M. Shawn Cornell’s web site opens with the statement "If you see snow in the painting, it means that the artist was standing in snow. If you see rain in the painting, it means that the artist was getting very wet."

Inexplicably, it requires that you drill down into Paintings, and then choose a sub-section (summer, spring, etc.) before seeing a color image.

Cornell’s paintings, when you do get to them, are rewardingly fresh and lively, with accomplished but abbreviated notation of the subjects, nicely embodying the strengths of the plein air approach.

Subjects include rocky bluffs, wooded hillsides, muddy fields, formal gardens and placid streams, mostly of places in Wisconsin, Colorado and Missouri, arranged on the site by season.

Cornell’s palette is controlled and understated, to the extent that the bright colors of autumn can be represented in muted tones, lending the images a feeling of quiet refinement. Most are fairly large by contemporary plein air standards, and it’s a little disappointing that there are no larger or detail images provided on the site.

Cornell is also a potter, and apparently represents himself and sells his work through art events rather than gallery representation. He also conducts workshops, sometimes in the company of his father, David M.Cornell, who is also a plein air painter.

Jean Fouquet was a painter of portraits and landscapes, even though, as a painter of the early Renaissance in 15th century France, he was largely limited to painting those things in the context of religious art (see my post on Giovanni Bellini).

Fouquet was the court painter to Louis XI, and is usually regarded as the most important French painter of his period. He traveled to Italy, where he caused a stir by painting a portrait of Pope Eugenius IV on canvas rather than wood; and brought the influence of Italian art into his own style, combining it with the influences from Jan and Hubert van Eyck, whose styles dominated northern European painting at the time (see my post on Jan van Eyck).

Fouquet painted at least one free-standing portrait, a self portrait on a copper medallion, now in the Louvre, that is the earliest known portrait miniature; and is in contention for the earliest formal self-portrait in Western art, depending on whether Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of a Man is actually a self-portrait (which it likely is).

It is as a miniaturist that I find Fouquet at his most interesting. He produced astonishing “illuminations”, miniature paintings on pages of manuscript, that have an uncanny monumentality and presence, and a surprising feeling of painting styles more common many years after his time. He was particularly known for his miniatures form the Book of Hours by Étienne Chevalier.

The image at top, above (larger version here, click for enlargement and click “100%’ if image doesn’t show), is a manuscript illumination from a history of Julius Ceasar, and portrays his crossing of the Rubicon. The naturalistic feeling and attention lavished on the background convinces me that, were he born a few centuries later, Fouquet might have dedicated himself to landscape. (It’s interesting, though, as accomplished as he is, to see Fouquet apparently struggle a bit with perspective, particularly if you assume the trees to be the same height. Perhaps the confines of the illuminated manuscript made laying out geometric perspective difficult.)

The other image, Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels, is the right half of a now separated diptych. It caused a stir in later years (and perhaps at the time) for its sensual overtones, and portrayal of the Madonna in fancy and stylish fashions of the time. (Hey Renaissance fair re-enactors, are the noblewomen among you shaving your forehead and temples as part of your period dress?) It has also been suggested that the model for Mary was Agnés Sorel, a famously beautiful woman of the time, further cause for moral outrage. The Madonna is accompanied by some bizarre cherubs, starkly blue and red, except for their glassy eyes, arranged in a pattern reminiscent of one of M.C. Escher’s surface tessellations.

The Bibliothéque nationale de France (the National Library of France, roughly analogous to the Library of Congress for the U.S.) has mounted a virtual exhibition of Fouquet’s work, particularly his manuscript illumination miniatures, titled Fouquet, painter and illuminator of the XVth century, that gives a good introduction, though the images are somewhat small. You can supplement it with some of the other resources I’ve listed below, particularly the Web Gallery of Art.

[Virtual exhibition listing via "Thomas J. Wise" on MetaFilter]

Norwegian painter and engraver Frits Thaulow long ago became one of my favorite artists on the basis of a single painting in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Water Mill. I make a point of visiting it every time I’m at the museum.

This stunningly beautiful and dramatically large painting embodies Thaulow’s wonderful touch with the portrayal of small bodies of water. He captures again and again the mercurial effects of light as it dances over, under and through the rippled surfaces of small streams, canals, mill races and rivers.

