One of my favorite paintings when seen up close appears very abstract and non-objective.
You may not be able to figure out what this artist was painting; even what genre.
It's one of the interesting things about painting. What can sometimes look like a mess of brush
work when seen up close can transform into an incredible work of art when seen at a distance,
such as with this landscape by Abbott Thayer.
The reverse is true as well. Have you ever been to an art museum or an art exhibition,
been captured by a particular painting, and when you got up close (or as close as they'll
let you) you see that the brush work hardly makes sense? Then there are other paintings
(often academic paintings) where the brushwork is almost as refined as it appears from a distance.
This piece by Thayer fascinates me. His values and colors are fantastic.
And look how loosely he paints the base of the trees and the foot of the mountain.
I love how the right side is blurred and the left is harsh.
And how together they pleasingly lead the eye to the base of the mountain, then up to the snow cap,
and off to the left where the greens in the mountain are sunlit. That's how my eye flows.
Your eye may see it differently. But the focal point, I'd say, is that snow-covered mountaintop.
Notice his choice of color for the mountain; the violet, or we could really call it lavender.
It works so well with his touches of green. It's not a very colorful painting,
in general. The blue in the sky is barely noticeable, but the strength
of that lavender color and the way the colors we do see work together make it feel colorful.
I love how the trees are done too. They're simply conveyed through a creative mass of
darks that have identifiable edges and some key broken strokes of black. It's magnificent.
I also like how he balances the painting. The white at the base is nearly solid. I like that.
It lets my eye rest and feels shadowed. The middle region almost acts as a unit, separating the two
lighter areas. They're kind of bands of value. Then those wonderful, bold, sporadic strokes
of pale lavender gently tie the light regions together. It's just such a fun piece to look
at and so visually pleasing. You can tell that he was emotionally engaged when he painted it.
This mountain wasn't far from his home in Dublin, New Hampshire. In fact, he could see it from his
studio window. It's called Monadnock Mountain and he not only painted it, but explored it on foot.
He was enthralled by the mountain and was able to observe it in all different seasons and lights.
You could almost say he was obsessed with it. But I prefer to say that it was his
ultimate inspiration, and it's reflected in his many, many renditions of the scene.
But this one is my favorite. I had the chance to see it in
person recently. My husband and I were exploring the Freer Museum in Washington DC, when I suddenly
came upon a display of Thayer's work. I actually never realized it was housed there. It was such
a delight to stumble upon it! It was even more impressive in person, as is usually the case.
His brush work and his colors...they're so confident and experimental.
But he wasn't just a landscape painter. He was a skilled portrait painter as well
and happened to paint one of my all-time favorite floral paintings.
But perhaps more importantly, he was a lover of nature and spent a lot of time studying
the colors in nature, noticing how animals were made to naturally blend into their surroundings.
When World War One began, Thayer used this knowledge to develop what would
eventually be known as camouflage. He convinced the Allies that they could
mimic the coloration techniques in order to better conceal troops and equipment.
Eventually they integrated the idea. Thayer was the father of camouflage.