DOI Heft:
Nr. 333 (February 1925)
DOI Heft:Nr. 334 (March 1925)
DOI Artikel:Flint, Ralph: Costigan, American pastoralist
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19984#0171
mceRnACionAL
EARLY MORNING IN THE FIELDS BY JOHN E. COSTIGAN
His wisdom has led him to find at his very threshold evolved within the studio; and—mirabile dictu—
the essentials of his calling, and his penetration the transference of sunlit wood to canvas was an
has led him to make the most of that which lay accomplished fact.
at hand. lt 1S seldom, however, that Mr. Costigan
It is in the woods that this painter finds his leaves his foregrounds untenanted. The usual
happiest subject matter. There, among the tan- occupants of these vantage points are his family
gled branches and brush-wood, he sets himself to and flock. In earlier years the figure of a woman,
study the endless variations of sunlight and a struggling hie of sheep or goats at her feet as
shadow as the touch of the seasons revolves the she wandered through the woods, appeared times
pageantry of leaf and light. It is here that the without number; her reddish skirt and dark bodice
need for a special technique must have come to became a familiar accent in his compositions,
the painter. To represent the wonder of sunlight Since the arrival of an heir to the Costigan home-
in its soft descent through countless layers of leafy stead, the many guises of motherhood have en-
boughs, when individual form almost disappears gaged his brush, and now as the heroine of the
in a general translucency, or to seize the prismatic story roams the woodland paths she bears on her
glitter of sun-shafts streaking through some bosky shoulders the little son or holds him high above
dell when twig and trunk, leaf and petal each her head in fond affection, quite unmindful of the
have their high-light and shadow were an impos- straying animals. He treats his dumb companions
sibility in a photographic sense. And so, in emu- with the same pictorial interest as his wife and
Iation of the feathery, fairy-like scenes within the child, and the sheep and goats and cows are
woods, a glancing, interlacing way of painting invariably as intimately rendered as they. Mr.
MARCH 1925
/our thirty-one
EARLY MORNING IN THE FIELDS BY JOHN E. COSTIGAN
His wisdom has led him to find at his very threshold evolved within the studio; and—mirabile dictu—
the essentials of his calling, and his penetration the transference of sunlit wood to canvas was an
has led him to make the most of that which lay accomplished fact.
at hand. lt 1S seldom, however, that Mr. Costigan
It is in the woods that this painter finds his leaves his foregrounds untenanted. The usual
happiest subject matter. There, among the tan- occupants of these vantage points are his family
gled branches and brush-wood, he sets himself to and flock. In earlier years the figure of a woman,
study the endless variations of sunlight and a struggling hie of sheep or goats at her feet as
shadow as the touch of the seasons revolves the she wandered through the woods, appeared times
pageantry of leaf and light. It is here that the without number; her reddish skirt and dark bodice
need for a special technique must have come to became a familiar accent in his compositions,
the painter. To represent the wonder of sunlight Since the arrival of an heir to the Costigan home-
in its soft descent through countless layers of leafy stead, the many guises of motherhood have en-
boughs, when individual form almost disappears gaged his brush, and now as the heroine of the
in a general translucency, or to seize the prismatic story roams the woodland paths she bears on her
glitter of sun-shafts streaking through some bosky shoulders the little son or holds him high above
dell when twig and trunk, leaf and petal each her head in fond affection, quite unmindful of the
have their high-light and shadow were an impos- straying animals. He treats his dumb companions
sibility in a photographic sense. And so, in emu- with the same pictorial interest as his wife and
Iation of the feathery, fairy-like scenes within the child, and the sheep and goats and cows are
woods, a glancing, interlacing way of painting invariably as intimately rendered as they. Mr.
MARCH 1925
/our thirty-one