# Favorite American Painters



## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

America has produced some of the best painters the world has ever seen. Who are your favorite American painters?


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Hmmm, Thomas Kinkade or Bob Ross, tough choice.

No, Edward Hopper is probably my single favorite. Bellows, Sargent, Church, Pollock... a lot of the usual suspects.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

GreenMamba said:


> Hmmm, Thomas Kinkade or Bob Ross, tough choice.
> 
> No, Edward Hopper is probably my single favorite. Bellows, Sargent, Church, Pollock... a lot of the usual suspects.


I had almost forgotten Kinkade and didn´t know Bob Ross , but thank you.

Andrew Wyeth is great too, maybe my real favourite ....
Thomas Cole ...


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Morimur said:


> America has produced some of the best painters the world has ever seen. Who are your favorite American painters?


This must be a joke right
Ever heard of the Dutch masters?


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

*Ivan Le Lorraine Albright*


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

1. Norman Rockwell
2. Thomas Kinkade

I've always been fascinated by the WWII era, especially within the US. Not only is Rockwell's art beautiful (if I can use such a vague term), but there's also the historical aspect that compels me. 

As for Kinkade: I refuse to buy an annual calendar that isn't based on Kinkade's paintings.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

America has produced some of the best painters the world has ever seen.

Actually a rather limited number of the "best" ever seen.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

This must be a joke right?
Ever heard of the Dutch masters?

There aren't all that many Dutch Masters, either. You have Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals... and if you go into the 20th century you get Mondrian... but most of the rest are rather minor figures: Ter Borch, Jan Steen, Van Loo, de Hooch, Ruisdael, van Oost, etc... all marvelous painters commonly known as the "Little Dutch Masters". Italy, France, and the Flemish/Belgians are the titans of Western painting.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Ivan Albright! I haven't seen him pop up anywhere online in years. I was absolutely enthralled with his work when I came upon it back in high-school (16 years old).

His paintings are like German Expressionism on LSD:


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

American painters don't really enter into the international scope of art until the late 1900s. Prior to that there are some interesting figures.

There's John Singleton Copley, perhaps best known for his portrait of Jack Black... I mean Paul Revere:



There's the Peale Family... dad Charles Wilson Peale and sons Raphaelle Peale, Rubens Peale, Titian Peale, and Rembrandt Peale:


-Rembrandt Peale- Portrait of Raphaelle Peale


-Rembrandt Peale- Thomas Jefferson

The best of the early American painters, however, was undoubtedly the British-trained Gilbert Stuart. Stuart was able to capture both the more rigid, American puritanism:



... and the flamboyant aristocratic art of Europe:


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

If I were to need to make a list of my personal Top 15 American Painters it might include:

*Winslow Homer*

Homer is the artist who most established the American realist vernacular.







*George Bellows*:

Bellows was the artist who employed the most creamy and sensuous handling of paint of any American artist prior to DeKooning. He also turned away from the American fixation with the untamed landscape and turned toward urban themes.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*James MacNiel Whistler*:

Whistler might be the first American painter to have a real impact upon European art. He was infamous for his lawsuit with John Ruskin, his affairs (including with the model who was also Courbet's lover), and his outrageous incident of the "Peacock Room":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peacock_Room

He was also close with many of the leading artists of the time, including Degas, and was influential in championing the Japanese aesthetic.


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## musicrom (Dec 29, 2013)

Hmm, now that I think about it, I don't really know much by any American painters, and what I have seen, I've generally been indifferent to. That being said, I do think that I like Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*John Singer Sargent:*

Sargent was one of the greatest portraitists of all time, a virtual swordsman with the brush equally adept in a polished realism and a flamboyant Impressionism, and unrivaled in watercolor.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

Thomas Hart Benton is without a doubt my favorite.










https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...ton_-_Achelous_and_Hercules_-_Smithsonian.jpg

Click the link above for the full sized picture. It's jaw dropping!


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*Edward Hopper:*

Hopper is a fascinating figure. Although he studied in Europe and was profoundly inspired by Manet and Degas, he is one of the most thoroughly American of painters, producing any number of iconic images of the age. His paintings often suggest scenes from film noir, and it is not surprising that he was and remains one of the most influential painters upon filmmakers... including Alfred Hitchcock. Hoppers use of lettering and signs in his paintings (among other elements) also made him one of the artists who inspired the Pop Artists. His technical ability with drawing and handling paint was rather limited, but the solidity of his compositions, the color, and the moods he was able to evoke made him one of the most important artists of the 20th century.


