Collection of notes and comments:

This page is an addendum to the narrations section of Bob Glover.com/Art

Artcyclopedia: ... by John Malyon/Artcyclopedia (http://www.artcyclopedia.com).

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ArtLex Art Dictionary: The ArtLex website has definitions for ... more than 3,600 terms used in discussing art / visual culture, along with thousands of supporting images, pronunciation notes, great quotations and cross-references. En plein air which means in the open air, as in work done outdoors, is defined in the ArtLex website, for example.

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Golden Ratio: See http://www.bobglover.com/art/wnotes/g04.htm#pd for an example of watercolor study done in the ratio of 1:6180339887, known as phi (It was defined by Euclid more than 2000 years ago). Key word search: golden+ratio+art+history. The search found a definition in Art History About.com along with more details at the website of the University of Surrey, School of EEITM, Guildford, Surrey, UK (webfile: Fibonacci Numbers and The Golden Section in Art, Architecture and Music). My reference library has The Golden Ratio by Mario Livio, Broadway Books.

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Hudson River School: The group of painters that followed the lead of Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand. Durand painted Kindred Spirits* (New York City Public Library). According to Thomas Cole.org, (Cole) founder of the Hudson River School of Art, arrived in the Catskill Mountain wilderness in 1825 and found inspiration (in the area). Thomas Cole.org has information about Cole's home, Cedar Grove, near Olana, the home of Frederic Church. Church (1826-1900) was Thomas Cole's best know student.

The Hudson River School movement includes artists who traveled west with the expansion of the Nation during the 19th century and graphically recorded its wilderness landscapes. Notable among them was Albert Bierstadt who had an influence on the establishment of the first national parks.

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Realism: American realism is associated with the philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952). Here is part of the introduction to American Realism by Edward Lucie-Smith, published by Thames & Hudson (ISBN 0-500-28356-7): Dewey's belief was that common sense was much more than an elusive chimerathat it remained 'a useful and usable name for a body of facts'. In art, this approach leads both artist and spectator towards the kind of work which presents the world as 'everyone' would see it ...

Realism suggests that the artist creates something that viewers can accept as resembling that with which they are familiar. Most viewers would generally accept a photograph of a landscape as realistic as in the case of a work by Ansel Adams. The American Scene Movement shows works of artists who are generally considered to be realistic painters. On the other hand, one viewer may be less inclined than another to accept fantasy art as realistic although a work may be illustrated to appear as a photograph. As a practical matter, the definition of realism in art should be relegated to the eyes of the beholder.

My sketchbook is used to bring studies together from different times and places to create a picture that is not real, although it may appear to be. See Adams Ranch 2003, and be sure to read the notes about it. My work with scenes and landscapes is influenced by Contemporary Realist (for example) as well by artists from the Realism Movement (mid-1800s), The Golden Age of Illustration (late-1800s - 1920s), and American Scene Painting (1931-1940) and, earlier by the Hudson River School. In the latter case, I really should say that I am influenced by that entire corps of artists that began drawing and painting the scenes of the pioneering of North America in the 19th centaury and continue today to capture our landscapes and stories with pencil and brush.

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Yahoo: http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/art_history/periods_and_movements. URL goes to a list/links that the search engine has for art periods and movements. The original search done to find the Yahoo resource included the word genre ... category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, marked by a distinctive style, form, or contentquote from Answers.com.

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Kindred Spirits by Asher B. Durand became involved in controversy around the time I was referring to the painting while completing a commission. The controversy surrounded the loss of Durand's painting from New York where it had been in the forefront as representative of Hudson River School art. Following is a quote from Artnet.com (May 2005): ... the New York Public Library has sold Asher B. Durand's masterpiece, Kindred Spirits (1849), a vaunted painting of artist Thomas Cole and poet and journalist William Cullen Bryant on a ledge in the Catskill Mountains, to ....

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Google search using the key words combination: sotheby's+kindred+spirits+painting.

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See Kindred Spirits at http://www.catskillarchive.com/cole/wcb-1.htm. As a tribute to Hudson River School artists a work exhibited in the main gallery of this website shows figures posed somewhat the way Durand painted William Cullen Bryant and Thomas Cole in his painting. Bob Glover has yet to produce a work of interest to Sotheby's or that is expected to be worth anywhere near $35 million in the near future, so don't make comparisons.

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