The P.H. Robinson generating station, located in Dickinson,Texas, south of Houston, is operated by the Houston Lighting and Power Company. From 1988 through 1991, Rackstraw Downes painted the plant and its environs.
One thing I like about this area of Texas is the naked, blatant proximity of nature and industry; it is a true metaphor of the state of our planet and the competing interests of its various inhabitants. I don’t wish to sentimentalize either nature or industry but, in a particular spot, take the measure of each empirically.¹
The composition shows the site in March, “when the new green grasses start up, but the trees and bushes are still bare.” The generating plant sits at the right of the composition. Power lines extend from the plant into the prairie landscape at left, showing how electricity is distributed from the plant. In the middle ground, birds – ibis and egrets – nest in the bushes near the puddles. In the foreground are tire tracks from a jeep or truck, which add an element of high spirits, bringing “a populist touch to this painting of otherwise impersonal protagonists.”
This painting relies on a meticulous attention to detail, use of color to create a mood, and an unusually long, narrow format. The neutral palette of soft browns, blues, and greens recalls the early spring and is punctuated by the red stripes on the chimneys that help focus attention on the generating plant. Downes chose a vantage point from the highest spot in the county, which gives a vast panoramic view. The long, narrow format and the sweep of power lines into the far distance emphasize the flat prairie landscape.
Born in England in 1939, Rackstraw Downes studied art at Yale University in the early 1960s. He began his career as an abstract painter but, in the mid-1960s, turned to realism. His painting is influenced by the meticulously detailed Flemish landscape paintings of the Renaissance, realistic American art, and panoramic photographs. For additional information about Dutch landscape painting, see Willem Claesz. Heda’s Banquet Piece with Ham (Teachers’ Guide Grades 4-6, page --). Although grounded in detail and documentation, Downes’s work goes beyond that reality to sublime images of nature.²
Downes began this work in 1988 by making sketches at the site. In 1989, he started the full-size canvas. After laying in the rough underpainting of the image in the studio, he did all the remaining work on the site in Dickinson. By 1991, Downes had completed the work, except for the sky. After trying many approaches, he created a new oil sketch. Then, in his studio in New York, he repainted the sky in the final composition.
1. All quotations are from a letter dated October 10, 1992, from the artist to Alison de Lima Greene, curator of twentieth-century art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
2. Frank H. Goodyear, Jr., Contemporary American Realism since 1960 (Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1981), pp. 133-35.