Thaulow is often classed as a “Norwegian Impressionist”, and it’s interesting to compare his paintings to works by Sisley and Caillebotte; but like most painters outside the circle of original French Impressionism, he was actually a painter who learned when he liked from the French painters, but took it in his own direction, with a more naturalistic academic draftsmanship underlying the vibrant colors and painterly brushwork.

For that reason, and because of his command of light, color and tonal subtleties, I think of him in comparison to painters labeled “American Impressionists”, like William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Edmund Tarbell, and Daniel Garber.

When I first wrote about Thaulow for Lines and Colors back in 2006, there were few resources available and most of them frustratingly repeated the same 6 or 8 images. Last year, I wrote specifically about Thaulow’s Water Mill, and resorted to posting my own photo.

Since then, I’m delighted to say, resources for viewing Thaulow’s work on the web have expanded considerably, and you can now get a sense of his overall range of subject matter and approach.

In particular, Allpaintings Art Portal has an extensive collection of Thaulow’s work; be sure to click through on the text link above the main image for the larger version (see my post on Allpaintings Art Portal). There are other new and expanded resources, and I’ve listed as many as I can find below.

It’s obvious that interest is growing in the work of this wonderful Norwegian painter. Maybe it will even convince a publisher to bring out a new English edition of Vidar Poulsson’s hard to find book on Frits Thaulow. (See Vidar Poulsson’s comments on my original post for more details about the book.)

I’m particularly delighted to report that Thaulow’s Water Mill, which had disappointingly been rotated out of view and into storage last year, has been returned to view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (Thanks to Barbara Lesley for letting me know.)

It’s like having an old friend move back into town.

You will sometimes hear talk of the “Van Gogh in the attic”; the thought that somewhere are lost artistic gems, set aside, forgotten or misclassified for some reason, waiting for discovery in a dusty attic somewhere in the back streets of Paris or London, perhaps sitting on a shelf in an antique store waiting for you to pick it up for next to nothing.

You’ll just as often hear that “it simply doesn’t happen”; but, in fact, new works by the world’s great artists are occasionally uncovered, either by actual discovery of previously unknown works or by changes in attribution of known pieces, like the recent re-attribution of Portrait of a Man to Velázquez.

In another case of re-attribution that is unfolding at the moment, a portrait thought to have been by an unknown German artist from the 19th Century has been identified as a work by Leonardo da Vinci. If true, it is a rare find indeed, the first additional work to be assigned to Leonardo in over 100 years.

The rendering, which has been in the hands of private collectors, is in ink and colored chalks. Though some things can be determined about the work by it’s style, such as the left-handedness of the artist, it was not attributed to Da Vinci, or any of his contemporaries. Because of it’s more modern approach (and despite the Renaissance dress of the subject, a young girl shown in profile) it was thought to fit in with stylistic characteristics of a different time and place.

The attribution is being made on the basis of a fingerprint, found in the upper left edge of the canvas (image above, top right), that has been analyzed and matched to another fingerprint in one of the master’s other works. (Leonardo, like many artists, got his hands into his work and left fingerprints in a number of paintings.)

Though the official jury is still out, art historians are falling into agreement that that work is indeed by Leonardo.

There seem to be many more stories covering the discovery in the UK and European press than here in the States (why am I not surprised?), and I’ll provide some links to some of them below. The first one, from TimesOnline, includes a video that has the best close-ups of the piece that I could find. Hopefully, we’ll see more of it in time.

Though most of the stories emphasize the monetary worth of the piece, like some museum level version of Antiques Road Show, the real value lies in what an additional work can tell us about one of the great masters of Western art.

Lorenz Stöer was a German printmaker and painter active in the late 16th Century. His wonderfully idiosyncratic visions of geometric forms in landscapes of imagined architecture have recently been brought to light for us by that master discoverer of the idiosyncratic and arcane, peacay, whose ever-fascinating blog BibliOdyssey is a treasure trove (and dangerously fascinating rabbit-hole) of the strange and wonderful. (See my previous posts on BibliOdyssey here and here.)

Stöer seems to be obscure except for a published folio of 11 woodcuts titled Geometria et Perspectiva, of which the image above is an example. But an unpublished portfolio of color drawings discovered at the Munich Library has in recent years been attributed to him.

