When visiting the Adirondack
Museum, I loved looking at their art gallery. I thought their extensive
collection was very impressive. I have always loved looking at art because just
as we said in class, you cannot interpret a painting incorrectly. Art makes you feel a
certain way due to our own frame of mind and I think that is wonderful.
In the Adirondack Museum, I took a picture of a
painting entitled “Lake George” by Richard William Hubbard that stuck out to me. Richard William Hubbard was a member of the Hudson River School,
known for their interest in painting majestic American landscapes. He was born
in Connecticut, attended Yale College, and after pursued his painting
career at New York University under Samuel Morse. He traveled to Europe
briefly, reflected in his painting aesthetic upon his return. He frequently
visited the Adirondacks and the Catskills, which he drew great inspiration
from.
Another artist that struck me was
Rockwell Kent. I did not see his painting specifically in the Adirondack
Museum, but we did learn about him during our trip to Asgaard Farm, where he
lived beginning in 1927. He was born in Tarrytown, New York and studied architecture
at Columbia University.
Although he also drew inspiration
from the Adirondacks, he has a different aesthetic than Richard William
Hubbard. Kent uses a lot of broad, flat, colorful shapes while Hubbard is much
more detailed and stylistic. However both conveyed to me a very similar
message. I felt at peace in both paintings. I could almost hear the utter quiet
very rarely experienced in our world today. Both these paintings brought me
back to a specific moment at Litchfield Castle. On the Sunday morning before we
left the Adirondacks, I ventured out to the back porch at Litchfield. I stopped
and listened and for one of the only times in my life I heard absolutely
nothing. There were no roads or houses near Litchfield, something that is hard
to achieve, and we were completely alone in the wild. In both these paintings
there are signs of human life, like the farm house in Kent’s painting or the
boat in Hubbard’s, but to me it felt like I was that human presence and there
was no other humans around, just like at Litchfield.
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| Rockwell Kent Untitled: Asgaard Farm http://www.adkmuseum.org/discover_and_learn/collections_highlights/detail/?q=rockwell+kent&cat=0&type=0&x=0&y=0&id=28 |
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| Richard William Hubbard Lake George, 1865 Adirondack Museum |
There are definitely a lot of similarities between Kent's style and Georgia O'Keeffe's Lake George paintings. They both focus on very bold swaths of color to convey emotion rather than a realistic representation.
ReplyDeleteI really like how both the paintings represent a soft, calm view of the Adirondacks. The mountains are seemingly endless and distant. It also provides a expansive scale for the rest of the painting, and the frequently painted Adirondack landscape makes the viewer feel tiny in execution.
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