West Point of Prout's Point Scarborough Maine By Winslow Homer, c 1905

West Point of Prout's Neck, Scarborough Maine By Winslow Homer, c 1905

Winslow Homer the American Artist That Started as a Civil War Painter and Captured the Essence of Nature Through His Artistry

Winslow Homer was an American painter and printmaker who lived from 1836 to 1910. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, he is widely regarded as one of the most important American artists of the 19th century. Homer was a master of various art forms, including oil paintings, watercolor paintings, and wood engravings. His work is characterized by his powerful and dynamic compositions, as well as his keen eye for detail and his vivid use of color.

Winslow Homer's career as a painter began with his realist paintings of the US Civil War. Sent to the frontlines as a war correspondent, Homer documented the war through his engravings ranging from chaotic battle scenes to quiet moments of the soldier's everyday lives. Homer’s images came to visually define the war as "illustrated news" to a broad swath of the public in the Northern States. Later, Homer translated several of these drawings into a series of oil paintings that revealed the artist's insight into the life of Union soldiers.

Prisoners From The Front by Winslow Homer, c 1866 

Homer's early work was heavily influenced by the Hudson River School of painting, which was popular at the time. This style emphasized the grandeur of nature and celebrated the American landscape. Homer's early works, such as "Snap the Whip" and "The Hunting of the Deer," reflect this style, depicting bustling rural scenes and dramatic landscapes.

Guide Carrying a Deer by Winslow Homer, c 1891

"Snap the Whip" (1872), depicts a group of children playing a game of whip in a rural setting. The bright, sunny day and the children's energetic movements are captured in a lively, spontaneous style that characterizes much of Homer's work.

Snap the Whip by Winslow Homer, c 1872

"The Herring Net" (1885) captures the action of a group of fishermen hauling in their catch. The dynamic movement and the tension in the bodies of the fishermen create a sense of excitement and drama, while the bright sunlight and the sparkling sea make the painting a visual feast.

The Herring Net by Winslow Homer, c 1885

As Homer matured as an artist, he began to develop a more individual style. He spent much of the Civil War years traveling and sketching in the South, and his experiences there helped to shape his mature style. Homer's paintings from this period, such as "Prisoners from the Front" and "The Herring Net," are characterized by their vivid, powerful imagery and their intense focus on the human condition.

Casting by Winslow Homer, c 1894

One of Homer's most famous works, "Breezing Up," was painted in 1876 and is considered a masterpiece of American art. This painting features a group of men in a sailboat, with the wind filling the sails and the waves crashing against the hull. The energy and movement of the painting is palpable, and the vivid colors and strong lines capture the excitement and power of the sea.

Breezing Up by Winslow Homer, c 1873

Homer's watercolors are equally impressive, and he is widely regarded as one of the greatest American watercolorists of all time. His watercolor paintings, such as "Good Nights" and "The Gulf Stream," are characterized by their bright, luminous colors and their spontaneous, loose brushwork.

Northeaster by Winslow Homer, c 1895

"The Gulf Stream" (1899) - This watercolor painting features a lone sailor in a small boat, surrounded by the raging seas of the Gulf Stream. The bright colors and loose brushwork create a sense of movement and energy, while the intense focus on the sailor's face conveys a sense of determination and resilience.

The Gulf Stream by Winslow Homer, c 1899

In addition to his paintings, Homer was also a skilled printmaker. His wood engravings, such as "The Country School" and "The Country House," are considered some of the best examples of American wood engraving from the late 19th century. These works are characterized by their powerful imagery, their bold lines, and their striking use of light and shadow.

Country School by Winslow Homer, c 1866 

 Eagle Head Manchester by Winslow Homer, c 1870

These are just a few examples of Winslow Homer's extensive body of work. His paintings, watercolors, and wood engravings are widely regarded as some of the best examples of American art from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his influence can still be felt in the work of contemporary artists today.

In The Garden by Winslow Homer, c 1874

Winslow Homer was an exceptional artist who made a lasting impact on American art. His powerful, dynamic paintings and his masterful use of color and light have inspired generations of artists and continue to captivate audiences today. Homer's legacy as a great American artist will continue to be celebrated and revered for many years to come.

