Sunlight and Shadow: The Life and Art of Willard L. Metcalf - Hardcover

Elizabeth De Veer; Richard J. Boyle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0896597539 ISBN 13: 9780896597532

Publisher: Abbeville Pr, 1988

Synopsis

Traces the career of the New England artist, describes the influences on his work, and looks at a variety of his landscapes

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Having painted pictures of Monet's formal garden in Giverny, Metcalf (1858-1925) applied the lessons of French impressionism to the New England landscape. Today he is not as well known as Mary Cassatt, Maurice Prendergast and other American impressionists, yet this big, gorgeous volume confirms him as their equal in many ways. His distinctive impressionism, spiked with his own tough brand of realism, defies ready categorization. The sheer directness of his approach, his optimism and lack of self-consciousness do not endear him to modernist tastes. But his best picturesand there are dozens heretake one's breath away. A believer in spiritualism, Metcalf sought correspondences between heaven and earth. On wide travels, he caught the poetry of a Tunisian street, Havana harbor and Zuni pueblos, but he kept returning to the New England settings that called forth his homespun visions, at once sublime and deceptively simple.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

A founder of "The Ten," a group of American Impressionists, Metcalf is not as well know as many of his fellow artistsand indeed, his career was rockier. His art may have revealed a use of rich colorenhanced by travels to exotic climes and appearing to best advantage in landscapes of his native New Englandyet in life he alternated between rebellion and salon adherence. In describing the contrast, this monograph unites important art historical research and appraisal, moving far beyond the hitherto scanty information available on the artist. An expensive, but valuable, choice for comprehensive collections on American art.Paula A. Baxter, NYPL
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Abbeville Pr
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0896597539
• ISBN 13: 9780896597532
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288
• Illustrator: Willard L. Metcalf