Poetry Wednesday, Autumn

THE POEM I HAVE CHOSEN FOR TODAY IS TO AUTUMN BY JOHN KEATS

ILLUSTRATED WITH PAINTINGS BY AMERICAN ARTIST CONNIE TOM

  Link back to the Poetry Wednesday Tour on Lauritasita's Page

 

 

 

John Keats (1795-1821)

TO AUTUMN.

1." SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.



2.Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.





3.Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies."

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Today’s paintings are by Contemporary American Artist

Connie Tom

 

The Paintings shown here are from

 

http://connietom.com/

 

And this is Connie Tom’s own Blog

 

http://connietom.com/blog

 

The Hudson River School of Art

The first coherent school of American art, the Hudson River painters, defined the uniqueness of the American landscape. The movement began with the works of Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and Asher B. Durand (1796-1886) and grew into late Romanticism, landscape painting was the prevalent genre of 19th century American art.

It’s roots were founded in European Romanticism and exhibit similarities to European painters, for example;  the Nazarenes and Friedrich in Germany or Constable and  Turner in England. Dispite this obvious influence the Hudson River painters followed Emerson's dictate; "to ignore the courtly Muses of Europe" and defined, for the first time, a distinct School of American Art. The Hudson River painters delighted in the wilderness that was still America, a vast expanse of untamed land in which man was small and vulnerable in the midst of unbridled beauty.  

Having said all of that…………this Artist is NOT a Hudson River Painter. She is a modern day painter who says of herself,

 ''I'm artist from Missouri who paints luminous paintings after the manner of the Hudson River School of Painting.''

I chose her work for today because of the way she portrays the vivid colours of autumn, a perfect companion to the poem Autumn. BUT………….I’m sure I’ll revisit these Hudson River Painters sometime soon and devote an entire blog to their work.