Art Lovers discussion

Nice painting but I haven’t a clue.

Already six views an no-one dares a guess…


So a second pic, but I’m afraid that this first one was already in the main style of this artist.
So here’s another one:


Maybe some facts?
This second one is dated 1915. Painted at the end of a short (39 yrs) but very productive live.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela perhaps?

Sorry Rebecca, Gallen-Kellela was Finnish, that's not the nationality of the artist we're looking for.
Also he was 65 when he died in 1931...

Wolf Kahn??

Good guess

Indeed, it looks like Mr Kahn has seen these paintings, his works shure seem similar.
Only one thing: Wolf Kahn is still alive at 91 years old and was born in 1927, some ten years after these two I posted ware made...
Also wrong nationality.

Not sure the bio fits, however. I just checked - it doesn't. Oh well ...

Found it - Tom Thomson - Canadian artist. I knew I recognized the style from the first picture, but I couldn't make the connection to a certain painting in one of my art books: "Best Loved Art in American Museums"(or something like that). That painting is titled "The Jack-Pine." I just got lucky doing my search thing ...

If you look up The Jack Pine on Wikipedia you can read a very nice tribute to Mr. Thomson and that painting.

Absolutely correct Chris!
Here is the Jack pine you mentioned:



Some more great works coming up in a minute.

These are really very nice.

They are indeed.
The ones with the clearly visible brushstrokes are pretty small, painted on wood panels Thomson could carry in his rucksack, hiking through the Canadian wilderness. It's on such a trip he disapeared later believed to have drowned while kayaking or fishing.

And a couple more ;-)
I really like them ;-)

very nice, and I agree that Wolf Kahn must have looked at least some of them.

And the poem was by Keats:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

    For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

  Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

  Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

  Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

    Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

  Steady thy laden head across a brook;

  Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

    Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

  And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

  Among the river sallows, borne aloft

    Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

  Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

  The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats