Tom Roberts

By
Armand Cabrera

Thomas William Roberts was born in Dorchester, England March 9, 1856. When his father died his mother moved the family to Melbourne Australia. Tom, as he was known attended the East Collingwood School of Design. In 1874 at the age of 18 Roberts enrolled in the Gallery School of Design. In 1881 he raised enough money to travel to England and study at the Royal Academy Antique School. From England he traveled to Spain, Italy and France. In France, he briefly studied with Jean Leon Gerome at the Academie Julian in 1884 in Paris. Roberts returned to Melbourne in 1885.

He began spending his summers in the bush, in 186-87 it was at a camp at Mentone with Frederick McCubbin. In 1888 Roberts camped with Arthur Streeton and Charles Condor at Eaglemont. These artists became known as the Heidelberg School named after an area outside of Melbourne.
He organized the five by nine exhibition with Streeton and others showing their plein air Studies on five by nine cigar box lids. Roberts was the gathering force of the group. These younger artists took Barbizon and Impressionist ideas and went directly to nature for their inspiration breaking with an older generation of painters that worked in the studio mimicking European motifs in Australian scenes. Roberts and Streeton travelled together and painted and camped near Sydney. In 1895 he became the founding member and the first president of the Society of Artists. Roberts and Streeton taught together and held exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne.

Roberts was commissioned to paint the opening of Australia’s First Federal Parliament in 1901 taking two years to complete the project. The painting is 304.5cm x 509.2 cm (10 x 16 feet). On completion of the painting Roberts entered what he called his black period having trouble with his eyesight and difficulty finding inspiration to paint. He travelled back to Europe visiting Holland, Italy and England. During the First World War he worked as an orderly in a London Hospital.
In 1919 Roberts returned to Melbourne and made painting trips to Sydney, Tasmania and New Zealand. Tom Roberts died September 14th 1931. His art would influence generations of Australian painters. Roberts’s high key impressionist paintings along with the other Heidelberg painters have defined landscape painting in Australia for over 100 years.

Bibliography

Tom Roberts
Ron Radford
1996
South Australia State Government Publications

Golden Summers Heidelberg and Beyond
Jane Clark and Bridget Whitelaw
1985
The international Cultural Corporation of Australia


Quote
It seems to me that one of the best ideas spoken to an artist is, ‘paint what you love and love what you paint’ and on that I have worked; on so it came that being in the bush and feeling the delight and fascination of the great pastoral life and work, I have tried to express it.~ Tom Roberts

Reflected Light

by
Armand Cabrera

Reflected light is an important part of realistic painting. This is especially true when painting outdoors where direct light from the sun is so powerful. Bad landscape paintings have no reflected light or ridiculously exaggerated reflected light. No reflected light is a product of too much reliance on photographic reference material. The camera is lousy at capturing reflected light outdoors under most conditions. This is why photographs have overly black shadows. The range of light and shadow in most outdoor scenes is beyond the capabilities of most cameras. When painting from life it is important to be aware of the properties of reflected light and how they affect the scene you are looking at.

Anything that has direct light falling on it in a scene becomes a source of light itself.

You can prove this to yourself by going outside on a sunny day with a colorful object and placing it close to the shadow side of any other object, while the colorful object is still in sunlight. It will drastically alter the color of the shadow. If the object being lit is light enough and reflective enough it can even affect other objects in the sunlight.

Reflected light is never as strong as its source light
This is a problem for most beginners who tend to focus on color and are oblivious to value shifts. In most situations, reflected light belongs to the shadow and as such it must support, not compete with the lighted areas of your painting. While it can be effective to exaggerate the chroma of reflected light, raising its value too much will ruin the effect completely.

Reflected light is a combination of the local color of the object sending the light, the object receiving the light and the quality and color of the source light and ambient light in the scene.

As you can see once you have multiple sources of light like the sky and other objects, reflected light becomes a very unique phenomena dependant on all the other aspects of the scene. You can imagine that the combinations of colors these reflections will produce are not predictable. This is why direct observation and field studies are so important and can never be replaced by photographic reference alone.

Richmond Workshop Demo

by Armand Cabrera


I’m down with the flu, so this week’s post is a demo from my Richmond Workshop. I want to thank Cathy Ellis for taking and sending me these photos for use in the blog.

On the last day of the workshop we painted in Hollywood Cemetery which is located on a hilltop overlooking the James River in Richmond. It was a beautiful day with the leaves just starting to turn on some of the trees.

Because I was painting complex architecture and I would only have an hour for the demo, I did a small 10x8 canvas. I started with my drawing and realized I had gotten my proportions wrong so I had to wipe it off and start again even though I had 12 students watching me. I wanted to make sure they see the process and how important it is to get things right from the start.
The second take got me to be more careful and I got through the careful placement of my elements.

