Neil Welliver - Landscape Painter

Birches, oil on canvas, Neil Welliver

Neil Welliver (July 22, 1929 - April 5, 2005) was an American-born modern artist, best known for his large-scale landscape paintings inspired by the deep woods near his home in Maine.

Welliver was born in Millville, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art (now part of the University of the Arts) and then received an MFA from Yale University. At Yale, he studied with the abstract artist Josef Albers. Welliver taught at Yale from 1956 to 1966, and in 1966 began teaching at, and eventually became chairman of, the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Art, from which he retired in 1989.

While teaching at Yale, Welliver's style evolved from abstract color field painting to the realistic transcription of small-town scenes in watercolor. In the early 1960s he went to Maine, where he began painting figures outdoors, the large oil paintings often focusing on his sons canoing or female nudes bathing. In 1970 he moved permanently to Lincolnville, and by the mid 1970s the figure as subject had given way to the exclusive study of landscape... Wikipedia

Link Eulogy

Link Neil Welliver and the Healing Landscape, Edgar Allen Beem

Link Full Text, Wikipedia

Landscape Into Art - Sir Kenneth Clark

Landscape, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1641, Etching and Drypoint, 13 x 32.2 cm

'WE ARE SURROUNDED with things which we have not made and which

have a life and structure different from our own; trees, flowers,

grasses, rivers, hills. For centuries they have inspired us with curiosity

and awe. They have been objects of delight. We have recreated them in

our imaginations to reflect our moods. And we have come to think

of them as contributing to an idea which we have called nature.'

Sir Kenneth Clark, in his work as Director of the National Gallery (U.K.) no

less than in his lectures and writings, has shown the belief that art is a

part of our general consciousness and gives a special value to all our

experiences. In this book, which is based on his first course of lectures

as Slade Professor at Oxford, he is concerned with man's relation to

nature as reflected in the history of landscape painting. - Jacket Copy

This book is a collection of Clark's lectures as Slade Professor of Art at Oxford. It was first published in 1949, and still offers the reader an intelligent and relevant approach to the serious study of the landscape.

Link Landscape Into Art, Sir Kenneth Clark, Internet Archive Web Site

Pochade Painting - Landscape by Antony Bridge

Antony Bridge painting the landscape of the Malvern Hills with the pochade box. How exactly does he start and develop the surface? How does his approach influence the outcome? What are the pictorial advantages of working small?

Go to his web site to look at the paintings. If you are not aware of the small scale, the paintings read as though they are much larger. How exactly does this "scale" experience influence your understanding of the work?

Link The Pochade Gallery - Antony Bridge and Carl Melegari

Wolf Kahn - Six Good Reasons Not to Paint a Landscape

Renowned landscape painter Wolf Kahn lectures at Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts. This is one of a broad and excellent Forum Network series of streaming audio and video lectures offered on the web by WGBH, Boston. RealPlayer required.

Link Wolf Kahn

Link Forum Network

Link RealPlayer