Boys Wading by Winslow Homer, c 1873

Nasturtium Flowers by Kônan Tanigami 1917-1924

Kônan Tanigami, 1879–1928, was born in the Hyogo region of Japan. He is best known as a "Kachō-e Nihon-ga" artist. Kachō-e concentrates on studies of birds and flowers, as well as other scenes from nature, and Nihon-ga describes Japanese paintings from about 1900 onwards that have been made in accordance with traditional Japanese artistic conventions and techniques.

  Spring Daffodil Flowers by Kônan Tanigami 1917-1924

In his lifetime Tanigami produced 5 volumes of paintings of Western plants.

Tanigami’s first 2 books were a set of works created in woodblocks, beautiful vibrant garden flowers in full bloom.  It is called Seiyo Soka Zofu, or a Pictorial Book of Western Flowers and was very carefully researched and included a great variety of western flowers. 

 Vintage flower illustrations and prints from Seiyo Soka Zufu by Japanese kacho-e artist Konan Tanigami. Beautiful floral paintings of Western Garden plants from our own original edition of the folio, published 1917 in Kyoto, Taisho Era.

In 1917 the Japan Fine Arts Exhibition - The Imperial Exhibition also known as Teiten selected Tanigami to produce a series of 24 peony prints. In 1923, after the close of the exhibition, the peony scenes were published in 2 volumes of pictures and then a 3-volume series named 'Shokei Kakicho' (meaning a Book of Flower Forms and Shapes). These books were excellent quality, both the images and the quality of paper that they were printed on.  These books stand out as superior to the smaller floral subjects previously produced in the Japanese print world.

Spring Flowers by Kônan Tanigami 1917-1924

He then produced 2 volumes which were each devoted to the summer and spring seasons, while the fifth volume was a combination of the plants and flowers that flourished in the winter autumn and seasons. Tanigami is often known for this signature peony series.

  Dahlia Flowers by Kônan Tanigami 1917-1924

Tanigami's style, techniques and color gradation elevated his works of nature and flowers above the traditional. He is still celebrated as one of the finest artists of this highly specialized technique. 

  Cyclamen Flowers by Kônan Tanigami 1917-1924

Leonetto Cappiello The Father of Modern Advertising

Leonetto Cappiello, 1875 – 1942, was an Italian and French poster art designer and painter, whose art and life were centered in the Paris France art scene.  Cappiello is often referred to as the father of modern advertising, and he has truly earned this honor with his innovation in poster design. When Cappiello began painting advertising posters, they were characterized by early poster artists such as Jules Chéret, Alfred Choubrac and Hugo D'Alesi as having a “fine art quality”. Cappiello was the first poster artist to use bold figures popping out of black backgrounds, a startling contrast to the advertising posters early norm. Leonetto  Cappiello's Self Portrait Cariacture circa 1905

Cappiello was born in the small coastal town of Livorno in Tuscany in 1875. He enjoyed a comfortable middle-class childhood.  He had no formal training as an artist – he was entirely self-taught.

Ermete Novelli & Giacomo Puccini, 1898. These are the first works Cappiello sold upon arriving in Paris.

Cappiello first showed his work in 1892 at a group exhibition in Florence. His initial focus was on portraits and caricatures, and in 1896 he produced his first album of caricatures called Lanterna Magica. In 1898 he made his way to Paris, where he began painting caricatures for the French publication Le Rire. He then branched out to newspapers and other journals.

In 1902, Cappiello’s 24-page book of his caricatures was published entitled Gens du Monde, or “People of High Society” for the magazine L'Assiette au Beurre. The following year, he published a 38-page book entitled Le Théâtre de Cappiello, “The Theatre of Cappiello”, for a special issue of Le Théâtre magazine, with captions written by theatre critics. In 1899 he received his first poster commission for the newspaper Frou-Frou, and in 1900 he signed a poster art contract with the printer Pierre Vercasson, which he fulfilled at the same time as his caricature work. Meanwhile, the Parisian poster scene was experiencing something of a decline. In 1900, Jules Cheret abandoned chromolithographic posters to concentrate on painting. In 1901, Toulouse-Lautrec died, and 3 years later the Art Nouveau designer Alphonse Mucha departed Paris for America and Czechoslovakia.