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## SarahNorthman (Nov 19, 2014)

Despite the fact that people say her flowers look like lady parts (dont know why because its not that way for me) I do like Georgia O'Keeffe


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*George Tooker:*

A good number of American artists in the early 20th century turned their back on Modernism embracing an American realism and Renaissance and Mannerist elements and techniques... especially the painting method of egg tempera. Among these artists were Thomas Hart Benton, Andrew Wyeth, Paul Cadmus, Jared French, and George Tooker. Tooker is the most interesting IMO merging elements of Renaissance form and technique, American Social Realism, and Magic Realism.


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## Balthazar (Aug 30, 2014)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> [/URL]


The Peacock Room at the Freer in DC is indeed wonderful!


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## Balthazar (Aug 30, 2014)

My favorites include Mark Rothko, Frank Stella, Richard Pousette-Dart, and Agnes Martin.

From earlier periods, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, J. M. Whistler, and Winslow Homer.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> *Edward Hopper:*
> 
> Hopper is a fascinating figure. Although he studied in Europe and was profoundly inspired by Manet and Degas, he is one of the most thoroughly American of painters, producing any number of iconic images of the age. His paintings often suggest scenes from film noir, and it is not surprising that he was and remains one of the most influential painters upon filmmakers... including Alfred Hitchcock. Hoppers use of lettering and signs in his paintings (among other elements) also made him one of the artists who inspired the Pop Artists. His technical ability with drawing and handling paint was rather limited, but the solidity of his compositions, the color, and the moods he was able to evoke made him one of the most important artists of the 20th century.


This two I like very much:tiphat:


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Hopper, Pollock, Rothko. The usual suspects.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Albert Pinkham Ryder.
The Luminists: Fitzhugh Lane, Sanford Gifford, Martin Johnson Heade, John F. Kensett, and those others, like Bierstadt, Silva, Bingham, etc., who painted occasionally in a Luminist manner.
George Inness.
Edward Hopper.
Winslow Homer.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*Willem DeKooning*-

DeKooning and Pollock were the two leading painters of the branch of Abstract Expressionism known as "Action Painting"... the other branch, epitomized by Rothko, being known as "Field Painting". Of all the American painters of Abstract Expressionism (or the New York School) Pollock was chosen as the best choice to represent the new American painting. Gorky was Armenian, Motherwell was too high class, Rothko was Jewish, Guston was Jewish and Canadian, and DeKooning was Dutch. Nevertheless, while Clement Greenberg championed Pollock, Harold Rosenberg, who had coined the term, "Action Painting", championed DeKooning... and DeKooning became the most influential painter of the period... Pollock's drips being far more difficult to build upon that DeKooning's gestural paintings rooted in Rubens, Hals, Van Gogh, and Soutine.

While the critics like Greenberg played up the dichotomy of figurative vs abstract art... and "high" "serious" art vs "kitsch" and "populist" art, DeKooning wholly rejected such notions. He began as a figurative painter and as a teacher at Black Mountain College he insisted students master academic realism before making any attempts at Modernist or abstract art. His abstract paintings were frequently rooted in the human figure or landscape and he returned to figurative painting several times... even employing elements such as photographic reproductions of Marilyn Monroe's lips ala Pop Art.


-Queen of Hearts


-Pink Angels


-Ganesvoort Street


-Gotham News


-Excavation


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*Robert Motherwell-*

Robert Motherwell was at the opposite end of the spectrum from almost all of the artists of the New York School/Abstract Expressionism. He was born into an upper-class family, his father being president of Wells Fargo Bank. He took an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Stanford before embarking on the "grand tour" of Europe with his father. At Stanford he extensively explored Modernist literature, especially the works of Mallarmé, James Joyce, Edgar Allan Poe, and Octavio Paz. From Stanford he went on to study at Harvard and Columbia majoring in French Symbolist poetry and Philosophy. He studied under the Art Historian/Art Critic, Meyer Schapiro who introduced him to many leading Modernist figures, including Max Ernst, Duchamp, Andre Masson, Matta, Gorky etc...

Motherwell developed a visual vocabulary that combined the large "empty" spaces of "Field Painting" as epitomized by Rothko and inspired by Matisse, with the gestural brushwork of Pollock and DeKooning (also inspired by Surrealist Automatism and Asian calligraphy. Motherwell was a very verbal/literary artist (he wrote extensively upon art and other topics) whose paintings were often inspired by poetry.


