ANCIENT GATE IN AACHEN, GERMANY

Ancient Gate, Aachen, 28 x 22 inch oil and colored pencil on paper by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

Some years ago my wife and I took advantage of a real bargain airfare and flew to Brussels, Belgium in January.  We rented a car and did a leisurely circuit visiting Bruges and Ghent in Belgium, and Zierikzee, Holland, the former home town of a friend in Chicago, before crossing into northwestern Germany, where I had arranged an invitation for us to stay overnight and have a private tour of Ramstein Air Force Base.  I could do that because I was an active contributing artist in the US Air Force Art Program in those days.  We stayed in Wertheim and Frankfort too, before heading back to Brussels by way of Aachen.  We enjoyed the trip a lot in spite of the short days and cold weather (not as cold as Chicago), but I didn't get any on-site painting done.  I did do several paintings back home from the copy photos I took in Europe, and this is one of them.  This old tower is about all that's left of the city walls that protected Aachen when it was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire founded by Charlemagne.  I researched this painting on a morning when an overnight snow had left the park grass covered and the street slushy.

I recently reworked parts of this painting and reformatted it to a smaller size.  I used to show all my works on paper with mattes inside a larger frame, and I still do that with drawings or watercolors that have bare white paper showing.  However, I now like to show art where almost the whole surface is covered with paint (like this one) without a matte and framed like a canvas or painting on a hard panel would be, although it still needs to be covered with plexiglas. 

For years I've been a member of the informal Artists Breakfast Group that meets Wednesday mornings at the S&G Restaurant on Lincoln Avenue at its intersection with Wellington and Southport Avenues in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood.  We are invited to show our art on a restaurant wall in a rotating exhibition.  For the next 2 or 3 months you can see Ancient Gate, Aachen there.  The food is good and the portions are generous.  Look for the "Breakfast Specials" menu.   

WALCHENSEE OR KOCHELSEE?

Walchensee Landscape, 51 x 61 cm watercolor and gouache by Lovis Corinth

Kochelsee in the Rain, 12 x 16 inch watercolor and gouache by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

I was looking at pictures in my catalog from the big Lovis Corinth exhibition that appeared in museums in Munich, Berlin, Saint Louis and London in 1996-7 when I noticed something that hadn't registered with me on many earlier studies of that book.  On page 355 a watercolor landscape is reproduced that was signed by Corinth, inscribed "Walchensee," and dated August 1924.  However, I am almost certain that the lake depicted is not in fact the Walchensee but the nearby Kochelsee.   And the reason I know this is because I painted that same lake from almost the same point of view on a visit to Germany some years ago.

We had flown into Munich and rented a car to explore southern Germany.  We visited a couple of Mad King Ludwig's castles and then headed for what I considered Corinth Country.  Corinth has been a favorite painter of mine since I discovered his work in a wonderful big book edited by his widow that I found in the art books department of Kroch's and Brentano's while I was in art school in the 1960s.  That book cost $180.  There was no way I could afford to buy it, but I spent a lot of time looking at it in the store.  The man who ran the art department was very tolerant of poor art students.  I think he suspected that some day I would be an art book collector and a good customer.  Thank you, Henry.  In 1998 the U.S. Air Force Art Program flew me to Frankfurt to attend the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Berlin Air Lift and I found a new reprint edition of Charlotte Berend-Corinth's 1958 book Lovis Corinth that I bought.  

Toward the end of World War I Corinth started spending his summers in the alpine lakes region of southern Bavaria.  In 1919 he built a house in the village of Urfeld on the shore of the Walchensee and spent increasing amounts of time there each year until his death in 1925.  His "Walchensee" paintings proved very popular with collectors and he painted a lot of them, some from his own property overlooking the lake, and some from other vantage points in the area.  I based myself in the larger town of Rottach-Egern nearby and spent a full day poking around the places Corinth lived and worked.   I drove around the lakes and explored the little lakeside villages.   It was raining when I pulled off the road at a scenic overlook and painted the watercolor posted above.  I sat in the passenger seat of my rented Volkswagen Golf with my watercolor block on my lap and the paints on the open door of the glove compartment.  I had no idea at the time that my painting idol had painted almost the same view decades earlier, although on a sunny day.  

Why did he inscribe his painting Walchensee and not Kochelsee?  I figure he either forgot which exact body of water he had depicted when he was signing his work perhaps weeks later, or he was using Walchensee as a blanket description for all the locations he painted while living at his house on that lake.  That view overlooking Kochelsee is only about 3 kilometers from his house, after all.       

THE OLD CASTLE AT MEERSBURG, GERMANY

Old Castle at Meersburg, Germany, 12 x 16 inch watercolor by George C. Clark    SOLD

I painted this on a sunny early May morning on a hill outside the lovely old town of Meersburg on Lake Constance in southern Germany.  Later I hiked through the vineyards overlooking the lakeshore. 

A ROOFTOP IN BERLIN

A ROOFTOP IN BERLIN

Airlift C-47 on the Roof of the Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin, 13 x 16 inch ink, watercolor and colored pencil painting by George C. Clark    UNITED STATES AIR FORCE ART COLLECTION

Here is another painting from my visit to Germany last summer, although I painted this one recently from photographs I took on-site.  This American military transport plane is suspended by cables from a crane-like gantry over the roof of the new Deutsches Technikmuseum (what we would call a Museum of Science and Industry) in Berlin.   It is both a part of the museum's aviation collection and a salute to the Allied Airlift that saved the city when the Russians cut off ground transportation in 1948-9.  The plane is cantilevered to hang out over the facade of the building.  The photo below shows what it looks like when you are approaching the museum at ground level.  It's pretty spectacular.

Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin,  photo by George C. Clark

ANOTHER SKETCH FROM THE VILLA-LIEBERMANN IN WANNSEE

Villa-Liebermann am Wannsee, 7 x 10 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

This is another sketch I drew at the Villa-Liebermann, now a museum.  I recently posted a drawing I made in the formal flower garden on the landward side of the house.  This is the opposite side of the building where a big lawn runs down to the Wannsee lake.  There had been a brief shower during the train ride out from Berlin, but by the time I drew this in late morning the weather had turned sunny and pleasant and museum visitors were enjoying coffee and pastries at Cafe Max on the lake-facing terrace of the villa.   

BERLIN CATHEDRAL FROM THE SPREEUFER

Spreeufer, Berlin, 10 x 7 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark    SOLD

 I drew this from a riverside table at the Spreeblick Cafe in the Nikolaiviertel section of Berlin.  This is an old part of the city reconstructed after WW2 devastation by the East Germans in the 1980s.  Some of the buildings were restored where they originally stood, some were moved from other locations, some are new copies of totally destroyed structures, and some are new buildings designed to blend with the old.  When I visited Berlin 20 years ago right after the Wall came down, the Nikolaiviertel struck me as having an artificial Epcot Center quality, maybe because it was such a contrast to the rest of East Berlin which was grey and dingy and still pock-marked with wartime damage and full of ugly new concrete Soviet-style structures.  They are the same buildings and it is only 20 years later, but this time they seemed more natural and lived-in, and the former East Berlin is the most happening part of the city.

I started this drawing while waiting for my lunch, then finished it after the meal, which was very tasty, by the way.  The German restaurants and cafes are very good about not expecting you to leave until you ask for your bill, but I felt guilty occupying a prima riverfront table so I ordered a gooey expensive dessert.  Chocolate sauce and several flavors of ice cream were involved.  I had to do it for my art!

Starting my drawing at the Spreeblick Cafe, Berlin

GARDEN IN WANNSEE

Garden in Wannsee, Germany, 9.5 x 6.5 ink and watercolor by George C. Clark    SOLD

One of the most interesting places I visited on my recent trip to Germany was the house the great painter Max Liebermann built on the shore of the Wannsee outside of Berlin in 1910 and where he worked every summer until his death in 1935.  After decades in private hands, the house has been acquired by the state, restored to its ca. 1912 look, and opened as a museum, the Villa-Liebermann am Wannsee.  It features changing exhibitions (currently a show of Liebermann's on-site art from various northern European beaches), but in the the second-floor room that was Lieberman's studio there is a permanent display of paintings he created in the house or on its beautifully landscaped grounds.  It is rare to see art displayed at the very location it depicts.

HAMBURG

The Jungfernsteig Bridge in Hamburg, 9 x 12 watercolor by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

This was painted the same day as Rathaus in Hamburg that I posted earlier.  I think the Rathaus was behind me and to my right as I painted this one.  Earlier I had painted the view of the Rathaus from the bridge you see in this painting.

MARIENPLATZ, MUNICH

Marienplatz, Munich, 9 x 12 inch watercolor by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

I painted this sitting on one of those metal chairs the city leaves around for tired shoppers, tourists and artists.

TRIER, GERMANY

Ostallee in the Rain, Trier, Germany, 10 x 14 inch watercolor by George C. Clark    SOLD 

I painted this out of the window of a hotel room on a rainy, jet-lagged winter afternoon.  Bad weather can be as interesting to paint as good weather, although you have to find yourself a dry place to observe it from.

KOCHELSEE IN BAVARIA

Kochelsee in the Rain, 12 x 16 inch watercolor by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

I painted this in the front passenger seat of a rented Volkswagen Golf pulled off the road at a scenic overlook.  I had the watercolor pad on my lap and my watercolor paints deployed on the open door of the car's glove compartment.  My wife Pat took a nap in the back seat while I worked.  Normally she walks or explores while I paint, but it was raining.

THE TRAVELER'S SKETCHBOOK WATERCOLORS

In 1976 I left my full-time commercial art job and moved to Paris for the New York Studio School summer session painting classes taught by Leland Bell and Elaine deKooning.  My wife and I sublet an apartment on the rue de Longchamps in Passy near the Trocadero, and I spent every weekday painting models in the studio or landscapes at various sites around Paris or visiting the many art museums with our instructors.  It was a great experience and I think I learned more that summer than I had in four years of art school a decade earlier.  When the session was over we planned to spend six weeks touring Europe by train.  I wanted to make more art, but I couldn't see myself lugging my bulky oil painting gear on and off trains, so I sent all that stuff home by boat mail.  Instead I bought a small portfolio with a shoulder strap and filled it with a box of Pelikan dry pan watercolors, a pad of watercolor paper, two small cups to put water in, and a green plastic French detergent bottle to carry a supply of water.  Thus began my "Traveler's Sketchbook" series of small watercolors and drawings.

Rathaus in Hamburg,  9 x 12 inch watercolor by George C. Clark    SOLD

My green French detergent bottle

I have worn out several portfolios and many boxes of watercolor paints, but I am still using that same green detergent bottle.