Peacay has provided not only examples from both on the BibliOdyssey page, but a Flickr set which features the images in high resolution.

There is also a reproduction of the folio here, but peacay’s sets are much better quality. You may want to supplement your enjoyment of the woodcuts with some background about polyhedra here and here (for some reason, I just love this stuff).

Stöer’s fascination with geometric solids was apparently the inspiration for other artists, like the creator of the intricate marquetery on this Collector’s Cabinet from the same time.

I would also have to assume that his polyhedral fantasias, oddly arranged architectural facades and stacked stairways were a direct influence on the fantastic geometry and math inspired works of M.C. Escher.

Anyone who has read Dear Theo, the book of Vincent van Gogh’s letters to his brother, which, in essence, is a kind of autobiography, knows that the popularized image of the artist as an uncouth, irrational, semi-literate wild man, stabbing at the canvas in frantic desperation like a crazed orangutan, couldn’t be further from the truth.

Though certainly emotionally troubled, Van Gogh was a thoughtful, well read and articulate individual, whose insights, observations and accounts of his personal journey as an artist are illuminating on many levels.

Van Gogh wrote hundreds of letters, a number of which contain sketches, or even well developed drawings, that frequently presage his paintings or refer to the circumstances under which they were painted. Together, they form an account of the artist’s life and work that is unlike anything we have from other major artists.

There are several other collections of Van Gogh’s letters, from those specific to a particular time in the artist’s life, like Vincent Van Gogh – Letters from Provence (The illustrated letters), to more comprehensive collections like Letters of Vincent van Gogh (Touchstone), The Letters of Vincent van Gogh (Penguin Classics) and Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh (Bulfinch).

The latest and most deluxe collection, which should soon be available, is Vincent van Gogh — The Letters (Thames & Hudson) (details here), a multi volume set collecting all of his letters with new transcriptions and translations, reproductions of the illustrated letters and reproductions of all of the works that are referred to in the letters. It promises to be a unique study of the artist and his work, told from the artist’s point of view; but at a list price of $600 U.S. ($480 on Amazon), it’s not exactly a mass market collection.

The book set accompanies a new exhibit at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (choose a language at the upper left), called Van Gogh’s letters: the artist speaks, that showcases many of his letters from the museum’s collection and displays them with related paintings and drawings, forming an exhibition in which the artist, in effect, provides the commentary on his own work.

The exhibition runs until the 3rd of January, 2010, but it is part of a larger project, in which the letters were reexamined and photographed in preparation for both the exhibit and the book; and the museum has mounted excellent web resources that will continue after the exhibition has closed.

There is a web site devoted to the project at www.vangoghletters.org that is essentially a comprehensive, online, databased version of the book project. It can be searched by period, correspondent or place; or filtered for letters with sketches. There are also advanced search capabilities and background features on the artist, his time, the people with whom he was corresponding and more.

The letters are displayed as original text, translated, with notes and facsimile reproductions of the letters themselves, as well as reproductions of artwork (by Van Gogh and other artists) referred to in the letters.

It’s easy to miss the small links at top of the columns to the facsimile versions and artworks, and it’s worth looking through the Quick Guide they have offered to getting the most out of the resource (it pops up by default the first time you access the letters).

As if this wasn’t enough to delight lovers of Van Gogh’s work, the museum is also maintaining a wonderful Van Gogh Blog, in which letters form the artist are posted daily, giving the effect of the artist writing a daily blog post, or corresponding with you personally on a daily basis (whichever appeals to your disposition). The posts are accompanied with drawings and sketches.

The blog just started in the beginning of October, so you can catch up and then read a daily post from Van Gogh to start your day. Wonderful.

Addendum: Peacay has posted a very nice article with images and quotes from the letters on Bibliodyssey.

Since I wrote my post about the great 19th Century German landscape artist Caspar David Friedrich back in 2006, many additional resources for viewing his work have appeared on the web; and there is a new exhibition of his work, Caspar David Friedrich — Nature Animated along with a complimentary exhibit, Friedrich, Eight Contemporary Commentaries at the NationalMuseum of Sweden (to 10 January, 2010).