Leonetto Cappiello's Caricatures of Parisian Celebrities

Cappiello had moved away from caricature work and concentrated on posters by 1905. In his final caricature book 70 Dessins de Cappiello, or “70 drawings by Cappiello” by H. Floury, Cappiello included black and white lithographic prints as well as a handful of color images.  

Leonetto Cappiello's Frou Frou Advertisement Circa 1905

Cappiello married Suzanne Meyer Cappiello in 1901 and lived in Paris in the center of the art community. Cappiello’s career as a poster artist began in earnest in 1900 when he began his contract with Vercasson. In this period, the printers would act as an agent for artists and commission work to them. Vercasson had a print house, and his goal was to bring vibrancy and color to the streets of Paris, he wanted the posters that he produced to stand out from the rest and attract lucrative new advertisers to his agency. Vercasson was very active in the Paris art scene, and had seen many examples of Cappiello’s work, including a small number of posters already produced and those for Le Frou-Frou.

Leonetto Cappiello Vintage Italian Food Advertisement circa 1914

Vercasson knew that Cappiello had the potential to be exactly what he was looking for. The relationship commenced with the arrangement that Vercasson would find the clients and brief Cappiello on the product. It was then up to Cappiello to produce a sketch for the client for which he would receive the fee of 500 francs, a good amount at the time. Once the design had been approved by the client, a full-size design would be produced for the poster.  Cappiello was responsible for ensuring the successful transfer of the design onto lithographic stone ready for printing.

Leonetto Cappiello Advertisement for Breath Mints circa 1920

Art Nouveau poster style was in decline which provided the opportunity for a young ambitious artist- designer like Cappiello, who immediately set to work applying his skills as a caricaturist to poster art.  His style was very different than the status quo of the day.  Instead of relying on complex, stylized and painterly designs used by previous poster artists, Cappiello focused on instant visual impact, clean lines, and his images were more appropriate to the faster pace of the 20th-century. In sharp contrast to his predecessors, Cappiello images provided a simple visual symbol for a product and could create a much more powerful advertising message than all the floral art masterpieces that were in fashion at the time.

Leonetto Cappiello Advertisement for La Cruz del Campo Beers circa 1926

No matter what he was advertising -fashion, alcohol, or food, Cappiello employed simple strong images which brought an attention-grabbing sense of humor to every poster he made.  In addition to gaining widespread visibility, the technique of using single bold images was also extremely effective in brand-building, as certain products became closely associated with certain images. During the period 1901-1914, Cappiello produced several hundred color lithographic posters that revolutionized the art of poster design.

Leonetto Cappiello Advertisement for Pink Pills for Pale People circa 1910

During World War I, Cappiello worked as an interpreter in Italy. The world changed during and after the war, and so did advertising. It moved on… The post-war mood across Europe changed. The war had smashed the traditional aesthetics, replacing them with the power of technology and machines. In decorative art and design, the organic idiom of Art Nouveau was being replaced by the machine-age style of a new international movement known as Art Deco. The new icons of power and speed were reflected in Art Deco's simplified, sleek shapes, and angular script. Artists such as Tamara de Lempicka and A.M Cassandre, were now more popular which supplanted Cappiello's position as the dominant designer.

Leonetto Cappiello Advertisement for Travel circa 1921

Cappiello had an amazing career. He worked until his death in February 1942, creating more than 1,700 posters for food, liquor, travel agencies, autos, and theatrical events.  He was one of the most successful poster designers of the 20th century. His work is cherished and in high demand to this day. Cappiello influenced a new generation of designers that started in Europe and spread throughout the world.  He ranks alongside Jules Cheret and Alphonse Mucha as a pioneer of poster art. His works can be seen in most of the best art museums in the United States and Europe.

