Skip to main content

Edgar Alwin Payne's Landscape, Canyon de Chelly

Image result for edgar payne
Edgar Alwin Payne, Canyon de Chelly, specific date unknown, ca. before 1947

    Nature falls into the happy rhythm of human steps in this beautifully romanticized oil painting by Edgar Alwin Payne. The cliffs provide the wanderers a pleasant shade, while the clouds shine benevolently in the sky. The shadows in the background are like children peeking around corners to see what the grown-ups are doing. 

    The way the light rakes across the rock face, it makes the cliffs appear to be follow the wayfarers around the curve of the valley. The way the rocks sink back into themselves counters this forward rhythm and creates the impression that they are reluctantly curious about the horsemen. The clouds overhead seem less connected to the wanderers but are playful with each other. Continuing the horizontal rhythm of the rock walls, the clouds have a peculiar shape that draws one in to wonder what Payne was trying to communicate. Though the clouds seem somewhat impenetrable, this mindset makes me look closer at the rocks, and I see that Payne has fit hidden pictures into the lines of these rocks: faces, animals, a subtle phantasmagoria of transitory images.  Here he communicates that nature is full of things to discover.

detail of rock face showing hidden picture of a coyote's head and neck


    I love how un-European Payne's paintings are. They are flat-footed, earthy, like the American journeyman they depict. The unique combination of earthy, gritty subjects with a benevolent sunlit sense of life is something one simply doesn't find in European art, but only in the great age of pre-World War II America, when men had a sense of the absolute unlimited scope of human potential. This was never depicted better than by the painters of the American southwest, and none of them were greater than Edgar Alwin Payne. Payne's closest artistic ancestor is the German painter, Caspar David Friedrich, but despite Friedrich's insistent commitment to this earth, his religiosity put him at odds with a truly this-worldly outlook, and his rocks and clouds were never as joyfully real as Payne's, but contained a gloomy insubstantiality.   

Caspar David Friedrich, Rock Canyon in the Harz 1811

    Payne really introduces himself in this painting. He announces to us, Hello! I am here in the landscape. I have sunk my thought into it and you may too. I have discovered this way of feeling about existence, and you can hop onto this feeling too.

    I implore you to hop on. I have never found a painting that feels as good as an Edgar Payne, or that leaves me with such confident hope.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to Paint a Landscape in Oil

This is a landscape painted with oil on paper. It was painted from a photograph and the subject is a pond in Central Park. The visual theme is "distance" and all of my choices were made in order to communicate and stress the illusion of space.  The painting was made in four layers, with a few days between each one to allow the paint to dry. I am going to describe the process of each layer. STEP 1 The first step is to block in the large shapes. This is a means of mapping out the composition, choosing which objects will be included and which omitted. The exact tones used at this stage are not absolutely critical but are an approximation of the target colors. Since they will serve as a substrate for subsequent layers, I mixed them lighter and duller than my target colors. That way they won't dominate subsequent layers by showing through and altering the color of those layers—at least no more than I want them to. STEP 2 The next layer of paint is ...

Carolus Duran, John Singer Sargent and the "Indispensable" in Art

  Carolus Duran taught that, “In art, all that is not indispensable is unnecessary." Carolus Duran,  Mademoiselle de Lancey I agree with Carolus, but the word "indispensable" is hard to define in art, and basically amounts to: that which is important to the artist . As such, it is difficult to tell how strictly Carolus adhered to his own principle. Especially in portrait art, an artist is inundated with the particulars of his sitter's personality, and does not necessarily have free reign to paint only that which he cherishes. Nevertheless, Carolus Duran proved canvas after canvas that he was devoted to producing clear, essentialized images. Duran,  Spanish Woman His student, John Singer Sargent was equally devoted to this idea, particularly in regard to the depiction of tones, which was Duran’s special insight and concern in teaching. Duran taught that: “Objects in nature relieve one against each other by the relative values of light and shade which accompany and are...