Impressionist landscapes and cityscapes
This is the Canal de la Robine in the Languedoc-Rousillon region of France. In Narbonne, the canal is very densely built-up and urban, but just outside, it is very quiet.
My aim here was to capture the morning light shining through the February leaves. The oil paint is used very thinly, almost like watercolor to get a luminous effect.
36”w x 24” h
Oil on canvas
$950.
Carcassonne is a castle town in southwestern France. In the 1200s, the Pope and the king of France massacred millions of Frenchmen in this area in the Albigensian Crusade. Though the history is terrible, Carcassonne is beautiful and like a fairyland version of the Middle Ages.
This is one of two small paintings of Carcassonne. I was trying to capture the otherworldly, medieval look of the town in late February.
Oil on canvas
16” x 20”
$750.
The Pincio Park, or the gardens of the Villa Borghese, are the Rome equivalent of New York’s Central Park. We’d often sit in our favorite café in the park to write Rome Secrets or CityTravelBlog. This is the Temple of Diana in the park in the sun, with several picnickers on the lawn in the foreground in dappled shade.
I was interested in capturing the subject in bright light in the background, as it so often is in 18th and 19th century landscapes. The middle ground is alternately sunny and shaded, and the silhouetted tree in the foreground gives the composition depth and drama in a somewhat Japanese way. I often like a tree in the foreground as a way of dividing the canvas and giving drama to an otherwise calm landscape.
Oil on canvas
36”w x 24”h
$950.
This is a view of the Santa Maria della Salute from the Riva degli Schiavoni in Venice, Italy, during Carnival. Susan always wanted to go to Carnivale in Venice, and one year, Easter was very early, so we could arrange Carnival in our schedule. We were staying in a hotel right on the Riva degli Schiavoni, recommended by a friend and neighbor in Cape May. Every morning, we’d go walking in our costumes, attracting lots of attention and having hundreds of Japanese tourists take their pictures with us. I went as a giant Turk and Susan went as an eighteenth century Frenchwoman.
My aim in this painting was to convey the crush of the crowd on the Riva degli Schiavoni and the other-worldliness of the pink light shining on the dome of the Salute. I used much more linseed oil than usual to make a rich, fat paint to carry intense color.
36”w x 24” h
Oil on canvas
$950.
Nimes is a beautiful city in southern France. It has two world famous sites; the Vieux Carré, which is the most perfectly preserved Roman temple in the world, and the Arena, which is a Roman coliseum. We were wandering around the city, catching its other sites, and climbed through a park called the Jardins de la Fontaine. About halfway up to hill, I saw this scene, which seemed so quintessentially French, that I had to paint it.
My aim was to capture the long shadows creating violet stripes across the path and the Frenchness of the pink stucco house
Oil on canvas
28”w x 22”h
$850.
This is a small painting that I did years ago of the Cape May wetlands between Wildwood and the mainland of New Jersey. The mud flats in the foreground were next to Ocean Drive and the bunch of trees on the horizon are adjacent to the banks along route 47.
I put the horizon very high to try to capture the vastness and flatness of the wetlands in a small canvas. The color is laid on in washes to reproduce the beige and green of early spring.
oil on canvas
24″w x 18″h
$900.
This is the Canal de la Robine, which I have painted in other views. Here, right in the middle of Narbonne, the canal boats were moored along the banks, and the low winter sun made long shadows. The French love to torture trees into artificial shapes and the plane trees in Narbonne are the same as those in Cape May, New Jersey, but trimmed into urban decorations.
Oil on canvas
28”w x 22”h
$850.
This is a new orchard just north of the Broadway Bridge on the West side of Seashore Road. I liked the one-point perspective created by the newly planted trees and the vast landscape, captured on a little canvas.
Oil on canvas
24”w x 12”h
$495.
This is one of a pair of paintings of the olive grove on the grounds of the castle in Beja, Portugal. In this painting, the trees are painted as hundreds of individual leaves, rather than the usual way of treating the whole leaf-mass as one volume with light and shadow. The other painting of this pair is painted differently.
Oil on canvas
20”w x 16”h
$700.
The Pincio Park, or the gardens of the Villa Borghese, are the Rome equivalent of New York’s Central Park. We’d often sit in our favorite café in the park to write Rome Secrets or CityTravelBlog. This is the Temple of Aesculapius in the park. It was built in the early twentieth century as an ornament for the little duck pond in front of it. It is actually just a temple front, with no building behind.
This is one of the many classical focal points in the park created in the early twentieth century as a green relief in very urban Rome.
Oil on canvas
36”w x 24”h
$950.
