Tavira, Algarve, Portugal

roofscape ion Tavira, Algarve, Portugal

This is a very small painting of Tavira in the Algarve region of Portugal, painted soon after our first stay there. I love the roofscapes of Mediterranean towns with the myriad planes and varieties of terra cotta.

This is thickly painted and depicts a patch of sunlight falling on the main street of town, several blocks away.

Oil on canvas 24″w x 18″h

$750.

Olive Grove Beja Portugal

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 Senate in the Forum

Susan and I were hobbling back after a long day of walking around Rome. We walked along the Via dei Fori Imperiali looking for a bus. I looked right and saw the back of the Roman Senate in the forum right next to the baroque Chiesa di Santi Martina e Luca. The simple brick Senate building (the Curia) next to the elaborate church made a wonderful contrast between ancient Rome and counter-reformation Rome; and the pruned Roman pines made the whole scene much more graphically interesting.

Oil on canvas
36”w x 24”h

$950.

Carcassonne II, France

Castle of Carcasonne, Languedoc, France, Impressionist cityscape/landscape

Carcassonne is a castle town on a hill in southwestern France. In the 1200s, the Pope and the king of France agreed to conquer this part of France. The locals were Langue d’Oc speaking Cathars. The Pope declared Cathars to be heretics and the French and Papal forces killed millions of Frenchmen. France got vast new territories and the Pope got to kill off millions who wouldn’t accept his authority. The fortified city of Carcassonne still survives from that period.
This is one of two small paintings of Carcassonne. I was trying to capture the otherworldly, medieval look if the town in late February.

Oil on canvas
16” x 20”

$700.

Olive Grove II, Beja Portugal

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 masses of light and shadow, and some leaves are added afterward to create the impression of leafiness. The other is painted differently.

Oil on canvas

20”w x 16”h

$700.

Mdina, Gozo, Malta

Susan and I spent a month in Malta many years ago. We were visiting the smaller island of Gozo, on the way to the old capital, Mdina. While we were in the sun at the bottom of the hill, it was showering in the city. When we got to the city gates, we were drenched. Every inch of Malta is terraced and farmed and not a spot is wasted.

My aim was to capture the drama of the medieval city on a hill with the terraced gardens flanking the slope. The dramatic cloud was a bonus.

oil on canvas

36″w x 24″h

$950.

Apples

This is a still life of golden delicious apples lying on a sheet. I don’t paint many still lifes, but they were a specialty of my first painting teacher, my uncle, Israel Malamud.I painted it a few years ago, just after a traveling Cezanne show cape to Philadelphia. Susan and I have visited Cezanne’s studio in Arles and stood where he stood to paint his many paintings of Mont Sante Victoire.

It is thickly painted and the folds in the sheet and the diagonal that they set up are as much the subject of the painting as the apples.

Oil on Canvas

24″wx18″h

$750.

The Covered Bridge at Narbonne, France

This is the only bridge in France covered by buildings (like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence) If you stand in the spot that my other painting of canal boats in Narbonne was done from, and turn your hear to face the other way, this is what you see. The water was perfectly still like a mirror.

When the Canal du Midi was built, the merchants of Narbonne realized that they would be bypassed and the town would whither and die, so they built the Canal de la Robine to connect with the new transportation system.

oil on canvas

18″w x 24″ h

$750.

Temple of Aesculapius in the Pincio Park, Rome

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.