^{William Glackens (1870-1938), American
    Le Baou de Blancs (Hillside near Cannes)
    Oil on canvas}

Colored with academicism and the influences of Impressionism, Glackens’ propensity for quick drawing liberates a simple picturesque view into a kinetic spirit of place. The plastic relationships of vibrant hues, sparkling light, animated line, and fluid spatial denotations filtered through the transparency of Glackens’ experience presses out the artist’s joyful picture intent of aliveness as the land rushes forth in a profusion of color and movement.

Le Baou de Blancs’ foundation springs from the academic developments of the Dutch landscape traditions that include aerial and relative perspective, the zig zag, and directional units that thrust into a scene. Glackens’ episodic landscape stirs into action as a green foreground curve, in the left corner, like an advancing wave, encounters the juxtaposition of the complementary orange upright repoussoir of wall. The wall, comprised of short choppy brick like strokes, shimmers with the vibrations of bright light, attaining a similar effect as in the Impressionism of Monet’s Cathedral series, but with a greater reliance on drawing. Glackens uses this repoussoir as an orientation from which everything else in the picture recedes, as did Cezanne with his millstone in Millstone in the Park at the Chateau Noir (PMA). The repoussoir, as a vantage point, gets its fixed position from the deep green projector unit of trees that push from behind and the dark grasses that press in on its right. Together, projectors and repoussoir support a reaction of repelling movement as the yellow green impasto intercepts the obstacle. It generates a momentum of rippling rick-rack vibrations that infuse the ground of Glackens’ world with energy. His finger like painting in this foreground area recalls the active wavy brushwork of Daumier’s Third Class Carriage, Van Gogh’s ribbons of color, Soutine’s furious gestural style, and anticipates the freedom of expression in Willem de Kooning’s viscosity.

Up strokes of zesty orange turn the direction of the eye, and shape the square compartmentalized end of stone that projects into the scene, on the right. Glackens’ blue color line delineates its other end and designates a supporting triangle of blue shade that jointly repositions the movement back to the other side of the canvas. In a steady back and forth zig zag recession, as in an animated pin ball game, the eye bounces quickly off solid units that vary in size and color. The movement transitions to Japanese and Impressionistic inspired arabesques of tree trunks that lift, swaying the land’s lively sensations aloft into the puffs of iridescent foliage. The effervescent energy continues, but it takes on the concentrated appearance of blue and pink dots of vegetation on the right slope of the swelling mountain. The experiments of Seurat’s pointillism, as in Port of Honfleur, serve Glackens well here, as the pink and blue react to the eye as lavender to express the aerial recession of space while maintaining the charged activity of his brushwork. Glackens pulls bits of blue into the shaded areas between the stone walls on the left, and in a small wedge tucked in the center of the canvas, beneath the foliage, to link the foreground and middle ground to this dotted hillside in the farthest plane. All of these methods are employed by the artist to move through the landscape, and yet he achieves the changes subtlety, flowing from one area to the next, as he gradually decreases contours of objects by softening line and reducing the intensity of color saturations.

Similar to Renoir’s Mont Sainte-Victoire, which is depicted with a greater degree of local color, Glackens’ enlivens his landscape with integrated light and imaginative color that flings the rainbow spectrum across the canvas. The intensity of the hot foreground colors interspersed with white radiates the expression of light and heat necessary for the emergence of lush growth. The ranges of colors expand the illusion of space, from the transparent warm tones that advance in the foreground to the pastel tints that pull back. His resolute choice of fresh color and the purposeful elimination of deep shade, contributes to the clarity that light brings, and to the exhilaration of spaciousness in the scene. The color has a unifying decorative appeal that sensuously entertains the eye, and expresses throughout the entire composition the vitality of nature alive.

The American artist’s background as a news illustrator is evidenced in his dependence on line to indicate objects, rather than the overall soft brushstrokes used by Renoir. Glackens’ angularity of color lines, adds crispness to the atmosphere of the outdoor scene which is lost in the fuzzy color chords of Renoir’s style. The thin application of blue in the sky, combined with long slender pulls of white that mirror the angles of the foreground walls, opens the space wide and lifts the action effortlessly to support the expression of the fresh tang of life moving freely at this moment, on this day, in this experience.

Glackens quick sketch of nature, Le Baou de Blancs, connects the scintillating joy of aliveness bursting forth plastically with the viewer’s own instinctive experience of life forces that are always there, lying below the surface as unseen realities, like the colors of pure light held bound until at last, released, they pass through the prism of the artist’s creativity to invigorate once again.

Analysis by Marie Slovich