Neige, 1986

Bernard Gantner  

The farm where Gantner lives is remote and surrounded by hills and dales, birches, aspens and fruit trees, meadows and ponds. To get to the nearest village, Gantner walks along narrow dirt roads, passing rustic cottages, old barns and farmyards populated with chickens, roosters, ducks and geese.

Through his drawings, watercolors, paintings and lithographs, Gantner captured the unchanging qualities of this natural world. He always used the open-air method developed by the Barbizon artists. Its presence in nature is familiar; he can be found walking with his portable chair and sketchbook on the trails, on the banks, and in the fields surrounding his house. In his glass studio overlooking a garden and the surrounding forest, he reproduces the colors, light and impressions of the outdoor scenes that he sketched in black and white. These drawings are the basis of his watercolors and oil paintings.

Gantner combines the Barbizon painters' sensitivity to the French landscape with the abstract play of colors of the Impressionist painters. It combines the abstraction of the sky, clouds or a path with the exquisite detail of a shaking branch or the inclined window sill. While strongly inspired by French tradition, Gantner's work offers a refreshing interpretation and a unique vision of nature.
Through his drawings, watercolors, lithographs and oils, Gantner translates his appreciation of the sky, water, trees and old farms so that others, like him, become one with nature that he loves so much.