Leonetto Cappiello Advertisement for Coffee circa 1922

THE ART AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF WALTER CRANE

Walter Crane, 1845-1915, was an English artist and book illustrator. Born in London, he was a founding member of both the Art Workers Guild (1884) and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society (1888) and later was President of the Royal College of Art. Walter was an advocate of new art movements and as his art developed, he became an admirer and proponent of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Crane studied under and was a diligent student of the renowned artist and critic John Ruskin. Politically radical, he became a prominent Socialist and was a close friend and colleague of William Morris. But as you can see in his art he had a good sense of humor – and loved fantasy and anthropomorphism which he was able to indulge in his contribution to children’s literature.

Walter Crane-Illustrator

Crane was the second son of Thomas Crane, who was a portrait painter and miniaturist.  As a child Crane took a keen interest in art and worked in his father's studio sketching the hands and faces of his father's portrait commissions.

Walter Crane started his development as an artist in his father’s studio. He then progressed to engraver’s draughtsman, which meant that he transferred an artist’s designs onto the engraver’s wood blocks.  Later he became an illustrator in his own right, contributing to books and magazines. His success there led to commissions designing wallpaper, tiles, and other household goods.  As a wood-engraver Crane had an opportunity to study his contemporary artists whose work passed through his hands, of Pre-Raphaelites Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais, as well as Alice in Wonderland illustrator Sir John Tenniel and Frederick Sandys. During this time Crane studied Japanese color prints and applied the style to a series of toy books, which started a new fashion.

Crane painted a set of colored page designs to illustrate Tennyson's “Lady of Shalott” which earned him acclaim and he found recognition and approval of wood-engraver William James Linton, to whom Walter Crane was apprenticed for three years (1859–1862).

Linton saw Crane’s aptitude for drawing and design and gave him assignments to improve his skills. In 1862, Crane’s apprenticeship came to an end, but his drawing skills and his contacts through Linton earned him an invitation to work as an illustrator for Edmund Evans, the leading woodblock color printer of the time.

In the 1860s, color printing with wood blocks was a promising new aspect of the expanding book market, which was quickly growing thanks to the increasing literacy rate. Evans first employed Crane to design book covers for his “yellow back” (referring to the yellow enameled covering paper that didn’t show wear as quickly) novels when he was only eighteen years old. Though Crane quickly adapted to the coloring work, it was his difficulty with rendering everyday scenes that prompted Evans to move him from “yellow backs” to children’s books, where he could apply his imagination to illustrate children’s nursery rhymes and fairy tales in short, inexpensive picture books referred to as Toy Books (popular in the Victorian era) for Routledge Publishing. Crane illustrated thirty-seven toy books over the next ten years, earning him the title “academician of the nursery,” and effectively pigeon-holing his artistic style as that of a children’s book illustrator.

Though his work with Evans during this time made him the most famous children’s book illustrator of his day, Crane was not enthusiastic about this moniker, and did not think much of the Toy Books that he was illustrating.  He was quoted as saying “They were not very inspiring. These were generally careless and unimaginative woodcuts, very casually colored by hand…” Despite his chagrin for the simplicity of children’s book illustration, Crane did devote a great deal of time to his designs, and to the way that children viewed pictures.

Crane’s early books were heavily influenced by Japanese woodblock prints, with flat, decorative compositions and deep perspective. He, like the Pre-Raphaelites, viewed each book as a work, in which every design element was reflective of the whole, including the covers and endpapers.

In 1865, Crane visited an art gallery in Piccadilly, London where he viewed Work, a painting by Ford Madox Brown. Though this piece did not have an immediate impact on his artistic style, the subject matter did have a profound impact on his long-term career. The painting shows historian Thomas Carlyle and F.D. Maurice, head of the Christian Socialist Movement observing the labors of a group of working-class men. Madox Brown’s revolutionary painting was a milestone for British art because it was the first time an artist had deemed a working-class person a subject worthy of painting. Crane’s artistic career was composed of political works, focused on the Socialist movement, and his non-political works, which were often considered to be his best pieces. Crane viewed art as a tool for revolution, an implement that could be used to change the minds of society. He worked on Socialist pamphlets and posters when he was not illustrating children’s books. An example of his political views being applied to children’s literature can be seen in his successful illustrations for Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm (1882). Considered by many to be one of his most notable works, these illustrations were filled with historical and allegorical connotations that spoke to the political consciousness of social reform.

