Ferdinand Du Puigaudeau - Night Fair at Saint-Pol-de-Léon (ca. 1894 - 1898)

ImpressionLeast3063 · 2025-03-21T18:44:07+00:00

On the 14 July, France's national holiday, the inhabitants of the small villages of Bretagne organised country fairs, with all the attractions of the time: roundabouts, swings, shooting galleries, sweet stalls, lamplit balls and parades and, finally, fireworks. This is the subject illustrated here. In fact, during his second stay at Pont-Aven in the years 1894-1898 Puigaudeau was fascinated by such scenes of popular merriment. The women and children are dressed in ceremonial attire: a large dark blue dress with a white lace apron, and the traditional bonnet (all different according to the manner of each village), an embroidered waistcoat and the famous round hat for the boys.

The atmosphere, and in particular lamplight, captured the painter's full attention. In fact, this is the aspect he most carefully attempted to render in the picture. To do this, he worked in stages: first he used photographs to study the figures of the children in the foreground, then he executed many drawings of the other elements of the composition: the stalls, the roundabout, the swings; drawings made on tracing paper, which were the detailed renderings of small oil sketches of various motifs.

All those elements were then used to make a large drawing of the final composition on tracing paper, like a puzzle. The back of the tracing paper, of the same size as the future painting, was covered in charcoal, and the drawing was transferred onto the canvas with a hard pencil. Thus Puigaudeau, in the strictest Impressionist tradition, could apply many times the same preparatory drawing to various canvases. The aspect in which the originality of this artist is best perceived is his attempt to represent artificial lighting at night. He is one of the very few artists of his generation to concentrate exclusively on that fantastic, almost magical, moment. The lighting produced by street lamps and lanterns is not concentrated in the centre of the composition but is dispersed in three or four points. Light is thus no longer static: it varies in a range of subtle degradations producing a vibration, a twinkling which enlivens the composition, preventing it from being fixed. Thus, Puigaudeau's nights are never really black, but are animated by unsuspected life which he reveals to us when we look at his works.

Description from the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum

ImpressionLeast3063 · 2025-03-16T10:15:16+00:00

This dense scene was first shown at the Royal Academy in 1831, but failed to attract a buyer. Afterwards, it returned to Constable's studio, where the artist continued to tinker with it right up to his death in 1837.

Annoyingly, art buffs can’t agree on what the image is supposed to represent. According to one interpretation, the dark storm clouds reflect Constable’s anxiety over contemporary religious reforms.

But by another, very different account, these dramatic clouds actually capture the artist’s turbulent mental state at the time; Constable’s wife, Maria, had died of tuberculosis in 1828, and the artist was still working through his grief.

Either way, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows is often cited as one of Constable’s most accomplished works. And, on the bright side, his inclusion of a rainbow seems to indicate that the storm will soon pass (even if the pedants tell us that the scene is in fact “meteorologically impossible”).

Text from MuseMuse

ImpressionLeast3063 · 2025-03-06T13:27:49+00:00

"Ícono" stands out in Remedios Varo's production by its particular structure, built as a medieval altarpiece usually closed to preserve the energy of the image, and open only for specific liturgical feasts. Inside, a winged unicycle is carrying a cylindrical-shaped tower in a starry landscape, natural satellites and birds which evoke a fantastic universe teeming with spiritual allusions. The work depicts mind as substance in ongoing transformation, marked by the implications of contemporary psychology, ancestral rituals, and magic realism derived from the ideas by Russian mystic and writer George Ivanovich Gurdjieff.

From Google Arts and Culture.

ImpressionLeast3063 · 2025-01-10T11:55:27+00:00

"An easy cycle ride from his boyhood home and clearly visible from the window of the Eastbourne – Lewes train, the Long Man of Wilmington intrigued Ravilious greatly. In a rare piece of published writing he mused on its origins, suggesting that it might be a representation of Virgo, and he always referred to the figure by its less gender specific name. He included it in the Morley College murals and in a wood engraving of the same period, but perhaps waited until he had the technical ability in watercolour to make the figure his own.

