Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Have You Seen These Trees?


If you have, you're looking at Gatineau Hills, by Group of Seven painter Frederick J. Varley,  which was stolen from the Canadian Fine Arts Store.  Please wrestle it from the thief, run away,  and call police from a safe place.

As to the stolen painting itself, Gatineau Hills illustrates how the Group of Seven typically responded to an environment relatively denuded of trees, which was to use their artist's eye to zero in on whatever trees the landscape offered, however unimpressive, and paint those.  However, you can see in this instance  that Varley became dissatisfied with the quality of tree available, and finally decided "Fuck it!  I'll throw in a few rocks for good measure!" 

The date on this work is unknown ( more specifically: I'm too lazy to look it up), but it may have presaged the Seven's later Trees AND Rocks period, when they realized that painting foliage alone was not enough to satisfy the soul.

Source.

PS.  This one is actually rather purty.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Is that tree? I thought its an small island,Btw I want to share you suit from emensuit