Landscape with a View of a Distant Village, by Thomas Gainsborough (late 1740s or early 1750s)

We continue our look at the truly stellar show at the Frick Collection here in New York featuring 10 masterpieces from the Scottish National Gallery with a picture by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788).

Gainsborough was born in humble circumstances.  His father was a weaver in Suffolk, and not much is known about his mother.  However, he seemed to be one of a brood of creative children: his brother John (known as Scheming Jack) was a well-known designer of curiosities, while his brother Humphrey invented the method of condensing steam in a separate vessel. 

Thomas left home for London in 1740 to study art; his mentors included Hubert Gravelot, Francis Hayman and William Hogarth.  He married Margaret Burr in 1746, and they had two daughters. 

A move to Bath in 1759 was a great career boon, as there he became a fashionable society painter.  He was soon exhibiting in London, and, in 1759, he became a founding member of the Royal Academy.  Despite founder-status, he had a tempestuous relationship with the organization, and he would sometimes pull his work from upcoming exhibitions.

Thomas and family returned to London in 1774, where he painted the royal family.  He soon became enamored with landscape painting, and his later years were devoted to depictions of the English countryside.  (He is credited as one of the founders of the British landscape school.)  He grew to love painting landscapes more than portraits, and his landscapes are among his finest achievements. His career was cut short with a diagnosis of cancer, and he succumbed in 1788.

Gainsborough was a meticulous painter, but he painted with great speed and fluidity.  His palette was generally light, with brushstrokes that were precise without being fussy.

Your correspondent must confess that he considers Landscape with a View of a Distant Village on show at the Frick as among the weaker selections in the exhibition.  The composition is perhaps too polished and too … calculated, leaving nothing for the eye to linger upon.  Though it follows the strain of naturalism popular at the time, the eye is disturbed by the overwhelming symmetry of the piece, as if calculated more for commercial reproduction that personal contemplation.

More off-putting still is the placement of various elements, as if Gainsborough were running through a list of crowd-pleasers necessary for a picture.  Pastoral lovers?  Check.  Strategically placed cattle?  Check.  Dog?  Check.  Even the clouds and trees look more like stock figures hustled out for effect rather than a reflection of either mood or reality.

In person, this rather wide picture further disappoints because the eye roams without direction.  As demonstrated in our posts on Constable and Velasquez, artists gifted in composition keep the eye in constant movement.  There is nothing in the composition to pull the eye along, and the effect is rather-well painted elements that just lie there without dynamism.  It’s not a bad painting … it is merely uninteresting.

It is particularly disappointing when compared to the truly champion Constable hanging on the same wall.  There, Constable’s fecund imagination takes a similar theme, and creates a picture that is teeming with life.  Indeed, the composition suffered to some extent by sheer virtue of Constable’s ability to render the scene real.  Both painters were men of talent and genius, but Constable was a painter of vision. 

More from the Frick Collection tomorrow!

Fêtes Vénitiennes, by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1718-19) at The Frick Collection

It is always a treat when one of New York’s major museums mounts a show that is scalable, smart and well-balanced, and that is what The Frick Collection in New York has done with its current Masterpieces From the Scottish National Gallery, on view through February 1, 2015.

The Frick has gathered 10 superb paintings from the collection, ranging from the Florentine Renaissance to 19^th Century society pictures.  It includes wonderful works by such masters as Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, El Greco and Velazquez.  It is a show not to be missed.

The Scottish National Gallery was founded in 1850 in Edinburgh, and is one of the finest museums in the world.  It has an extraordinary collection of paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings – and the question of what to show at a traveling exhibition must have been a mighty one.

However, this bite-size show rises to that challenge – there is not a piece in it that is not a masterpiece in its own right.  Those not in New York should rest easy – the show will also travel to the de Young, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. 

Between now and Thanksgiving I wanted to share my favorite pieces in the show in The Jade Sphinx.  We start with Fêtes Vénitiennes, painted by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), in 1718-19.

Watteau had a brief career, cut short by premature death, but his legacy has been long lasting and influential.  He veered away from the stuffy excesses of the prevalent Rococo style, and his use of color and movement was influential for decades after his death.

Watteau was deeply influenced by figures from commedia dell’arte while learning his craft in the workshop of Claude Gillot (1673-1722).  The actors from the commedia had been expelled from France for several years, but the costumes, masks and mummery were to loom large in his boyish imagination.

Watteau also created the genre of fêtes galantes, scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with a theatrical air. Some of his best known subjects were drawn from the world of Italian comedy and ballet. 

The picture on hand at the Frick is well within that tradition – and it is one before which I spent considerable time.  It is a picture that seems to generate feelings both celebratory and foreboding, as what is clearly a party also seems spooky and … uncanny.

The moody garden setting would not seem out-of-place in a pen-and-ink drawing by Edward Gorey, and the coloration seems both subtle and vibrant.

The figures, so clearly part of a costume party, add another note of the strange to the picture, where figures in fancy dress disport themselves in an atmosphere that is playfully erotic.

The air of erotic play is personified by the background statue that is blatantly sexualized, and by the two male figures on either side of the picture who gaze openly at the woman center-stage.  (I also like the blue-costumed figure in the back with a tricorn hat; an aesthete who looks on with a critical eye.)

There is also a private joke in the picture – the musette-playing fellow to the far right is Watteau himself, while the dancer in pantaloons and turban is Nicolas Vleughels, a Flemish painter, who was Watteau's friend and landlord.  The actual story of why they are represented in the painting has been lost to time.

Not easily seen in the reproduction here is the wonderful coloration – though painted in oil, it looks for all the world like pen and watercolor.  The dress of the central female figure is dazzling, and lightens up the whole picture, providing life and vitality to the proceedings.  The band of color that shimmers down her dress is almost the source of light in the piece, capturing, surely, the pearly rays of the moon.

This small picture (22x18) is a little master class in mood and tension through color and composition.  Be sure to see it.

Tomorrow:  Painting by Allan Ramsay!