More pictures from the super-cool California Watercolor movement of the 1940s: Hardy Gramatky (above), Erle Loran (middle), and Dong Kingman (below). Click to enlarge.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
LOVE THOSE CALIFORNIA WATERCOLORISTS
More pictures from the super-cool California Watercolor movement of the 1940s: Hardy Gramatky (above), Erle Loran (middle), and Dong Kingman (below). Click to enlarge.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
19 comments:
Great paintings, but jeese Eddie no theory to go along? Not even a little one? You must be super busy!
Hey, which book are these from? I'd like to get a copy.
I'd say this was hands down a 1930s emergence of style, mainly courtesy of the teachers and students at Chouinard, but I could be wrong. Anyway, that's just being a stickler. ; )
They are beautiful and these, along with the California plein air paintings of the 1910s-1940s, are just heartbreakingly beautiful.
I absolutely love that first watercolor! I feel really drawn into that scenery, and to me, the painting is setting a mood. When I look at that painting, I hear blues music, circa 1930s - 1940s, playing in the background, and I smell the fried fish in the air.
The second one reminds me of an illustration that I would see in a children's book written around the 40s or 50s.
Kali: Yeah, I'm really busy (Groan!)!
Jenny: I can't remember the source. I've had these pictures on my hard drive for ages.
Jennifer: Golden Books is lucky because it benefited from an art movement that was tailor-made for colorfull kids books.
thanks for sharing these!
There was a whole movement of these kind of paintings?
Let's all get drunk and paint watercolor saloon paintings in a Japanese garden!
Judy Garland on the Soupy Sales show
See ya
Steve
Eddie, you dissembler! You can't seem to figure out how to post simple jpegs and kvetch about your bandwith but can store hi-rez pics on your "hard drive", with no clue where they came from? I call devious shenanigans!
Oh, well...I just thought it might have been one or another of the fat books on California watercolorists I've seen now & again.
Jenny: I have lots of pictures in storage, some from the internet, some from books I own, some from books long since returned to the library. I usually remember the source if I own the book but otherwise I frequently forget.
Ah, Dong Kingman. What a mensch!
I wish someone would publish a book on Kingman with more than just a handful of color plates.
The only one I've found is from 1958 [The Water Colors Of Dong Kingman And How The Artist Works - Studio Publications, Inc.] and, frustratingly, has only 7 color plates, and 80 black & white ones.
"He looks at New York as no one else does..." says William Saroyan in the introduction. The true descendant of Kingman is David Levine.
Hey Eddie, can you follow up this post with some of Levine's Coney Island watercolor paintings?
By the way, you can use a nickname. How does "Dong Fitzgerald" grab you?
A terrific book "The California Style - California Watercolor Artists 1925-1955" shows lots of nice color plates by Gramatky & lots of other artists, many of whom worked for Disney in the 30s & 40s. Rex Brandt was one of my favorites - he taught classes in Laguna Beach & wrote a book about composition that I loaned to Steve W to scan for the Archive (hint). (Also has a nice photo of Lee & Mary Blair painting together in what looks like Santa Monica in 1941)
Kent B
Hey, many thanks, Kent!
Always nice to see your moniker around the blogs. : )
Dong Kingman is my new favorite artist. His work is okay, but I LOVE his name.
Yeah, "Dong Kingman" is a great name.
He should have opened up a studio with Ding Darling. Or Dick Sprang.
DING DARLING?! I have a book of his work, from his eponymous nature preserve in south FL. Believe it...or not!
I think I'm too late to get in on the conversation, but I'm Hardie Gramatky's daughter (only child) and I love your comments and appreciation of Dad's watercolors! Thanks.
A couple of nice things: the most awesome is that Andrew Wyeth just named Dad as one of the "20 great American watercolorists" along with Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe! In the Watercolor Fall 2006 magazine. And a "restored classic" edition of Little Toot is coming out in Fall 2007, with the artwork restored to the colors Dad did (rich blues and reds rather than the oranges & grays that have come about after 67 years of printing from the same film!). I live in Westport, CT, and really enjoy people loving Hardie Gramatky's art. Best to you, Linda (Gramatky Smith)
Post a Comment