Birds and flowers

Title? Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)
Lu Ji (1477-?)
likely on silk

A painter of bird and flower works, I haven't been able to find much on Lu Ji, discovering the painting on ChinaCulture.org.

Ming Dynasty art was known for its many different styles stemming from its variety of schools and sects. Lu Ji and others were known for more true to life/reality paintings, Lu Ji most specifically birds and flowers. Flower-and-bird painting is a genre of Chinese painting alongside genres such as landscape. His vivid colors and finely detailed work are exemplary. The rich goldenrod of the background is what draws me to the painting, the other works I've been able to find consist of much more muted colors.

Website dedicated to understanding Chinese painting.

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas (Yuletide Revels), ca. 1910
William Glackens, American, 1870-1938
Black conte crayon, ink, transparent and opaque watercolor, graphite, and paper attachment on cream, thick, smooth pulp board
Illustration for Collier's, The National Weekly, December 10, 1910.
24 3/8 x 18 1/2 in. (61.9 x 47 cm)

I will be signing off for the better part of 2 weeks (you might get a post here and there, my internet access will be intermittent) for the holidays. I wanted to leave you a with a fun Christmas image. I realized how hard it is to find Christmas art, a lot of it is horribly cheesy (but sometimes cute and sweet), much of it is illustration (which is surely often art but I was trying to find something a little more "fine"), and much of it is of course religious (not a bad thing, but was seeing if I could find fine, secular holiday art).

There is only so much time in a day so I've picked this fun drawing by William Glackens. Glacken was associated with "The Eight", Ashcan School of Artists, based in nyc. Glackens was a painter and worked as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines. Glacken's illustration was part of the Brooklyn Museum's 2006 exhibition: Urban Views: Realist Prints and Drawings by Robert Henri and His Circle.

Happy Holidays to all my Art of the Day readers! Thanks for reading :).

Totem

Totem 2
Wayne McDowell
oil on canvas, 36x24 in.
Chase Gallery

Discovery via a gift subscription to Art in America. Like most magazines, Art in America has a slew of ads. In this particular case most of the ads are for gallery shows. I've gotten into the habit of dog-earing not only interesting articles but also works featured in the gallery ads. It has turned into an additional source of inspiration for my art of the day as well as an introduction to many new artists.

A landscape for today. McDowell's paintings are quiet but dense, they appear to have (as much as I can tell in a reproduction!) a light impasto. Most of the landscapes in his current show are seascapes that consist of a low horizon line, the sky filling up most of the canvas. I like the addition of dimension in this particular painting. The thin, slightly gnarled trunk of the tree appears to be just a pedestal for the leaves which look like more like a cloud.