A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana - (Page 80)

shores were Meyer Straus, as exemplified in such works as and also a painter of marine landscapes. Principally supporting Moonlight on the Bayou, and Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr., another himself as a ship captain, surprisingly, he was the only real rival Clague disciple memorializing the South’s noble decay. Finally, to August Norieri—who died tragically young at age 38—in the painting of marine landscapes, considering New Orleans’ close Joseph Meeker, the odd member of this fraternity of style, came proximity to the sea and its reliance on maritime industry, to Louisiana as a Union paymaster and was the only Louisianaperhaps another example of how the painting of the period based painter to have studied directly with members of the Hudson River School, such as Asher B. Durand, later colorizing tended to veer away from depicting as subjects the sources of its the drawings and sketches he made during the Civil War such as material wealth. But it was landscape that was the belle of the cultural ball so Sunset. Perhaps the most transitional painter as the new century far as painting was concerned, and this genre captured Louisiana approached is Alexander John Drysdale, whose worked spanned in its characteristic unique slant of light. Richard several decades in each century. Though evocative Clague, Jr., epitomized the naturalistic and of the Bayou School techniques, he developed idealizing technique that came to his own kerosene-laced technique to characterize the “Bayou School” of render atmospheric effects. Drysdale which he was the principal was also influenced by the growing spell of the Impressionists whose influence. Born in Paris of a luminous effects were gaining French Creole mother into an notice throughout Europe affluent mercantile family involved in the slave trade, and the United States in among other enterprises, the late nineteenth century. Clague was initially raised Throughout the late in New Orleans but nineteenth century, when returned to Paris and American society was Switzerland for formal undergoing its most study of painting and later profound metamorphosis opened a photography studio. under the onslaught of Generally selecting pastoral capitalism, industrialization, and rustic scenes, he rendered and immigration, the writers less realistically than through an and artists of America’s literate idealizing and softening perspective. class, the middle class, sought to give expression to that metamorphosis. Admired for his formal expertise, his As often is the case in times of ferment, influence was extended through his copious school of students including William Henry Realism succumbed to a new Romanticism, Buck, George David Coulon, Charles Giroux, and in no region more strenuously than in BROR ANDERS WIKSTROM Joseph Meeker, and William Aiken Walker. the South which suffered additionally from (b. 1854, Sweden – d. 1909, New York, New York) Louisiana Farm, 1883 In an interesting intersection of genres, the consequences, real and perceived, of its Hand tinted graphite on paper; 7 x 10 in. Clague exhibited a number of times at loss in the Civil War. Because of New Roger H. Ogden Collection photographer Theodore Lilienthal’s studio. Orleans’ prominent role as the South’s largest William Henry Buck trained with the and most cosmopolitan city, the art that Italian painter Ernest Ciceri in Boston before he became a was centered there is an index of that society’s complex response to a period of dramatic change, yielding a genre of heightened disciple of Clague’s, often accompanying him on excursions to South Louisiana’s bayous and lakes, but most art historians idealizations and gentle, muted renderings to console it for its losses, real and imagined. Fortunately, as is so often the case, the considered his dark, moody, atmospheric canvases to be inferior in technique. Other contributors to this dominant genre of art outlasted the historical moment and future generations are atmospheric rendering of the bayous, marshes, swamps, and lake the beneficiaries of its inspired vision. 80 CIVIL WAR THROUGH THE NEW CENTURY  http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1359 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1240 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1378 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1378

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A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana

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