Walter Crane married Mary Frances Andrews on 6th September 1871. They spent the next eighteen months in Italy, where he painted portraits, landscapes and continued his book illustrations. He had paintings accepted by the Royal Academy and had several exhibitions in London art galleries.

Walter Crane the Socialist

In 1884, Crane and Morris joined the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). Its leader, H. M. Hyndman, had been converted to socialism by reading the works of Karl Marx. Crane contributed illustrations for the party journal Justice that was edited by Henry Hyde Champion. As he later explained that he agreed to work for free as "all the work on the journal was gratuitous, from the writers of the articles to the compositors and printers." In one of his most popular drawings, "Capitalism was represented as a vampire fastening on a slumbering workman, and an emblematic figure of Socialism endeavors to arouse him to a sense of his danger by the blast of a clarion.”

William Morris speaking from a wagon in Hyde Park, May 1 1894 by Walter Crane

 On 13th November 1887 Walter Crane was involved, along with William Morris in what became known as Bloody Sunday, when three people were killed and 200 injured during a public meeting in Trafalgar Square. Crane later recalled, "I never saw anything more like real warfare in my life - only the attack was all on one side." The police, despite their numbers, apparently thought they could not cope with the crowd. The following week, a friend, Alfred Linnell, was fatally injured during another protest demonstration and this event resulted in Morris’s writing Death Song. Crane provided the cover drawing for this work. Crane, because of a suggestion made by his friend and fellow socialist George F. Watts, provided twelve designs that illustrated heroic deeds carried out by working-class people. This included Alice Ayres, who died while rescuing three children from a fire, and two Paisley railway workers who were killed during an attempt to help others in trouble. This work was first shown at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in 1890.

Walter Crane became a close friend of Oscar Wilde, who also held socialist beliefs. Wilde, who was editor of Woman's World, commissioned him to provide illustrations for the magazine. In 1888 Crane also contributed three full-page illustrations for Wilde's highly successful book, The

Crane, like many socialists, believed that wars were often begun by capitalists for reasons of commerce rather than for idealism. In 1900 Crane resigned from the Fabian Society over its decision not to condemn the Boer War. Walter Crane published his autobiography, An Artist's Reminiscences in 1907. In the book he attempted to explain why he had spent so much of his life fighting for socialism: "Such experiences convinced me that freedom in any country is measured by the impunity with which unpopular opinions can be uttered - especially those advocating drastic political or social changes"

Crane's work contributed a lasting impression on the art of the labour movement in Britain. Between the 1880s and World War I, the socialist artwork developed by Crane can be seen on posters, pamphlets, membership cards and trade union banners. Crane's work was also widely circulated in Europe, and in Italy and Germany his reputation as an artist was greater than it was in England.

Crane’s most famous work is often considered to be the illustrations he created for Edmund Spenser’s 16th century epic poem, The Faerie Queen (originally published 1590). The design elements of the Arts and Crafts movement clearly influenced Crane’s style in these illustrations. Like John Ruskin, Edward Burne-Jones, and William Morris, Crane was looking back to the English Gothic style for inspiration, viewing it as an honest time where the artists were craftsmen, and the craftsmen were artists. Crane’s focus on the design of an entire book as a cohesive whole are especially evident in this tome, as the intricate borders mesh seamlessly with the medieval scenes. His illustrations for The Faerie Queen (1894-1897) garnered such high praise that it is one of the most beautiful works of the late 19th century Arts and Crafts movement. Crane’s intricately decorated borders, calligraphy, and Gothic Revival images blend into one harmonious whole, echoing lavish creations by William Morris and his Kelmscott Press.

At this point in the late 19th century, there was a shift towards referencing the medieval era as a pastoral, idyllic period of time, which Crane and the followers of the Arts and Crafts movement perpetuated. The industrialization of England inspired many to reminisce and look to the past for simpler, “honest” work that connected them to nature and the land. This yearning for a connection to nature may be part of what drew Crane to work primarily with woodblock prints, a natural technique that was often used in the medieval era, and earlier. This method certainly connected him with the past, as well as with natural materials, and yielded an old-fashioned, less polished appearance appropriate for the fantastical and historical stories he illustrated.

