Lifted from the Journaleers

[skyring]

A favorite painting.

It so often depends what I'm looking at. There are so many artists I love, and seeing a new work often makes me gasp with pleasure.

But this one is special:



Madge by Hugh Ramsay. There was something about Madge that stopped me dead in my tracks the first time I saw her. Something about her face, some expression. To say she had an interesting face would be an understatement; her face knocked me off my feet from across the room.

Later I learnt more about Ramsay and the story of this and a few other paintings. An artist of enormous talent, he left, like so many other Australians, for England. His portraits have an air of John Singer Sargent, but there is something special. Not quite so much the perfect formality, but a touch of irreverence or something wholly lacking in JSS.

Ramsay learnt a lot and made a splash and knocked around with many noted artists, but eventually he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent home to Australia. He only lasted a short time, but in those few months he painted many of his best paintings. His subjects were his sisters, of whom Madge was one, and what is written in their faces is concern for their dying brother, along with a determination to pose for him, because painting gave him such pleasure.

Lyonel Feininger's Gelmeroda IX is another I love. So very different to Ramsay, but the energy and the intellect shines through in every brush stroke, every not-quite Golden rectangle.

Comments

[sabriela.livejournal.com]

These are amazing and I love the background tales. Thanks for sharing.

[yokospungeon.livejournal.com]

I love Madge, she's ace.

Won't you join the journaleers?

[skyring.livejournal.com]

I know I'd be in the very best of company, and I think I put my name down right at the start, but I'm not comfortable with providing personal information on demand.

For that reason I've stopped doing every meme that comes along. A few, but if it comes down to pouring out lots of personal stuff, no.

Having said that, I'm quite happy, as you know, to write long personal screeds.

[mojosmom.livejournal.com]

I love the Feininger! (Well, I like Madge, too, but the Feininger knocks my socks off, and that's just seeing a little image of it - must be awesome "in person", so to speak!)

It takes a few seconds to realize what it is, because the air around the building takes center stage. The perspective, too, the small people in the large space, really makes a statement. Is the colors that luminous in the real thing?

[skyring.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the real thing, but I've got a framed print hanging on the wall nearby, and it's bit less vivid than the web image, but not by much. I picked it up in a thrift shop, and it was one of those *Gasp* moments when I first saw it over rows of old couches.

Last year in Washington, I got to see several Feiningers in the NGA on the Mall, or rather in the annex.

I went with Kerri that first day, on a day of wonder and delight for us both as we tramped through the snow and admired the grand buildings and the grander paintings, and I just had to go back a couple of days later to see the paintings again.

There was more than I could possibly see or appreciate in that one huge building, but I remember Biglin Brothers Racing with some fondness, and of course John Frederick Peto's stunning "Take your Choice"

[mojosmom.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that anonymous commenter was me. I thought I was logged in and I wasn't.

I love art

[woosang.livejournal.com]

Streeton being my favourite. I like the second picture you posted, but Madge I can walk past. Just love the colours in the second painting. Where are they hanging??

Re: I love art

[skyring.livejournal.com]

Madge is in the NGA, but the Feininger is in a gallery in Essen. Feininger is a significant artist, one of the original Bauhaus leaders, and can be found in many significant galleries.

Arthur Streeton is a favorite of mine. But much as I like his big "set-piece" paintings, it is his smaller works I love. The watercolours, rarely seen nowadays, are little gems, every brushstroke in precisely the right spot.

The Customs House Gallery in Brisbane has a few of his I hadn't seen before, and I'm looking forward to visiting the WA state gallery in a few weeks on my way to Osaka.