luminist/tonalist/impressionist?

[AndyRichardson]

How do you distinguish a luminist from a tonalist from an impressionist?

[bruin70]

to keep it simple,,,tonal painters use values(this means using black) to base their imagery and unify their palette, impressionist use color.

luminists.... http://www.sanford-artedventures.com/study/g_luminist.html

sounds like they were trying to capture nature's light, in very specific areas and circumstances to capture a particular facet of that light. they were landscape artists. tonalists painting everything. impressionists are landscape artists ,,,,,but think they can apply their theories to portrait work and fail miserably.

impressionists are concerned with the physics of color interplay. looks like luminists are realist landscapers who are fascinated with the beauty of light. one is color, one is light. it also seems to me that luminism is not a method of painting as are tonalists and impressionists. luminism is a "point of view". and judging from who they are, they probably paint in the tonal manner.......{M}

[djstar]

cool! I think I am narrowing in on my non-human viewpoint!
I appreciate the subtle distinction and thanks for the clarification. There IS a desire to PAINT specific qualities of light.
We are not mentioning the K word.. but the natural light and how it effects those colors reflected.
I feel the harmonics, now I have to do my homework!
dj*

[AndyRichardson]

THANKS Bruin70. I think I'm getting the distinctions a little better.

Luminists (mid 1800's)explored dramatic light with scenic vistas painted realistically and therefore descriptively.

American tonalists (1880 -1890) painted landscapes with soft mysterious edges and dominant tonal treatment in mid key neutrals, especially for atmospheric effects of fog, pearly mists, and sunrises and sunsets.

Impressionists (1880 - 1890) painted variable colors, depending on the minute of the day, and had no qualms about showing brush strokes--which the luminists and tonalists tried to keep unobtrusive-- and tried to paint their color theory instead of tending necessarily to realistic description of objective form.

[bruin70]

amy....i guess if you are going to refer to the tonalists in an art history sense, then you are right. but whenever anyone asks me to differentiate, i always think of TONAL PAINTERS, not the tonalists group.......as i am a total nincompoop when it comes to art history.....{M}

[AndyRichardson]

"Amy" who???
Bruin..your comment about impressionists and their attempts at portraiture made me wonder about doing a portrait in the American tonalist way. Imagine if you would a dominant field of slightly warm tones with a slight disturbance of colors where the "head" is. The facial expression has to be passive and perhaps looking downward and at an angle...tonalists didn't want to convey high energy emotions, nor direct "in your face" descriptions. The idea was to paint as economically as possible and provide just a minimal hint of objective content and context, so the portrait would only show slight differences in surface reflected light and slight detail for maybe one eye..Makes me think of a set of floating eyes..rather ghostly!
Wonder if anyone does portraits in such a mysterious way?

[bruin70]

Originally posted by AndyRichardson
"Amy" who???
,,,,,,,.tonalists didn't want to convey high energy emotions, nor direct "in your face" descriptions.

well,,,,i mean,,,,well,,,,you know what i mean, am,,,er andy.

tonalists are very emotional. the emotional content is in the very lack of color, which is why all great portrait artists are tonal painters. think "film noir".

impressionism shows me no emotion, but then, i guess it all boils down to how people respond to a given stimuli....so they get emotional about van gogh,,,,whereas i throw up(is that being emotional :):):) )
oops, van gogh wasn't really an impressionist, anyway. well,,,,,,people love monet, and i feel like lying down and sipping a mint julip.


impressionist divorced themselves from emotion when they painted. for them, it was always a rather artistic/scientific exploration of color. when one thinks of tonalism, one thinks of mood. when one thinks of impressionism, one thinks of color(mostly pretty color)......{M}

[surreal]

I just wanted to add a quote from artlex.com to this discussion about luminism, which is one of my favorite styles in the history of American painting.


Luminism or luminism, and luminists - The American landscape painting style of the 1850s-1870s, characterized by effects of light in landscapes, poetic atmosphere through the use of aerial perspective, and a hiding of visible brushstrokes. It is related to, and sometimes refers to Impressionism. Leading American luminists were Fitz Hugh Lane (1804-1865), John F. Kensett (1816-1872), Martin J. Heade (1819-1904), Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900), and Frederick E. Church (1826-1900).

[AndyRichardson]

Bruin, it seems to boil down to different connotations on "tonal". If one is talking about "value" painting (in contrast to "colorists"), then there can be very dramatic emotional renderings. When talks about "tonalists" like Surreal's definition, the emotion is just restful moody stuff. As you said:"..when one thinks of tonalism, one thinks of mood".
I'm not sure where you are coming from in your statement:"..tonalists are very emotional. the emotional content is in the very lack of color.."
Please note that my statement said that tomnal painters "..didn't want to convey high energy emotions.."That isn't the same as saying that they didn't want to convey emotion at all! But, it certainly isn't the dramatic effect that classical tonal portrait work was done in, with strong chiaroscuro, like a figure looming up out of the shadows into the candle light! As Kandinski explained, colors convey movement and emotion and have connotations connecting them to things that are typically colored the same (eg. "orange" connotes oranges). Using color alone one can render spacial and emotional effects, and so your statement regarding lack of color makes no sense to me. Would you expand a bit about that?

[cobalt fingers]

Focuses or Foci

lumis-light

tonalists-values

impressionists-color


When artists try to use every "Tool: available sometimes their statements are weakened. These folks ELECT to concentrate on one of these. Some, like Twatchman went from one group to another-tonalist to impressionist, in his case. It would be interesting to put Turner into any one group if you consider all his work w/o reading the text that comes with it.

