Johnnie Liliedahl: Watermaid

  TECHNIQUE: Grid Method of Drawing Enlargement, French Naturalist all prima method of painting after Charles Sprague Pearce, in the style of Jules Bastien-LePage, Jules Breton and Leon l'Hermitte. Charles Sprague Pearce was an American painter who studied and painted in France during the period when the French Naturalist movement was born. Led by Jules Bastien-LePage, a new approach to painting and composition was explored. Painters moved out of doors to paint from nature, and the landscape was painted as it was observed, and not idealized. Innovations in composition were expressed by high horizon lines and great sweeping landscapes behind figures, which were placed in the front-most plane of the picture. An immediacy with the viewer made these paintings a new and powerful statement in the art world of the time. Painting outdoors presented the same problems then as now, with changing light and imperfect painting conditions. Therefore, the best light was deemed to be that of an overca