HARBRON Plein air

  Spotlighting great examples of plein air art ____________ Here is a painting by one of the principle founders of impressionism and the most dedicated plein air  painter of his time, Alfred Sisley (1839-1899). Let's take a mindful moment to enjoy it shall we. I say 'mindful' because whenever I view a painting by Sisley, I find myself slipping into the sort of meditative state I usually experience when out for a country stroll.  We could take the path that splits the frost-static grass. Perhaps Sisley had just walked it, labouring under the weight of his easel and paints, his weathered boots crunching upon the frozen earth. He walked a lot of miles beside rivers, did Sisley; The Oise, The Liong, The Thames, and here, The Seine. He painted the water sparkling in sunlight, brooding under pregnant clouds, and even when it had breached the bankside and crept right up to doorsteps. Here though, the water is calm, reflective. You see? we are in meditation!   Perhaps S...

  Spotlighting great  examples of plein air art . _______________ Poplars by the Lake (1916) by Tom Thomson (1877-1917).  Oil on board, 8.4" x 10.5" National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.  Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons _______________ The year before his mysterious death, one of Canada's greatest  landscape artists, Tom Thomson, found himself working the summer as a ranger in Algonquin Park, Canada. The area had become his muse, and he had been spending the spring, summer and autumn there, painting the seasons in all weathers, at all times of the day.  It was in this period that he painted Poplars by the Lake,  one of many  oil sketches by the artist, completed  en plein air .  It has all the hallmarks of Thomson's work. The main elements of trees, sky and water, which provided endless fascination for Thomson as subject matter. There is also the signature  b road brushstrokes, liberal applications of oil paint, and idiosyncratic palett...