A Canadian Painter Of Native Americans
Using pastels as his favored medium to paint with, the Canadian artist Nicholas de Grandmaison spent over forty years of his career doing portraits of Native Americans or the First Nations of North America.
Born in Russia from an aristocratic lineage, Nicholas de Grandmaison lived and created art in Canada for most of his artistic career. He first went to Winnepeg and traveled through Alberta and other regions of Canada quite extensively painting the portraits of the indigenous people that he met in each area.
I love that he not only did incredibly detailed art using the First Nation People as his subjects but he also preserved pieces of history of a culture that might have been lost otherwise. His subjects in the portraits were rarely famous men or women and would have never commissioned him to do their portraits. de Grandmaison was really fascinated with the people he encountered and his respect and admiration shines through in his art.
When I look at the artwork by this Canadian painter, I am intrigued with how very real each face seems. The eyes seem to be looking right at you. He captures the dimensions of the skeletal structure along with the nuances of tissue and muscle in each face. His daughter has been recorded as saying that her father almost built the face by the tissue structure by blending colors and using darker color to create the feel of a real face. When you see one of his pastel portrait you sense what she is saying.
I am quite enamored with the artwork of Nicholas de Grandmaison the immigrant who became a most collected and admired Canadian painter of Native Americans.
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Author: Bev Owens
Bev Owens writes under the pen name BevsPaper on a variety of topics. She is the author of the blog Native American Totems. Bev co-authors a blog reviewing products at DIY: Do It Yourself Reviews.
This author has published 24 articles so far.