A new book on the American landscape painter William Trost Richards describes the tribulations of the artist painting the sea of life. Richards said:
"I look and look, trying to unravel its thrust and leap and step back, make me ready to grab the strings of the big breakers and I'm always surprised at my self possession by thunder and rush, jump back the loose shingle beach, of course this time I will be washed, wet with spray, and am ashamed that I had missed getting the actual drawing of such a splendid, and this happens twenty times an hour and I have never been accustomed. "
The book was produced by Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University in California, based on the extensive collection of the WTR studies inherited by his younger son in 105 and donated to the museum in 1992.
the book of 9.5 x 11 inches more than 204 pages, with 250 color reproductions documenting the entire collection at Stanford. It includes studying Ruskin influenced early pencil plant, its Adirondack landscapes and marine studies in gouache and oil. Trost Richards was the king of gouaches landscape, often working on toned paper to capture the transient air and water effects.
The focus is on its small outdoor studies, which rival those of Frederic Church, Peder Monsted and Ivan Shishkin for impeccably precise observation. Because Richards has worked well in this mode after it was fashionable (it said "greybeard"), it is not as well known as it deserves.
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William Trost Richards Faithful to Nature: Drawings, Watercolors, and Oil Sketches Stanford University, Carole Osborne. recent exposure of
Cantor Arts Center ended Sept. 26.
GJ previous messages Trost Richards: "Outer Limits of the pencil", "Trost Richards Watercolor", "Called Moreover,"
Thank you, Margaret!