[AndyRichardson]

Agreed Cobalt!
The sticking point is just the clarification of the special application of the term "tonalist" for the American tonalists of the late 19th c. To blend the understanding of a tonal treatment of a painting with the tonalist movement here in the US is to lose track of the more singular choice of tonality chosen by the American painters. Take a Turner painting and eliminate the hard edges which serve to describe form, and there is part of the tonalist effect. The only other criterion is that the subject matter of American tonalists was different than Turner's.

[AndyRichardson]

Sorry Surreal, I didn't catch on to the fact that your definition applied to the lumininsts. I knew there was something fishy about the time span given. The Tonalists reigned around 1890. I wonder how many artists got their first yearning for painting when they saw special atmospheric lighting effects? Nature can put on quite a dramatic show. I know my start with painting was inspired by beautiful sunsets over a pond. Humm, sounds like a nice survey question for another thread.

[surreal]

I think what I found and still find attractive about Luminism is the "big" skies, the horizontality of the works and the presentation of nature in its exquisiteness.
:)

[AndyRichardson]

Yeah, me too Surreal. I like that "see it all like I'm God" perspective. It's a transcendent mood you might say. The clarity signals cleanliness, fresh optimism.
I have some associations for you..let me know if there are more.
Most of these apply to the Tonalists.
1)Low key and horizontal motif---repose and tranquility (you lay down to go to sleep)
2)Twilight, sunsets, dawn ---time passage(momentary natural effects)
3)Limited color scale of homogeneous and analogous colors ---unity (sameness equals unity)
4)Soft contours and muted colors ---quiet contemplative mood (soft things are silent)
5)High vantage point or panoramic view ---transcendance (unique knowledge is special knowledge which few come to know)
6)Flattening of space(no overlapping shape cues), also, Omission of anything that shows the effects of the human hand ---non-physical, non-objective, therefore "spiritual"
7)Close-in views --- intimacy (nearness equals intimacy)
8)Farm scenes with domesticated animals ---connectedness with nature/environment
9)Mists, fog ---veil (hidden mystery)

[surreal]

Andy,
Are you referring to Luminists as Tonalists in your above post?

I never heard of Tonalists before, so I went to my online art dictionary and more, artlex.com and couldn't find a definition of tonalism.

If you are referring to Luminists, let me know.
If not, I have to consult my hard-copy art history books tomorrow to learn more about tonalists, in order to reply to your post.

I'm off to work very soon.
:)

[AndyRichardson]

It's new for me too. I get my info from an online article entitled Twilight and Reverie: California Tonalist Painting 1890-1930. In the article the Tonalists actually referred to themselves more as Luminists. The name "tonalists" was brought into play by art historian Wanda Corn who wrote an essay in 1972 entitled "The Color of Mood: American Tonalism, 1880-1910". Her defining characteristics for the Tonalists are: "..a style of intimacy and expressiveness interpreting very specific themes in limited color scales and employing delicate effects of light to create vague suggestive moods."
Chances are that most books we have about art won't have her term in there, but would more likely refer to tonality, as has been brought up a fews times in this thread already. Speaking of which, I might add that tonality doesn't have to imply the tempering of color with black. Colors have values all their own. Yellow is light, blue is dark, etc. So, someone can legitimately consider as a "tonal painting" that which is composed of blues and violets and greenish blues (limited color scale which happens to be of a dark value) and still not use any black. Someone could mix compliments and neutralize their hues and be considered a value painter (ie., "tonalist" in the traditional sense of the word), relying on value contrast more than color to portray their subject.

[surreal]

In regard to your above post and the Luminists, there are occasionally human figures in the paintings as exemplified by the piece by Heade below:

http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/view1zoom.asp?dep=2&full=0&mark=1&item=1975%2E160

Also, in the Luminist traditon the sky occupies sometimes 1/2 or more of the picture plane.

There is also a poetic feeling about these paintings.

[AndyRichardson]

Judging by the striking light effect, and the details delineated, I classify the Heade painting as "luminist". Is that your judgement too, Surreal?

[AndyRichardson]

Richard Bogart is a definite tonalist. Check out these paintings:
http://www.artic.edu/saic/art/projects/alumni/newyork/rbogart.html

[AndyRichardson]

Now check out Bierstadt's painting, which in my estimation bridges over to Tonalism, except there is still crisp detail, so it is Luminist.
http://sheldon.unl.edu/HTML/ARTIST/Bierstadt_A/SSI.html

[surreal]

Yes, Heade is definitely a Luminist.

Thanks for the link on Bogart's work.
Interesting paintings. :)

Bierstadt is considered a painter of the Hudson River School.
If you view many of his paintings, you will see why he isn't considered to be a Luminist.

:)

[AndyRichardson]

I agree. Innes too seemed to be a hybrid. Lots of his stuff looks Hudson River-ish, and yet there are several paintings which are very Luminist. I'm seeing that oftentimes it is no use using a painter's name to signify a particular style, since they often change styles depending on the subject matter and their own personal growth. I guess it comes down to particular paintings more than anything else. I realize that that is a pretty stupid observation..stating the obvious. But, when talking about artists of the past, I think I tend to pidgenhole them with labels and categories. It is demeaning to them, and in effect making me feel somewhat superior, since I "got them all figured out"...a cultural habit that I perhaps should be more self-critical about.