack Noses with Clematis on a Lattice Work, No. 36 (1900) (Art Across America, plate 3.233)
  • Lilacs, Dogwood and Bees (1900) (AAR Volume 8, Number 3, page 18)
  • Flowers (AAR Volume 9, Number 1, page 78)

Paul de Longpré loved bees, and often showed them visiting flowers in his work. Unlike the memento mori of Raphaelle Peale showing flies visiting peaches, one feels that de Longpré intended such inclusions to be upbeat and joyous. It is an attempt to make viewers almost imagine the smell of his roses or lilacs, suggesting that they small so sweet that they are attracting bees. The bees can be in full flight, and look like the vigorous representatives of a fantasy world. The viewer is also encouraged to wonder what it would be like to be a bee, visiting flowers that look big enough to be houses. After all, this is part of the effect of still life painting: to monumentalize flowers. It is also fun to dream of flying around between them.

There are often delicate color harmonies in de Longpré's work. He liked white, pale green and pink together.

Lydia Field Emmet 1886 - 1952

  • The Red Kimono (AAR Volume 9, Number 1, page 69)

The woman in The Red Kimono seems to be holding a beautiful bunch of red roses that match her dress. Their red is just a bit more intense than the red of the kimono; the green of the leaves is also just a bit sharper than the green lines that interlace the red of the kimono. This gives a beautiful color harmony to the picture.

Samuel Marsden Brookes 1816 - 1892

  • Still Life (1862) (Painters of the Humble Truth, plate 14) (AAR Volume 9, Number 1, page 38)
  • Still Life with Fan and Pendant (AAR Volume 10, Number 2, page 149)
  • Still Life of Apples (300 Years of American Art, page 143)
  • California Mission Grapes (300 Years of American Art, page 143)

Brookes' still lifes lack the clean geometric purity of the Peale tradition. Instead, his pictures are a riot of geometric forms. He likes long, pale colored tubular objects: the vase and closed fan in Still Life with Fan and Pendant, the necks of the birds in Still Life (1862). The many intertwined forms of the later work look like nothing so much as the biomorphic abstractions loved by the Dada (Arp), Surrealist (Miro, Masson, Dali), Abstract Expressionist (Gorky, De Kooning) tradition. Even in a picture like Still Life with Fan and Pendant, which has geometric, not biomorphic forms, the pale color and the complex shapes suggest biological objects. The hole in the fan base where the tassel cord passes through looks like an eye for example, staring out from a head supported by the long "neck" of the fan. The small angel on the vase adds a genuinely biological form to the mix. Brookes also likes his picture with a riotous mix of textures. The many kinds of cloth, string and tassel on the fan produces a great many different surface textures in a very small space at the bottom of the picture. Brookes also likes a great variety of light colored tones, mainly shades of light gray, silver, off white, tan and colors in between, as well as light pinks and pale greens. These make a detailed color harmony in his pictures. His liking for such tones recalls Paolo Veronese, who also used silver colors in his works. Both Veronese and Brookes have a very off trail and unconventional color sense.

Brookes' plant still lifes seem odd. The cut plant branches look as if they are beginning to dry and wither up, just like the dead animals in his pictures.

Still Life (1862) has a two part composition. The left side consists largely of a triangle. The right side of the picture, which is more complex, is made up of a spiral. It starts in the lower right corner, in which a series of vegetables is strangely arranged along the curve. It continues up along the right hand side, and then down towards the center of the picture along the neck of the bird. The whole pattern forms a spiral, similar in shape to the shell of the nautilus. The unexpected spiral itself seems surreal. It adds to the effect of strange abundance in the painting.

Charles Ethan Porter 1847? - 1923

  • Still Life with Apples (Art Across America)
  • Carnations (AAR Volume 9, Number 3, page 14)

Franz Bischoff 1864 - 1929

  • Roses (Art Across America, plate 3.239)
  • Roses (AAR Volume 7, Number 1, page 11)

Bischoff's painting tends to emphasize the rose heads themselves. They are huge 3D objects, bulging with many petals. They tend to be painted either from the side, or head on, with few intermediate angles. He achieves variety among the many roses painted from the side, by varying the angle of their tilting, from either straight down, all the way up to horizontal. Within each rose there is much modeling of light and shadow, with the outer or higher petals casting shadows on the inner. This further enhances their 3D effect. Bischoff arranges his roses into rows. They make slightly curving lines in his picture, usually diagonal.

Carle J. Blenner 1864 - 1952

  • Asters (AAR Volume 7, Number 1, page 19)

Asters is painted in an Impressionist style. Blenner's picture is of asters. Monet, too painted chrysanthemums, and Van Gogh sunflowers. These are all in the Compositae: plants with circular flower heads. They are especially appropriate for an Impressionist work. The basically circular flower heads make beautiful clear designs, even when painted with impressionist blurred focus. By contrast, think what a soft focus picture of fuchsias, say, might be like: just a confused mass of lines. In Blenner's picture, each flower head becomes a glowing mass of color, while its circular outline remains clear, and part of a complex geometric design of circular heads and linear stems.

Blenner has put bright white asters at the center of the picture, facing the viewer head on. Surrounding them are the pale purple asters. The red asters, which are the brightest of the three colors, are all seen on an angle, either turned to the side or hanging down. The colors range from whitest to most intense, white to purple to red, from the center of the composition to its periphery. Blenner gets a 3D effect, by having asters turned in every direction. The flowers are facing all 360 degrees of the circle - it is a radially symmetric arrangement.

Robert Jenkins Onderdonk 1852 - 1917

  • Military Plaza, San Antonio, Texas (AAR Volume 7, Number 2, page 24)
  • Still Life with Roses (AAR Volume 7, Number 1, page 22)

Onderdonk's still lifes are in the tradition of Emil Carlsen.

Onderdonk's brother Julius Onderdonk was also a well known Texas painter. It is an unfortunate fact that there are dozens of movies about the James Brothers, and none about the Onderdonk Brothers.

Minerva J. Chapman 1858 - 1947

  • Chapman's Studio (AAR Volume 7, Number 2, page 25)
  • Girl in a Wine Shop (AAR Volume 7, Number 2, page 25)
  • Banana Still Life (AAR Volume 7, Number 2, page 25)

Chapman's still lifes are in the tradition of Emil Carlsen. She also painted interiors filled with many objects, which function in many ways as gigantic still lifes, in the tradition of many of her contemporaries. In Banana Still Life, the yellow color of the bananas, large and small apples is quite similar, and they all echo each other. Similarly, the oranges and the yellow grapes towards the left have somewhat related colors. The painting as a whole is made up of a few shades of yellow, orange and brown, with just a hint of purple in the purple brown grapes. Everything is quite dark, and dimly lit, as in Carlsen. The yellow grapes at the left glow with light with a special beauty. There is a pleasing emphasis on the round forms of the apples, the oranges, and the circular plates, as well as the curve of the bananas. Chapman makes the corner of the table jut out into the picture, in a way rarely found in the Peale school tradition. It adds a further geometric element to the composition. The tilted rectilinear coordinates of the table are further underlined by the boards that make up the table top, and two knives that are aligned with the two axes of the table. The position of the fruit also follows the tables grid, with the two front apples aligned with it, the position of the bananas parallel to it, and two of the plates more or less in a row along it. All of the fruits are nearly the same height, with a gentle sloping from right to left.

Hobson Pittman 1899 - 1972

  • Strawberries in a Glass (1969) (AAR Volume 7, Number 4, Inside Back Cover)