Walter Crane the Author

Walter Crane also wrote books, including Of the Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New (1896), India Impressions (1907), and An Artist’s Reminiscences (1907). Much of his writing and illustrating, especially later in his life, was focused on his socialist politics, which had a lasting impact on the art of the labour movement in Britain, and heightened his artistic reputation in Europe, especially Germany. His populist approach to art ensured that he exerted a great deal of influence on illustration and book design at the end of the 19th century, arguably more than William Morris. Throughout the 1890s Crane contributed to socialist periodicals that published his political cartoons featuring themes that more subtly permeated his earlier work. This continued until the end of his career.

On 18th December 1914 Crane's wife Mary was found dead on the railway line near Kingsnorth in Kent. The couple had been married for forty-four years and Crane was devastated by her death. Walter Crane died three months later in Horsham Hospital, on 14th March 1915. When Crane died in 1915 his obituary in The Times summed him up as “one of the chiefs of those artists who redeemed English design from hopeless and incompetent ugliness.”  But it continued “if we were less familiar with his work, we should see its originality more clearly. But we have known it since our childhood, when we enjoyed his children’s books so much that, rather ungratefully, we have never enjoyed any of his works so keenly since.”

Grant Wood, 1891-1942, was one of the principal Artistic Regionalists of the 1930s. He depicted his Iowan subjects in a deliberately primitive manner, almost satirizing them. His art was highly influenced by the volatile events of World War One and The Great Depression.  The name Grant Wood brings to mind, the Midwest, farms and traditional Americana. Wood used his art to portray his perception of the American Midwest, its people, and his ideas of the American Legacy in his art.

Grant Wood Sketching

Grant Wood was born on Feb. 13, 1891, at Anamosa, Iowa. His father, a farmer, died in 1901, and the family moved to Cedar Rapids. There Grant took drawing lessons from local artists and attended high school. He studied design briefly in Minneapolis at the Handicraft Guild, taught school near Cedar Rapids, and then took a job in 1913 in a silversmith shop in Chicago and attended night classes at the Art Institute. In 1916 he registered at the Art Institute for full-time study as a "fresco painter."

During World War One Wood served in Washington, D.C., where he made clay models of field gun positions and helped camouflage artillery pieces. After teaching art in a Cedar Rapids high school, he left for Europe in 1923. He spent most of the next 14 months in Paris, where he studied at the Académie Julian. The paintings he did in Paris were in an impressionistic manner.

Yes, believe it or not Grant Wood started out as an Impressionist painter. Like the Impressionist artist Claude Monet, they both studied the colors and light of the natural world to create works during different seasons, times of day, and places.

In 1927 Wood received a commission for a stained-glass window memorializing the veterans of World War I to be installed in the Cedar Rapids City Hall. To learn the technique of stained glass he went to Munich. There he admired the work of the 15th-century French and German primitive painters and began to work in a linear, primitivizing style. When he returned to The United States In the late 1920s he painted portraits of his mother and local Iowans.

Grant Wood was one of the first artists to promote and create art in the Regionalism movement.  Wood and his contemporaries strived to create art that was uniquely American. It is both ironic and intriguing that in this struggle he was influenced by European styles from the Renaissance to Impressionism.

In 1930 Grant Wood finished American gothic. Grant Wood's American Gothic—the double portrait of a pitchfork-wielding farmer and a woman commonly presumed to be his wife—is perhaps the most recognizable painting in 20th century American art, an indelible icon of Americana, and certainly Wood's most famous artwork.

An example of his use of Regionalism is his painting The Birthplace of Herbert Hoover, depicting the home where the president was born in West Branch, Iowa. Wood painted this before the house became a landmark, and it is located near where Wood grew up. By painting and naming this specific scene he is predicting its historical importance and creating a tie between rural America, the presidency, and even himself.

