“The impressionist paints what he sees, not what he knows. He looks at the subject as a whole and paints a comprehensive view or impression of it. He sees objects as smudges of warm and cool colors of different shapes and values and having only a suggestion of detail. He sees the objects fuse in places to form broader and simpler masses of light and shadow. He does not make the painting so photographic that your could reach in and pick up each object. Such a piecemeal rendering gives a distorted view of the subject because our eyes do not see such a wealth of detail when looking at the whole subject at once.”^[1]

-An excerpt from Richard Whitney’s book, Painting the Visual Impression. Bold emphasis is in Whitney’s original.

Richard Whitney, Summer Pasture.

Lately on this blog I have been focused on Gammell’s teaching, relative to an observational approach to painting. As I have mentioned before, my own connection to Gammell is solely through instruction from two of his students and the friendship of a few others. One of those friends is Richard Whitney. Richard was a 5 year student of Gammell’s and has been professionally painting for decades. He is perhaps best known for his portraiture but is also a well known landscape painter. He lives and studios with his wife Sandy in New Hampshire, on a gorgeous bit of land. Their backyard has been recognized by The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat. While that fact is taken directly from his website, I have been there and can attest to its beauty.

Richard wrote Painting the Visual Impression as a collection of principles, distilled from his time studying under Gammell. Within it is a mixture of studio maxims and fleshed out instruction. But, as Richard says in the introduction, these are not to be viewed as law, for advances in the field of painting have often come by breaking the rules.^[2]

Richard Whitney, Portrait of Gifford Foley

While it will no doubt be very helpful to those students trying to teach themselves, Painting the Visual Impression was primarily written to be used as a supplement to the proper studio instruction. To those studying in a Gammell-based atelier or studio, this book will prove invaluable. And, as someone who came through that tradition, I refer to it often. Although a number of the schools I list in the sidebar, A Very Fine Art Education, pursue a wholly different approach to painting in some aspects of their instruction, Richard’s book will prove very useful to those students as well.

Rated: (O O) Eyes wide open: Buy this and read it now!^[3]

Painting the Visual Impression is available only through Richard directly. See his site here.

1. Richard Whitney, Painting the Visual Impression, Studios at Crescent Pond, 1979, page 19. ^
2. Richard Whitney, ibid., page 2 ^
3. See my rating system here. ^