-Mallarme's Swan


-Elegy for the Spanish Republic LXX


-Beside the Sea


-America- La France Series


-Mexican Night


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*Richard Diebenkorn:*

Shortly after the New York School began to make a name for itself and group of artists in California also began to earn a degree of recognition. The so-called "California School (of Figurative Artists") built upon some elements of Abstract Expressionism, while rejecting others. Where the attention of the artists of the New York School was centered upon Picasso and Surrealism and Urban Cityscapes, the artists of the California School embraced the gestural brushwork of Abstract Expressionism, but turned rather toward the French "intimiste" artists such as Matisse and Bonnard reveling in the brilliant light and color of the California landscape.

Diebenkorn began painting in a manner derivative of DeKooning, but inspired by the example of other California School painters such as David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Paul Wonner, etc... he turned toward a manner of "realism" that build not only upon Matisse and Bonnard as well as Abstract Expressionism, but also the everyday realism and strong geometric structures of Edward Hopper. Late in his career, he returned to abstract painting in a series known as the Ocean Park series which built upon the geometry of the suburban landscapes of California, the Open series of Motherwell, and Matisse's Open Window.


-Sleeping Woman


-Girl with Plant


-Interior with a Book


-Ocean Park #79


-Ocean Park


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

Aside from the aforementioned Sargent, Copley and Hopper, there's Thomas Moran:









Thomas Cole:









Jasper Francis Cropsey:









and George Bellows:









I live fairly close to the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Gallery of Art, so I can see works by all of these artists and more pretty regularly. The last two paintings I posted are actually in the National Gallery.

Has anyone ever checked out the DVD art lectures offered by the Great Courses company? There's an art historian, William Kloss, who does a wonderful series on American art.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

I like a lot of the painters in the thread. Well, not of Kinkade. In particular I guess I'm not very original saying that Hopper is a big favorite.
Some of my favorites not yet mentioned:

Charles Burchfield and his psychedelic visions (even if I don't have a particular favorite)









the genius of color Maxfield Parrish









the landscapes of Wayne Thiebaud (but I'm not a big fan of his cakes)








Dod Procter 








Ben Shahn








Florine Stettheimer


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

This is interesting so far. My favorites have already been covered: Hopper and Rothko especially, also O'Keefe.

I had the opportunity to see some paintings by Helen Frankenthaler that were impressive. They don't translate well into pictures.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*Philip Guston*

Guston was a Canadian-born, Jewish (his original name was Goldstein) American painter who eventually became a leading figure among the Abstract Expressionists... and arguably became even more influential after a late-career stylistic shift.

Guston attended high-school with Jackson Pollock and began working with David Siqueiros shortly after graduation. Siqueiros, along with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco was one of the leading figures in the Mexican muralist movement. The ambition and scale of the Mexican muralists would have a major impact upon the Abstract Expressionists, while most would ignore the socio-political content of their work. Guston was quite committed to social and political causes early on... so much so that he became the target of an LAPD Red Squad raid. Along with the Mexican Muralists, Guston was influenced by the German Expressionists, especially Max Beckmann, who would succeed him in his teaching post at Washington University, Saint Louis.

Guston's early work showed the influence of Mexican Muralists, the German Expressionists, the American Social Realists, and Magic Realism and Surrealism.



In _This Be Not I_ Guston portrays childhood/childish games to adult violence such as the Crucifixion and war.

By the late 1940s, Guston began to align his work with the vision of his friends, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Adolf Gottlied creating a barely figurative art that still attempted to confront social issues... as in the painting, _The Tormentors_:



By the 1950s Guston had moved fully toward abstraction... becoming the most poetic painter of the generation, his shimmering and atmospheric paintings suggesting the late paintings of Monet:





His sensuous handling of paint must be seen in person to be fully appreciated:


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

By the mid-1960s Guston felt an increasing dissatisfaction with the direction of his work. He would often spend the day with his neighbor, Philip Roth, ranting about the Vietnam War and other political issues of the day and felt a disconnect between his political concerns and his paintings. By the late 1960s he made an even more dramatic shift than his early transition from figurative painting to abstraction when he went from abstraction to figurative painting.

The work of the last decade or so of his life suggested a certain crudeness... with funky figures that suggest the work of R. Crumb but were actually inspired by Mutt and Jeff, Krazy Kat, Max Beckmann, and even Giotto. The paintings were often laden with images of hob-nailed boots, Ku Klux Klansmen, and even allusions to Biblical themes. Still the paintings retained Guston's masterful sensuality of the handling of paint. The critics were outraged, accusing him of selling out to Pop Art. These late paintings, however, would ultimately become Guston's most influential work as Abstract Expressionism lost its dominance and painters returned to figurative work.


-The Studio


-The Pit


The Wall


-Cabal


The Street


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