Ella Condie Lamb: Outdoor Painting

"October Blue and Gold" by Ella Condie Lamb

"In December of 1917, the year in which Ella Condie Lamb wrote of the 'terror and 'dread' in her heart because of the War, she mounted an exhibition of twelve 'Garden Paintings and Landscapes' at The Touchstone Galleries; it was a selection of outdoor work. From her childhood Ella had loved nature and sketched it. 

But it took the encouragement of a dear English friend, Lester Rolfe, in 1915 to return her to a more concerted effort to paint outdoors. Not only Ella but the children as well went out sketching in the fields. In the midst of the inner turmoil caused by the war, it was a restorative - a comfort and a joy with its range of color, detail and infinite variety of forms and light.

One reviewer of her exhibit, from the 'American Art News,' noted that 'Mrs. Lamb is especially fond of silver birches, and these she has painted in their changing aspects throughout the year. Probably the most striking of her paintings is 'The Blue Valley.' This picture has silver birches in the foreground, and a wonderful effect of distance looking out over the valley. As a whole, Mrs. Lamb's exhibition is extremely charming and intimate.'

Ella's landscapes are not grandiose canvases - perhaps she had enough of executing works of great size in her mural work. Her visions are intimate and are expressive of her sympathetic response to her immediate environment or of her need to express freedom. They are fully three-dimensional - having none of the flat, two dimensional design aspect which she was constantly required to use in her professional work. To use perspective in her landscapes was for her a release."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Ella's Certain Window" by Barea Lamb Seeley.)