As Wood painting style evolved, he uses his signature bird’s eye view perspective so that the viewer feels as if he or she is looking down upon the scene rather than at an eye level. The perspective is so zoomed in that the viewer can see each individual tree leaf and even tiny acorns placed at the very top of a tree. His scenes are like miniature reproductions of towns, and it creates a dream-like appearance even though he is depicting real places.  His trees are enormous compared to the homes he illustrates, emphasizing how nature dominates over the homes and people. He idealized the countryside and disliked the large urban settings, using Regionalism to depict the contrasts between man and nature. Regionalism was used to not only depict life in the country but to give voices to those who did not have one in cosmopolitan cities.

Wood’s interpretation of the Midwestern landscape and its people were nostalgic and reminded people of the traditional way of rural life that was largely disappearing. With the rise of industrialized cities, Wood’s paintings have become a record of what life was like during his time. They are nostalgic because his landscapes look like something from a daydream, but they also showcase the realities of people’s lives in rural towns. His paintings portray real images of his childhood, and they became a way for him to hold onto those sentimental memories. With this perspective, his works are melancholy in the hopes that civilization would return to their roots of being an agricultural nation. 

In addition to his landscape paintings, Wood created American imagery that contained satirical and political themes. Parson Weems’ Fable depicts Parson Weems himself pulling back a curtain to show a depiction of his tale of George Washington cutting down a cherry tree and not being able to tell a lie. Wood utilizes this image to literally “pull away the curtain” and showcase the reality behind the myth.

Wood died relatively young of pancreatic cancer, one day before his 51st birthday in 1942. His estate went to his sister Nan Wood Graham, the model for the female in “American Gothic.” When she died in 1990, her estate, along with Grant Wood’s personal effects and various works of art, became the property of the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa.

Self Portrait.  Grant Wood updated and repainted his self portrait many times and at his death did not consider it finished.

Grant Wood was one of the major Regionalists, a group of painters who in the 1930s employed a variety of naturalistic styles.

American Regionalism was an American realist modern art movement that included paintings, murals, lithographs, and illustrations depicting realistic scenes of rural and small-town America primarily in the Midwest. It grew in the 1930s as a response to the Great Depression and ended in the 1940s with the end of World War II. Regionalism reached was popular from 1930 to 1935, with its reassuring images of the American heartland during the Great Depression. Despite major stylistic differences between specific artists, Regionalist art in general was a conservative and traditionalist style that appealed to popular American sensibilities, while strictly opposing the perceived domination of French art

Before World War II, the concept of Modernism was not clearly defined within the context of American art. There was a struggle to define a uniquely American art.  On the path to determining what American art would be, some American artists rejected the modern trends European influences. By rejecting European abstract styles, American artists chose to adopt academic realism, which depicted American urban and rural scenes. Due to the Great Depression, Regionalism became one of the dominant art movements in America in the 1930s. In This era the United States was heavily agricultural.  A small portion of the United States population was living in industrial cities.

American Regionalism is best known through its "Regionalist Triumvirate" consisting of the three most highly respected artists of America's Great Depression era: Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry. All three studied art in Paris, but devoted their lives to creating a truly American form of art. They believed that the solution to urban problems in American life and the Great Depression was for the United States to return to its rural, agricultural roots.

American Modernism

When World War II ended, Regionalism and Social Realism lost status in the art world. The end of World War II ushered in a new era of peace and prosperity, and the Cold War brought a change in the political perception of Americans and allowed Modernist critics to gain power. Regionalism and Social Realism also lost popularity among American viewers due to a lack of development within the movement due to the primarily rural subject matter. Abstract expressionism became the new prominent and popular artistic movement.

Norman Rockwell and Andrew Wyeth were the primary successors to Regionalism's natural realism. Rockwell became widely popular with his illustrations of the American family in magazines. Wyeth on the other hand painted Christina's World, which competes with Wood's American Gothic for the title of America's favorite painting.

Regionalism has had a strong and lasting influence on popular culture, particularly in America. It has given America some of its most iconic pieces of art that symbolize the country. Regionalist-type imagery influenced many American children's book illustrators and still shows up in advertisements, movies, and novels today.

