french paintings - taking time to observe

I love to collect small paintings, framed or unframed I don't mind that much.  A casual display of mismatched pictures on canvas, board or even card just makes me happy.

The reason behind the huge charm of the old paintings is that they speak to us of another time when  knowing how to paint was a normal part of a good education and when  they took time to sit down and observe.

In the French school system there is little time given to nurturing a child's creativity, and even the students who specialise in an artistic discipline are no longer taught how to draw, the curriculum prefers to give them a good grounding in draughtsmen's software than charcoal and paints.  The result is that students who choose to study art or architecture at university, have to spend their first year going back to basics and learning how to ... observe.

Because surely that is what art is all about, be it drawing, painting or even writing : the ability to observe and interpret what we see.

Can you tell that I have a bee in my bonnet?!

Last week I was fortunate enough to buy several paintings from the French lady I told you about.  I kept this one painted on card, almost certainly by an amateur who just took pleasure in walking out with a box of paints and a folding stool until he found a view that appealed and sat down to paint.   He painted this pretty scene of a country lane, and then ....

flipped the card over and painted some trees beside a lake!  How could I possibly frame this one, I'd never be able to choose which side I like best!!

So because I know that this is a dying art, and that my children's generation favour a screen to an easel, I shall continue buying these pieces of amateur art whenever I have the opportunity.

Just yesterday I bought this little painting at our local auction house.  Not quite so amateur, since the painters name is known and displayed on the frame, but it still has its charm.  He took the time to sit down and paint an ordinary house, to observe, to transmit.  You can see more about the painting here.

How about you?  What is your favourite object that reminds you to slow down and take the time to observe?

french oil paintings

I was beyond excited yesterday to find a couple of little paintings that I adore.    Bringing them home sent me into a flurry of relocating paintings.

I love groups of paintings , united by colour or theme.  Whenever I have the chance I pick up small paintings, generally oils, often on board rather than canvas.  I have them framed when I get around to it, otherwise they are stood on shelves, between books, behind a lamp.  Just can't have too many!

Today I grouped some above the table in our entrance hall, and some others above the tub in a bathroom.  Tell me what you think BTW if you think a couple aren't quite straight, you're probably right!  sorry I didn't see until the post went up then I ran out of time to reshoot !  sigh ... )

In the bathroom I assembled 10 canvases that are all about water, and happen to be in the same palette.

They started off standing up against the narrow shelf behind the tub,  then little by little they crept up on to the wall.  It's never that easy to find the right positions straight away, and as these canvases are very lightweight, I just use tiny copper tacks that can easily be moved around.

In the entrance hall it was more difficult.  All the paintings are landscapes, in similar colour ways, but some are framed, some not, and some just stood in frames temporarily.

The top picture was my main find yesterday (I love to 'borrow' stuff from the store until it finds a new home!).  It's a pretty oil on canvas of a village not far from here.

This little square scene, is the other one that I found yesterday , I just love the shadows falling across the track.

Clark collection at Giverny

If you are in Normandy between now and October, please don't miss this show at the Impresionist Museum in Giverny.  72 glorious French master paintings have been graciously loaned to the museum  by the Clark Collection in Massachusetts.

Sterling and Francine Clark lived in Paris,  where he was a young,  and already wealthy,  lawyer and she was his young and beautiful French wife.  They started buying paintings around 1912, purchasing works they loved and which to them embodied all that was new and fresh in the modern impressionist movement.

What a life!!  They could have been characters plucked from an Edith Wharton novel, glamorous, interesting, part of the elite New York society, who felt at ease anywhere in the world.  How I would have loved to have lived at that time ....

Our Friend Alberto

We have had a lot of fun things happen in our garden,  children's tea parties, grown-up's dinner parties, treasure hunts, Easter egg hunts, pony races, three legged races, three-legged pony races (no I'm kidding) charity lunches, Christmas fairs .....   but of them all, I hold a very special place in my heart for the days when our friend Alberto came to paint.

When Alberto came to paint I would pull weeds, fix garden furniture, brush the dog .... anything that meant I could spend as much time as possible in the garden watching his pictures grow, and listening to him chat about everything and nothing in particular in his delicious rolling Brazilian accent.

Watching any artist paint is  hypnotic, and Alberto's colourful, busy, Brazilian style is particularly fascinating.

He'd turn up on his bike with easel, huge canvases, and a lot more stacked into an old cart  attached to the back of the bike.  When he left at the end of the day, we'd creep into the barn and look again at the canvases he'd left to dry.

He painted all along the valley, often besides the river, and today there are pictures of the vallée de l'Eure, by Alberto, hung in houses all over the world.

For the moment he's back in Brazil, where he's done some fantastic urban scenes, and has also returned to one of his favourite themes - pianos.   Recently he created a huge mosaic for an underground station.

We are looking forward to him coming back to stay one day,  there's an easel waiting here for him.

If you'd like to see more of his work, visit his website here.