 |
| Rudolph N. "Rudy" Colao (1927-2014), Peony Bouquet, Oil on Masonite, 11 ¼ by 15 ½ in., Private Collection |
 |
| Peonies and Daisies, Oil on Board, Private Collection |
 |
| Peonies and Daisies, Oil, 12 by 16 in., http://www.pototschnik.com
|
 |
| Lilac Bouquet, 12 by 16 in., Oil, http://www.pototschnik.com |
 |
| Thatcher Island Lighthouse, oil on canvas, 16 by 20 in., http://nsartsa.blogspot.com |
 |
| Seaside Farmhouse, Friendship, Maine, 16 by 20 in., Oil, http://www.pototschnik.com |
 |
|
Friendship, Maine Wharf,
Oil on panel, 16 by 20 in., me.usharbors.com
|
One of my extracurricular delights when trawling for still
life objects in the flea markets scattered around Manhattan in the 1980s and
90s was spotting framed prints of gorgeous, lively paintings of ample bouquets of
lilacs, daisies, mums or peonies, usually in a copper pot or teakettle. The flowers were always beautifully painted,
with spirited brushwork and excellent tonal values. The artist was always "R. Colao."
I didn’t know Rudolph N. "Rudy" Colao, the artist who signed all his paintings "R. Colao." I
did meet him a couple of times in the late 1970s when I was studying painting
at The Art Students League of New York, where he would substitute teach for
Frank Mason once in awhile. I knew he
had later moved up to Rockport, Massachusetts. And I was surprised and saddened to learn just
the other day that he had died unexpectedly on October 4, 2014 at the age of 86
while walking back home from downtown Rockport.
But I knew the most important thing about Rudy -- he had
figured out how to paint a big bouquet of flowers expertly and seemingly
without effort. Painting flowers and
other traditional still life subjects was a serious business for him, as it was
with the great Henri Fantin-Latour. I
was talking about Rudy recently with one of Mason’s former students who
remembered that Frank used to tell his aspiring artists not to disparage Rudy’s
main work as a flower painter. “He put
two children through college on those paintings,” Mason would say.
Rudy sold his original oils in galleries around the country
and prints of them galore, in various sizes, through Gimbels and other major department
stores that had thriving art galleries within their confines throughout much of
the 20th Century. He probably
had other outlets that I’m not aware of.
The Internet today is inundated with anxious queries about Rudy’s artwork. A typical entry goes like this, “Can you tell
me if my painting by R. Colao is worth money?”
I got a laugh when I saw on Yahoo! Answers that a couple of people were wondering why they
owned the exact same still life painting by Rudy.
“I have a painting by R. Colad (sic) with a pear grapes vase
teapot and a knife,” wrote one correspondent.
“There are a lot of people claiming to have the same painting. Do you know why?”
Another correspondent chimed in, “I also have a painting by R.
colad (sic). Don’t know who he is but if
you find out could you please let me know…I found my painting at a flea market
in Louisiana which is where I live…let me know where you live and what your
painting is of. My painting has a pear,
a knife, grapes, a kettle and a bottle in it. Very good detail! It’s beautiful!
Just let me know! Thanks and hopefully we can help each other out!!
Yahoo’s “Best Answer” was provided by someone over at AskART www.askart.com,
a site that tracks auction results and much more about a multitude of American
artists. That appraisal expert warned
that what looks like an original painting may in fact be a reproduction print:
Rudolph Colao's
popular works have been extensively reproduced.
Many reproductions of your popular painting exist.
Rudolph Colao is known
for still life paintings and for paintings of interiors. He painted
prolifically from the 1950s though the 1990s…His original paintings have sold
at auction from $600 to $30,000. But his
work has been extensively reproduced, and millions of copies of his works
exist, so they are not particularly valuable. They tend to sell for about $25
to $40.
I often have difficulty myself telling whether back-sealed vintage
framed art is a print or an original oil painting without close examination, so
I can sympathize somewhat with all the confusion that exists out there in the
real world with respect to Rudy’s artwork.
