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L. Jean Liberte, Artist (1896-1965)




L. Jean Liberte, Artist (1896-1965)

“Grand Manan”






“Grand Manan” is one the great strong examples of a nocturnal coastal scene by Liberte.  Grand Manan is located in the midwestern end of the Bay of Fundy, a body of water between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.  It is home to some of the strongest tides in the world. The painting has rich impasto textures that provides a dramatic dark brooding image, and some say that he was influenced by Albert Pinkham Ryder, whose paintings were also dark and moody.  The painting is oil on canvas, approximately 30 by 24 inches.  It still includes its Babcock Galleries tag on the reverse, and it is from the mid-1940s.  



L. Jean Liberte, Artist (1896-1965)   


Starting in the early to mid-1940s, L. Jean Liberte was hot!  His paintings were now in the collections of the Whitney, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, Tel-Aviv Museum and at numerous universities and colleges.  His work was being exhibited in Carnegie Institute, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Modern Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, so on and so on.  Most artists would dream of that kind of recognition, yet he said in a 1942 essay on himself that “Painting was a lifetime struggle.”

L. Jean Liberte was born in Italy, 1896, and immigrated to America with his parents in 1900.  He studied at the Cooper Union Art School, the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, and the Artist Student League.  Later on in life, starting in 1945 until his death, he taught at the Artist Student League.  He was named a member of the National Academy of Design posthumously after his death in 1965.  

In the book,  Painting and Sculpture in Modern America, he wrote the following about his work:  “My method of painting is very unorthodox.  I seldom paint directly, most of the time my method consists first, in underpainting, followed by glazing and scumbling (a light passing of paint over the surface of the canvas).  Color being such a dominant part of my work, my problem is to realize form through color.  In building up a canvas, each part should function independently as a mosaic, yet they should all tend to merge into a single color entity. The underpainting is usually a rich heavy impasto.  Standard oil, Damar varnish, and turpentine, are used in the scumbling processes.  This give my painting transparency and surface quality like molten lead.”  Well, that is best description of his paintings I have ever read:  a surface like molten lead.  Please enjoy your view of “Grand Manan.”
  








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