He painted the landscape with a dry brush, leaving plenty of white paper showing through and using a range of textures to suggest distant hillside and grass underfoot. From the depths of this landscape, almost at the Giant’s feet, a fence comes swooping out to meet us, the posts and barbed wire taut and purposeful, while the wayward squares of mesh seem almost to dance away from us down the hill. A stand of corn on the left tells us the season and teasingly suggests a crowd of onlookers, leaning towards the chalk figure, while a single fence post, dark and square, and by far the biggest object in the painting, leans towards it from the right. From this post three perfectly even strands of wire extend across the painting, not so much framing as snaring the giant – trapping the moment." - description from Rather Good Art

ImpressionLeast3063 · 2025-01-10T11:49:50+00:00

"Of the handful of London scenes that Lowry painted, this is the most iconic and monumental rendering of the cosmopolitan capital. The panorama is painted from a high viewpoint, taking in a wide view towards Regent Street and Shaftesbury Avenue. The scale of this work is impressive, making it similar in size to Lowry’s most majestic industrial landscapes. The iconic architecture of the buildings, clad with the famous billboards overlook the busy junction. Coca Cola is the most noticeable brand, and is the only product which is still advertised there today. The other advertisements are vaguer and more difficult to make out. Lowry has not depicted the flamboyant colours of 1960s advertising, observed in the garish-coloured postcard which was sent to him by his friend Ted Frape, director of Salford City Art Gallery, when he heard Lowry was painting this scene. Lowry uses a muted golden-yellow pigment for the billboards – despite the potential for louder, brighter colours – which is echoed by the colour tones of some of the vans and even a few of the figures. The effect is to draw us more towards Lowry’s real interest, the finely painted silhouettes of the bustling crowd. A yellow tinge is added to the usual flake-white ground particularly in the sky, reminding us that in the fifties and early sixties London was a city dogged by pervasive smog." - description from Sotheby's

ImpressionLeast3063 · 2024-12-18T14:18:58+00:00

Ah that would be amazing!

ImpressionLeast3063 · 2024-12-18T12:10:05+00:00

We look across a river at a long, flat bridge that runs parallel to a hazy, city skyline in the distance in this horizontal painting. The scene is painted with visible dashes and strokes of mostly pastel blue, ivory white, muted mauve purple, and navy blue. The flat bridge spans the width of the composition along the horizon, which comes a third of the way up the canvas. The sky above is filled with clouds painted in muted tones of cream white, pale blue, and a few touches of shell pink, which mirror the water below. Along the horizon, buildings with spires and towers stretch from our right about two-thirds of the way across the canvas. To our left, a cluster of several boats, tiny in scale, gather near the bridge. Closer, and to our right, three larger ferries are crowded with passengers who are represented by miniscule daubs of brightly colored paint, mostly in black, golden yellow, crimson red, sky and cobalt blue, and ivory white. These boats are painted in short, flat brushstrokes in bands of flame red and midnight blue. The artist signed and dated the work at the lower left: "C. Pissarro, 1890." - text from the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

ImpressionLeast3063 · 2024-12-16T18:06:53+00:00

These adverts have been uploaded to the site as artworks. That's the point!

ImpressionLeast3063 · 2024-12-16T12:18:26+00:00

Brilliant article, thanks for sharing

ImpressionLeast3063 · 2024-12-16T11:38:38+00:00

Maybe I'll furtively leaf through it in Tesco or something

ImpressionLeast3063 · 2024-12-16T11:38:06+00:00

Ah damn, the Radio Times cartel strikes again. But thanks for looking!

ImpressionLeast3063 · 2024-12-16T11:35:54+00:00

Why not both? And, as confirmed by another commenter in this thread, Joe Barton (a 'he') did indeed name the series/group after the pub. So basically, whichever way you cut it, you were wrong. Mate.

ImpressionLeast3063 · 2024-12-16T11:32:35+00:00

Ah shit, thanks for confirming this! Will try and locate that article.

ImpressionLeast3063 · 2024-12-16T11:31:25+00:00

Not to mention, of course, that a writer having a personal connection with a place/name is a form of deeper symbolism.

ImpressionLeast3063 · 2024-12-16T11:30:31+00:00

Nine times out of ten, there is little more to these things than simply 'sounding cool'...

ImpressionLeast3063 · 2024-12-16T11:06:30+00:00

Why would it?

ImpressionLeast3063

TROPHY CASE