Sadly, some of Friedrich’s work was lost in the Allied bombing of Dresden during World War II, though some of that has been recreated in interpretations from black and white photographic records by other artists in subsequent years. (Unfortunately, displays of his work are not always quick to point out which pieces are recreations, and I’m not the one to give you guidance on that point.)

Friedrich was a prolific artist, however, and there is finally an abundance of web resources to view his work as he regains popularity with contemporary art lovers. His popularity waxed an waned during his own lifetime. Friedrich had success in the early part of his career, but fell into disregard and even disdain in the latter part of his life, a life that was marked by tragedy of various kinds almost throughout.

Friedrich’s work can be stunning, particularly his evocative landscapes, in which he attempted to convey more than the landscape itself, stating: “The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also omit to paint that which he sees before him.”

It may be disconcerting to some, but I actually enjoy the fact that art history, like history in general, is a fluid landscape. New discoveries and the reinterpretation of existing information can make textbooks obsolete overnight and reverse the fortunes of collectors and museums; and can also lead to excitement, disappointment or simply clarification.

A reversal of a reversal has led to excitement, and improved the fortunes of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as the attribution of Portrait of a Man, a painting in their collection once assigned to Spanish master Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, but later downgraded to “workshop of” (meaning painted perhaps under his guidance, but by lesser hands) has recently been reexamined, cleaned, restored and reassigned to the master’s hand.

Velázquez is one of the great masters of Western art, considered the greatest of all painters by some, and the reassignment of the painting to him is a significant event.

This is particularly interesting because the painting, when originally attributed to him, was thought to be a self-portrait, an assessment that just seems “right” to me. I say that not because I’m any kind of expert on Velázquez, but simply because the portrait has that particular look I’ve seen in dozens of self-portraits.

This is partly, I think, due to the staring-directly-at-you face-in-the-mirror pose, but partly due that special look that I think comes from the mental shift into that mode of seeing that accompanies drawing and painting from life. (See my posts on Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, The Face of Leonardo? and Marie-Denise Villers)

The portrait matches that of the figure of a bystander in Velázquez’s Surrender of Breda (to the far right, image above with detail). That figure also stares directly at us (or the mirror) and has something of that same look to the eyes. This figure too was long thought to be a self portrait while Portrait of a Man was still attributed to Velázquez.

Portrait of a Man is more of a study than a finished work, but the face is pretty well finished. To think that we have the face of the artist staring out at us is a wonderful addition to the treat of knowing we have another Velázquez in the world.

Todd Bonita is a New Hampshire based painter who studied at the Art Institute of Boston, and here in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

He has worked as a muralist, designer, sculptor, painter and illustrator, and has over 30 books to his credit.

As an oil painter, Bonita paints a variety of subjects, but focuses in particular on compositions involving small boats in the water. These are often in shallows, adding interesting effects of rocky, sandy or muddy bottom surfaces through layers of translucent water; along with weathered docks, reeds and shorelines arranged against the often colorful and texturally rich boats themselves.

Texture plays such a part in these paintings, in fact, that at first glance, I thought they were thickly layered pastels. Bonita works most often in oil on Masonite, wood panel or canvas; and the paintings featured on his blogs (he maintains two, painting life and Todd Bonita’s Art Blog) and web site vary in size from roughly 24×30″ to 6×8″.

He finds in his subjects wonderful areas filled with colors and textures of ground and water between his boats and their surroundings. Look at those areas as negative shapes to appreciate the strong design aspect of his compositions.

[Via Mick McGinty (see my posts on Mick McGinty)]

At first I thought these images by Japanese artist Kazuki Takamatsu were 3-D depth mattes, renderings of 3-D CGI models in which shades of gray are assigned to areas according to their distance from the virtual camera. (Their white, sculptural quality also brought to mind the paintings of A. Andrew Gonzalez.)

However, even if CGI depth mattes, or something similar, are the source material or inspiration for them, Takamatsu’s finished works are actually gouache paintings, and fairly large in scale as you can see from these photos at Gallery Tomura.

Takamatsu uses the term Distanfeerism to name his style. Other than that, and the fact that he graduated from Tohoku University of Art and Design, I can find very little information about the artist.

Takamatsu’s site is in Japanese, but there are link titles in English.

(Note: the sites linked here may be considered mildly NSFW.)

[Via Jason Kottke]