inueRHACionAL
EARLY SPRING BY JOHN E. COSTIGAN
ing his paint with a palette knife in order to secure range. A distinct purpose lies imbedded in this
a greater body of tone and a wider range of Costigan technique which gives his paintings a
effect. He developed a technique, based on the wonderful carrying power. When seen beside
impasto of the palette knife, which gradually pictures done in the usual flat manner, the corus-
grew into an exuberant loading of the pigments eating, shimmering surfaces which he achieves
with the brush in the vibratory manner of the with his heaped-up pigments are particularly
Impressionists. effective and quite justify his technical procedure.
Closely examined, the Costigan canvases pre- Thematically Mr. Costigan is as simple as he
sent a puzzling surface to the layman. Hillocks is technically involved. He has an almost Words-
of paint rise and fall like some raised topographical worthian attitude toward the natural beauties
map, with channels and grooves darting here and that surround him. He puts their simplicities
there in apparently wild confusion. Let the paint- into strokes that sing with the same earnest
ing, however, be seen at a proper distance, and emotion as do the phrases of the English poet,
these corrugations blend into a seemingly smooth His art approaches, too, the deepness of Millet's
construction where order and reason obtain. But pastorals, save that the Frenchman's melancholy
this lavish display of pigment is not made with is absent. Costigan celebrates the beauty of living
any desire to epater le bourgeois, nor is it through humbly and contentedly, close to mother-earth,
any personal predeliction of the artist for Pene- in a sort of self-appointed peasantry. He is a
lope's classic contrariness that he raises his prom- pictorial harvester bringing into the storehouse
entories and headlands of paint only to have them the fruits of It is observation and meditation,
sink away when the picture is seen at a normal gathered on the daily round of his little world.
four thirty
march 1925
EARLY SPRING BY JOHN E. COSTIGAN
ing his paint with a palette knife in order to secure range. A distinct purpose lies imbedded in this
a greater body of tone and a wider range of Costigan technique which gives his paintings a
effect. He developed a technique, based on the wonderful carrying power. When seen beside
impasto of the palette knife, which gradually pictures done in the usual flat manner, the corus-
grew into an exuberant loading of the pigments eating, shimmering surfaces which he achieves
with the brush in the vibratory manner of the with his heaped-up pigments are particularly
Impressionists. effective and quite justify his technical procedure.
Closely examined, the Costigan canvases pre- Thematically Mr. Costigan is as simple as he
sent a puzzling surface to the layman. Hillocks is technically involved. He has an almost Words-
of paint rise and fall like some raised topographical worthian attitude toward the natural beauties
map, with channels and grooves darting here and that surround him. He puts their simplicities
there in apparently wild confusion. Let the paint- into strokes that sing with the same earnest
ing, however, be seen at a proper distance, and emotion as do the phrases of the English poet,
these corrugations blend into a seemingly smooth His art approaches, too, the deepness of Millet's
construction where order and reason obtain. But pastorals, save that the Frenchman's melancholy
this lavish display of pigment is not made with is absent. Costigan celebrates the beauty of living
any desire to epater le bourgeois, nor is it through humbly and contentedly, close to mother-earth,
any personal predeliction of the artist for Pene- in a sort of self-appointed peasantry. He is a
lope's classic contrariness that he raises his prom- pictorial harvester bringing into the storehouse
entories and headlands of paint only to have them the fruits of It is observation and meditation,
sink away when the picture is seen at a normal gathered on the daily round of his little world.
four thirty
march 1925