I was painting Major Lewis Ginter‘s mausoleum, a prominent historical figure of Richmond; I wanted the composition centered giving it a formal reverent feel.

Because the trees off to the left were beginning to cast shadows into the scene I painted the foliage and background first getting the big masses of color and shadows down and locked in.

When those elements were done I began painting the mausoleum itself. I focused on the shifts in color and value and ignored details.

I finish up by adjusting edges and completing the background elements.

Here is the finished painting. Although there were sweeping views overlooking the city of Richmond, I was drawn to this intimate scene of a part of life often ignored in paintings. I think it is important to always paint what moves you not necessarily a postcard scene of a place. The painting was purchased by one of my students who is with the Historical Society of Richmond on its completion.

Paintings of the Piedmont

In two weeks, on November 7, 2009, my One Man Exhibition opens at the Berkley Gallery in Warrenton, Virginia. I will feature 40 paintings of the Piedmont Region of Northern Virginia. The paintings comprise a significant portion of my productivity for the last year. It is the largest One Man Show I’ve given in my fine art career and I’m quite excited about it. I’ve been honored with great press in the Washington DC area and also nationally, in the November issue of American Art Collector. I’ve decided to preview some of my show pieces on my website and this blog.







The Virginia Piedmont has a rich history with architects of the American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, James Madison and John Marshall all lived in Virginia. Major battles of the Civil War were fought throughout the State. Virginia was one of the first wine growing regions in the country. Speaking as an artist, it is one of the most beautiful places in the United States. For the majority of the time, Virginia has a very pleasant climate.




The idea for my “Paintings of the Piedmont” Exhibition had been kicking around in my head since I moved to the area from California in 2007. Berkley Gallery’s owner, Tom Sentz, liked my Virginia Piedmont idea and my desire to donate to a preservation or land conservation society. Tom suggested partnering with the “Piedmont Environmental Council” and giving a portion of all proceeds to the organization. PEC safeguards the landscapes, communities and heritage of the Piedmont by involving citizens in related public policy and land conservation.
Meeting with Doug Larson of the PEC was amazing. He got behind the show idea immediately, suggesting locations and providing access to beautiful private estates and farms. I couldn’t have pulled off this show without his help.


Many of the show paintings were the end result of multiple trips to a location to find the right light or time of year. In some instances, like the case of my bluebell painting, I made fifteen trips to the location in three weeks ---trying to capture the perfect time of day---the perfect time of the year---just when the flowers were blooming at their peak.
In the studio, I often determined an outdoor sketch wasn’t the right format. I either returned to the field, or if that wasn’t possible because of weather or seasonal changes, I created a studio version from the field study in the format I felt worked better.
I had a lot of fun on this journey, saw some incredible sights and have grown to love Virginia, her seasons, great architecture and landscapes even more.

Charles Warren Eaton

by
Armand Cabrera

Charles Warren Eaton was born in 1857 in Albany, New York.
He was raised by his father and older sister after his mother died when he was a child. At the age of 22 Eaton moved to New York City. In New York Eaton worked as a dry goods clerk to support himself and attended the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design on nights and weekends. In 1882 Eaton began to exhibit at the National Academy of design. His work reflected an interest in French Barbizon painting which was popular with collectors at the time.

In 1886 Eaton travelled to Europe visiting France, Belgium, Holland and England.
On his return to America Eaton moved to Bloomfield, New Jersey. It is here the artist fully embraced the tonalist style for his work, eschewing an impressionist sense of color and key for the majority of his career.

Between 1880 and 1910 the American tonalist movement was a departure from the Hudson River School and its highly rendered scenes of grandeur. Tonalism was more concerned with quieter places, where the atmosphere was the dominant factor. Artists sought to capture more subtle, muted effects of color while maintaining a dynamic range of value between light and shadow. Tonalism simplified forms and focused on atmospheric effects such as twilight, mist and moonlight to create a less representational and more poetic depiction of the landscape.

After 1910 Eaton used pine trees extensively as a motif in his paintings. These pictures secured the artists career. His paintings were awarded many medals including a gold medal at the Paris Salon de Artistes in 1906 for Gathering Mists. Eaton also garnered awards in America from the Salmagundi Club, The Philadelphia Art Club and the National Academy of Design. After 1910 Eaton abandoned Tonalism for a more impressionist style with a brighter palette. He continued to travel and paint making yearly trips to Italy.
Charles Warren Eaton died at the age of 80 in 1937.






Bibliography
Charles Warren Eaton an American Tonalist Rediscovered
Charles Teaze Clark
Spanierman Gallery, LLC