Jackdaws At Dusk

Jackdaws At Dusk

Tuesday 9 March 2010

Paintings from Bridgeman

I've spent some time looking through the Bridgeman Art Library for images of crows and there were plenty.

The one that first caught my eye was 'Tree of Crows' by Caspar David Friedrich. http://www.caspardavidfriedrich.org/The-Tree-of-Crows-c.-1822.html Here's a link to his website showing the image of the tree, It contains a lot of the elements that I want in my painting such as the bare trees, the swirling crows and the pale lemon yellow sky. I'm still planning on my painting being a bit more 'messy' even though I like the tight, detailed look of Friedrich's painting.
I also found an image by Ellen Golla that I liked, the outline of the branches and the crows were uneven and very textural, then I read she created them with paper mosaic. Her website http://www.zebracrossing.org/ goes into detail about her working methods and the image I found of 'Stormy Day, Greenwich Park' is in the link for 'paper mosaic collages' then click on 'imaginary places.'
Phillip Sutton, on the Bridgeman Website, created a series of paintings of crows though I've been able to find no website showing the images yet. He painted with very vivid colours, the Royal Academy website mentions that he was inspired by Matisse, and the crows in his paintings were quite often feature a white border around them, as if to highlight them.
Finally I selected the painting by Van Gogh of 'Wheatfield with crows' (his final painting) which also uses very similar vivid colours to Philip Sutton though with much sharper angles to his brush strokes. The format of this painting really took my interest because of the wide, panoramic view which I hope to use in my painting.

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