Despite the enormous popularity of his paintings, Rudy once
said, “I don’t think about ‘the art market’ as such - I just paint. I really
paint because I want to, and because I need to. I have always felt that 1 never
had any other choice!”
Rudy’s alla prima paintings of lavish bouquets of solo flowers
inspired me to paint similar arrangements when bored with other still life
subject matter -- the usual pots and pans and fruits and vegetables. Flowers are as thrilling to paint as the
human form and the great outdoors, two genres I am unable to paint due to specious
circumstances beyond my control that are too depressing to constantly whine
about, as I have done occasionally in previous blog posts in shameful fashion.
I’d love to be able to paint some of the flowers Rudy
favored as skillfully as he did. He could
describe individual petals in a big bunch of lilacs and not make them look crudely
out of place with the tonal mass, something that’s not so easy to accomplish. And he had no apparent trouble painting those
spindly petals on daisies that confound me.
Of course it’s very helpful for flower painters to keep their own
gardens, as Rudy did in Rockport and Fantin did at his summer home in France
in the 19th Century. How I
envy them.
Rudy was destined to become a wonderfully skilled painter because
he had found his ideal mentor in Frank Vincent DuMond at the Art Students
League, where he studied on the G.I. Bill after World War II. DuMond taught for 59 years at the League, from
1892 until his death in 1951, and I’ll bet every one of his serious students
learned more about painting than most of us who never had the opportunity to
study with him.
How many times have we read stories about successful, gifted
artists who swore allegiance to DuMond?
And I wonder how many other gifted DuMond students fell under the art
market radar? Rudy’s ex-wife, in fact, the
late Camila McRoberts, was a very good painter herself and executed a number of
important portrait commissions in the early 1950s. The couple met in DuMond’s class, but she
gave up painting to raise their three children, two girls and a boy. They divorced in 1976 but remained friends,
with Camila continuing to tend Rudy’s flower garden until her death in 2012 at
the age of 83.
Rudy was a member of several arts organizations, including
Allied Artists of America, the Hudson Valley Art Association and the Rockport
Art Association AskART notes that articles on Rudy have appeared in American Artist Magazine (March 1975,
and May 1982), Southwest Art Magazine
(March 1982), and Focus/Santa Fe
(Aug/Sept 1988).
An astute summation of Rudy’s painting skill was penned by
Jill Warren in Southwest Art magazine: Like
all traditional realists, Colao uses value and simple shapes to show us more
clearly than the camera or even the eye what his subjects look like. He
achieves astonishing depth so that we can see the front, back and middle of his
arrangements and bouquets, even though the canvas has no depth at all.
I’m reminded insecurely of an anecdote about DuMond, Rudy’s
mentor, wherein DuMond was painting a landscape en plein air one day when a
little boy who was watching him eventually exclaimed, “Look at that man, he’s
making something out of nothing.” I
think I read that in an article about the landscape painter Paul Strisik,
another of DuMond’s many successful students who also was based in Rockport.
Rudolph N. “Rudy” Colao’s life and career are lovingly
recounted in an obituary published in the Gloucester Daily Times on Oct. 11, 2014, which can be read online. http://www.gloucestertimes.com/obituaries/rudolph-n-colao/article_b28e8ad5-19f9-5b7c-9f77-c308f7be91be.html
What an amazing legacy Rudy has left us. It seems as if he has more paintings or prints
of paintings in American households than any other artist, including Norman
Rockwell, Grandma Moses, and even Thomas Kinkade! And why not?
On one Internet site, a seller of a set of four 8x10 in. prints on
canvas of Rudy’s still life paintings boldly proclaims: “THESE PICTURES WILL BE
GREAT TO LIVEN UP A KITCHEN OR EVEN A DARK HALL WAY.” You know, I think that seller is absolutely right.
 |
| 8x10 in. Prints on Canvas |
