daily painting titled Beurre d'Isigny

Beurre d'Isigny

18cm x 12cm (8"x5"), oil on gessoed card Painting status: SOLD
Daily painting for Tuesday 7 December, 2010
Posted in Still life paintings
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12 Comments

I have a similarly wrapped slab of Irish butter. I wonder, why is European butter so much more delicious than ordinary U.S. butter? You have captured the beurre perfectly, including the foil. I am about to have lunch and plan to slather whatever I eat in melted Irish butter. Thanks!
Two new textures for you to capture. And capture you did! Really exquisite. I've had English clotted cream. I bet Normandy butter is equally as delicious.
Julian, this is just stunning! The reflective color in the foil is exquisite.
This little painting puts you firmly on the same table as Antoine Vollon and his Mound of Butter. Very lovely.
Absolutely gorgeous! You have made my day!!
Maestro!
Yep, you captured it...the lovely fat! I heard Normand cows produce 80% butterfat. My parents-in-law lived in Isigny-sur-mer so I went often. The butter, the creme fraiche, the mussels...the Calvados! Your delightful painting brings it all back. Mmmmmm. Merci!
You certainly like challenges... and obviously handle them well! Awesome foil...
Bien sur on pense a la motte de beurre de Vollon… j'avais cru que le papier ne refletait pas assez la lumiere et donc je suis alle ouvrir mon paquet de 250g de beurre (I live in Normandie) and realised how wrong I was. Just the perfect colour! It is a subject that I haven't dare to attack… You do keep us on our toes!!
Julian, your paintings must produce a collective mouthwatering dribble ! Yum Yum - now off to make toast- just an excuse to eat my recently purchased French butter, and to temporarily get away from the struggle to paint well- or at least Better ! Vonnie.
Several commentators have mentioned 'The Mound of Butter (La motte de beurre) by the French painter Antoine Vollon 1833 -1900 which is in the NGA in Washington DC. I hadn't looked at it for a while but the set-up is remarkably similar (except the scale etc.). As is a more direct influence, the Irish painter Connor Walton's 2008 painting, 'butter' (no doubt Irish butter) I think this is where the idea came from though I must have seen this a year or so ago and tucked it away in the back of my ideas draw (somewhere in the deep folds of the grey matter). The genesis of ideas is often hard to pin down but I think through these two paintings you get a glimpse of how this little painting of mine may have come about.
Duane Keiser wrote a nice piece on the Vollon painting in his Keiser on painting.
Oh, geeze......this is so exquisite I almost had a stroke. Good lord, man! You have captured BUTTER!