"Smithsonian Castle Magnolias" (oil on linen; 12" x 12")

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Near the Smithsonian Castle on The National Mall, the administrative headquarters of many national museums in Washington DC, there is a beautiful garden complex called Enid A. Haupt Garden. Visit it during the magnolia season.  As hundreds of mature magnolia trees become heavily loaded with big, pale pink, cup-shaped flowers, the garden is transformed into a fragrant pink heaven!

"Smithsonian Castle Rose Garden" (oil on stretched canvas; 18" x 18") sold

sold

Then

It is with a great pleasure that I am sharing the new, better "Smithsonian Castle Rose Garden". Can you believe how much improved I am as a painter?  It is the same, yet totally different painting.  In understanding of color temperatures, the color-mixing ability, and confident brush strokes, it might as well be done by a different artist.

By the way, the painting shows the rose garden at the eastern end of the Smithsonian Castle on The Mall in Washington, DC.  If you visit the garden at the right time of the year, you will be enveloped in the thick perfume of roses in full bloom.  I am planning on visiting it next week!

"Smithsonian Castle" (oil on linen; 8" x 10")

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I have painted the Smithsonian Castle before, as you can see below.  The old painting from the last fall was also titled unimaginatively "Smithsonian Castle," I apologize. From the moment I finished it, I didn't like it, but didn't know what to do.  So I did another painting based on a different photo taken on the same beautiful autumn day. Of course, you cannot tell from the paintings whether it is spring, summer, or fall.  Hey, I was going for a timeless beauty!

Please tell me which painting is better.  I am voting for the new one.  I have a tendency of preferring new paintings to old ones, perhaps based on the delusion that I am improving by the day.  But this time I am hoping that everybody will agree with me.

The new painting is more painterly, reads better, and compositionally superior. The mock Gothic castle is in shadow, so it is dark.  Don't the sun-struck slivers in the clock tower sing?  I didn't really need all the foreground either.  Even without it, the castle in the new painting sits back, doesn't it?  I guess the morale of the story is: if a painting of your favorite subject doesn't turn out well the first time, do another and another until you nail it!

The old "Smithsonian Castle" (oil, 14" x 11")

"Smithsonian Castle Rose Garden" (oil on canvas; 18" x 18")

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Reference photo

One spring day, I went to The Mall with my family and saw the rose garden at the eastern end of the Smithsonian Castle.  The air was so thick with the rose perfume that you couldn't have missed it while walking by.  I didn't, however, stop to take pictures because I had company.  So I went back a couple of days later, hoping that the heavy rain the day before didn't damage the flowers in full bloom.  I timed it carefully so that the garden would be basking in morning sun as you can see above.

So far, so good.  Painting the scene was not as easy.  It was tough to make the various components of the picture--the castle with a complicated mock medieval architecture, two big trees, garden, benches, etc--work together harmoniously without drawing too much attention to the castle.  I finally finished "Smithsonian Castle Rose Garden" yesterday.  I am going to enter it in The Art League's annual landscape show in two weeks.  We'll see how it goes.