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by Marc Dalessio

Plein Air Paintings from France (2019)

In a recent post I wrote about landscape painting in the Gers region of France. Here are the paintings from the rest of our summer trip. We bounced around quite a bit of the country as we had to be here and there for workshops and to work towards future exhibitions.

After the Gers, we traveled over to Bordeaux for a few days, then down to the coast between Sète and Agde for a week on the beach.

Plein air painting of a street in Bordeaux, France
Rue de Pessac, Bordeaux. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Plein air painting of Allées de Tourny in Bordeaux
Allées de Tourny, Bordeaux. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Place des Quinconces
Place des Quinconces, Bordeaux. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Place Amédée-Larrieu in Bordeaux.
Place Amédée-Larrieu, Bordeaux. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.
Plein air painting of Agde in Southwestern France.
Agde. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Oil painting of Sete in Southwestern France.
Sète. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Oil painting of the Canal du Midi.
The Canal du Midi. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Oil painting of a chapel in France.
Chapel near the Thau. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Oil painting of boats in Sète.
Les Copains, Sète. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Oil painting of the canals in Sete.
Afternoon light, Sète. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Oil painting of Mèze, France.
Mèze, on the shore of the Thau. 20 x0 30 cm, oil on panel.

After the Gers, we traveled over to Bordeaux for a few days, then down to the coast between Sète and Agde for a week on the beach. Next we had to head up north for a workshop near Laon, so we stopped for a few days in the Loire Valley.

Oil painting of the cathedral in Tours.
The Cathedral, Tours. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Oil painting of Amboise, France.
Passing Storm, Amboise. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Oil painting of the Château de Chenonceau
Château de Chenonceau. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.
Oil painting of Blois, France.
Blois. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

In Laon we had a workshop, so I didn’t get much of my own work done. We were on a beautiful property though, so I tried to paint as often as I could.

Oil painting of a pond in Northern France.
The Side of a Pond, Fourdrain. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.
Oil painting of cows in northern France.
Cows in the Sun, Fourdrain. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Oil painting of buildings through trees.
The Farm Buildings, Fourdrain. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Oil painting of a pond in France.
Lily Pond. 35 x 25 cm, oil on panel.

After Laon we had a couple of days to kill so we headed over to Normandy to paint in Honfleur. I’m always trying to find places where my favorite artists worked, and Boudin, Seago, Jongkind and Monet (among others) all painted in and around the small port there.

Oil painting of the port at Honfleur, France.
Honfleur. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Oil painting of Honfleur, France.
Morning, Honfleur. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Painting of boats in Honfleur.
Boats, Midday, Honfleur. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.
Plein air oil painting of Honfleur.
Evening Light, Honfleur. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

From Normandy we drove back down to the Dordogne, to paint local scenes for the V&A gallery in Sarlat-la-Canéda.

Oil painting of the Dordogne river from Domme.
The Dordogne from Domme. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.
Oil painting of Sarlat, France.
Sarlat-la-Canéda. 30 x 20 cm, oil on panel.
Oil study of the Dordogne river.
Water Study, the Dordogne. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Oil painting of Beynac.
Beynac from the Dordogne. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.
Oil painting of a child on a swing.
Child on a Swing. 25 x 22 cm, oil on panel.

These are most of the paintings but the full summer’s oeuvre was posted at the time to my Instagram account.

Overall it was a great trip. The painting locations across France are varied and stunning, the food was amazing, and the people were wonderful and welcoming. We’ll be back again in the summer of 2020 as we have an exhibition and a couple of workshops.

by Marc Dalessio

Pin Mill

Plein air painting of a boat on the mud in Pin Mill, Suffolk.

Boat at Low Tide, Pin Mill. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

Pin Mill is a couple of small buildings on the south shore of the the tidal River Orwell, in southern Suffolk, England.

Plein air painting of a sailboat in the mud at Pin Mill, Suffolk.

Sailboat at Low Tide, Pin Mill. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

I recently spent three days painting there with three other plein air painters: David Bachmann, Roy Connelly, and Paul Rafferty.

The English painter Edward Seago did some of his best paintings there of the Thames barges. Since I spend a lot of time talking to other plein air painters, and Seago is seen as one of the best plein air painters of the 20th century, I assumed everyone in England had heard of Pin Mill, and that it was something of an English Giverny. So I was surprised when I called my studio painter friends in England to brag about going to paint at Pin Mill and no one had heard of the place. Then, at the B&B where I stayed up the road, they had never heard of Edward Seago.

Plein air painting of a barge in the fog at Pin Mill, Suffolk.

Grey Morning, Pin Mill. 30 x 20 cm, oil on panel.

The place should be more well-known. It is one of the more picturesque quarter miles anywhere in the world. The Thames sailing barges that Seago painted are still there, and often have their sails up still.

Unfortunately, when we were there the barges were all up at the nearby town of Woodbridge for a maritime weekend. We drove there to try to paint them on the last day, but they had just left to go back to Pin Mill.

Plein air painting of the pub at Pin Mill, Suffolk.

Late Morning, Pin Mill. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.

Plein air painting of Pin Mill at Sunset.

Pin Mill Sunset. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

by Marc Dalessio

Copyright

Disclaimer: This is not legal advice, (though I did have the text checked by my lawyers).

In the ‘Blossoms’ post below I had wanted to add my favorite example, Primavera by Adolfo Tommasi in the Galleria di Arte Moderna in Florence. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a decent image online. The Italian Culture website has a small, terrible image of the painting with watermarks all over it from a private company which controls the image databases of Italian museums. It begs the question: Who is this for? The tagline on the government website is ‘a patrimony to explore’, and in the charter of most museums there is something about their job being to disseminate the works to the public. But the online images are often small, cropped, and covered with watermarks, rendering them all but useless except as ads for the database company. For important paintings, a quick Google-search produces high-resolution images in abundance, but for lesser-know paintings there is no way to get an image from an Italian museum online. I contacted the archive company representing the museum’s collection, Scala Archives, but they want €120 for a 600 pixel, 72dpi blog-ready digital image.

It got me wondering though: Who owns this image?

Adolfo Tommasi died in 1933, so the painting is in the public domain. Yet in this case, and in museum collections worldwide, archiving services such as Scala have photographed the work, and now claim a new copyright exists on the photograph of the painting.

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