Lotus Flower and a Dragonfly by Ohara Hōson Shōson

Ohara Hōson Shōson The Japanese Painter of Nature

Ohara Koson, also known as Ohara Hōson or Ohara Shōson, was a Japanese painter and woodblock print designer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, part of the shin-hanga ("new prints") movement.

Photograph of Koson around the age of 53

If you’ve read some of my earlier blogs about other Asian artists, you’ll notice that it was very common to use what are called “Art Names” or pseudonyms, (called gō in Japanese, or hao in Mandarin), which some artists adopted at different stages of their career to mark significant changes in their life or work. Extreme practitioners of this tendency were Tang Yin of the Ming dynasty, who had more than ten hao, and Hokusai of Japan, who in the period 1798 to 1806 alone used no fewer than six. In Ohara’s case, he was born Ohara Matao (Ohara is the family surname), and during his lifetime, used several different "go" names, including Shoson, Koson, and Hoson.

Boat and Setting Sun by Ohara Koson Shoson by Ohara Hōson Shōson

Little is known about Ohara.  He was born in Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture in the North of Japan around 1877.  It is thought that he started training at the Ishikawa Prefecture Technical School in 1889–1893, where he studied painting and design, and studied with the painter Suzuki Kason (1860-1908) either while there or after he moved to Tokyo. It is likely that he received his first “go” (artist’s name) Koson from Kason.

Ohara’s career bridged the era between the decline of the full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e) in the late 19th and early 20th century, and the emergence of the Shin-hanga ("new print") movement in the 1910s.

Two women in the snow on Yanagi Bridge by Ohara Hōson Shōson

Around 1900 he became a teacher at the Tokyo Bijutsu Gakko (Tokyo School of Fine Arts), where he is said to have met the American Ernest Fenollosa (1853-1908), then a professor at the Tokyo Imperial University, now the University of Tokyo, and an advocate of the traditional Japanese arts. Under Fenollosa’s encouragement, Koson began producing kachō-e (bird and flower) prints and exhibiting his paintings and woodcuts in the United States.  Now considered the most important and prolific kachō-e artist, Ohara  created around 500 prints and met with great success in the Western world, particularly the United States and Europe. He has only recently received attention in his native Japan following the discovery of important reference material including original sketches and paintings for his prints.

While in Tokyo, he produced many ukiyo-e triptychs illustrating episodes of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) and earned his money with them.  However, the bulk of his art were prints of birds-and-flowers (kachō-e). At first, he worked with publishers Akiyama Buemon (Kokkeidō) and Matsuki Heikichi (Daikokuya), This was where he signed his work Koson.

Mallard Ducks in Flight by Ohara Hōson Shōson

In the following years, new versions of many of these prints were created, using re-carved blocks; typically, the re-issued "post-quake" prints included changes and revisions in the designs. When Ohara began publishing with Watanabe, he adopted the go “Shoson”. His prints are generally not dated and frequently without publisher seals. Watanabe began publishing Shoson’s prints in 1926.

The subject matter and style of Shôson's prints appealed to the Western market and thus much of his work was intended for export. His compositional style and marketing significantly affected how his works were viewed in Japan, as he was considered an artist somewhat outside the circle of those who designed prints for Japanese taste.

Sparrows on Bamboo by Ohara Hōson Shōson

Through his association with Watanabe, Ohara's work was exhibited abroad, and his prints sold well, particularly in the United States. He was active designing prints until at least 1935 and died at his home in Tokyo in 1945.

Water Lily Flower by Ohara Hōson Shōson

Ohara’s work is held in museums worldwide, including the Toledo Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the British Museum, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Harvard Art Museums, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Museum of New Zealand.

The Manggha museum in Krakow, Poland held a large retrospective in 2021 from the collection of Romanian musical artist Adrian Ciceu, brother of Eugen Cicero.

Magpie Bird in Tree By Ohara Hōson Shōson

https://ukiyo-e.org/artist/shoson-ohara

 https://www.artelino.com/articles/koson_ohara.asp

https://onevisionart.printstoreonline.com/galleries/ohara-matao

https://www.woodblockprints.org/index.php/Detail/entities/25

 https://www.myjapanesehanga.com/home/artists/ohara-koson-1877---1945-/

John Gould

The Bird Man