Bo Bartlett at P.P.O.W - New York

Bo Bartlett's exhibition of roughly 20 paintings plus watercolors and gouaches showed the artist continuing in the realist vein that has defined his practice for more than a decade. Entirely devoid of postmodern irony, Bartlett's work is unabashedly traditional; it succeeds on its own terms and by the sincerity with which it is conceived. Nonetheless, a certain eeriness prevails, stemming less from atavism than from Bartlett's precision in conveying place, the peculiarity of his compositions and the unusual lighting from within that characterizes many canvases.

For any viewer who has spent time on the lakes and shores of Maine, the atmospheric light and coloration of Bartlett's skies and seas are unmistakable dead ringers--this despite the pared-down settings. The larger paintings are staged in a manner characteristic of Manet's early studio compositions. Take The Box, in which a young girl and teenage boy play dress-up with the contents of a box of Americana props in the afternoon light. It is not just the striking resemblance of Bartlett's son to Manet's in Luncheon in the Studio that brings to mind the earlier master. More important is the inscrutable oddity of this scene on a grand scale (the work measures 82 by 100 inches), the attention to marginal detail (the weirdo doll with a dunce cap at lower right) and the arrested quality of the sitters.

Sources abound, including Andrew Wyeth and Grant Wood (for their American regionalist sensibilities) and late 18th-century British portraitists (for the low vantage point they assumed to ennoble their subjects). There are dabs of Delacroix in some of Bartlett's works, particularly one of the shows most arresting images, Old Glory, a post-9/11 painting of a young girl wrapped in an American flag. The viewer's line of vision is centered at her feet, and the background is a richly atmospheric blue sky above the clouds that lie just beyond the craggy precipice on which the girl stands. An image of youthful heroism and virtue, emphasized by the nimbuslike lighter blue that circumscribes the brunette model's head, the painting is, at first glance, truly irritating in its simplistic symbolism. And yet the model's questioning expression behind a sort of blank-faced resolve embodies the underlying complexity of the moment.

The distinctive light from within is most pronounced in Manasseh, in which a towering redheaded fisherman atop a rock formation holds his ground against the viewer's gaze. The greens of this prophetlike figure's garb are highlighted with red-orange strokes that lend a fiery inner luminescence. Color thus deployed in pursuit of transcendent effect brings to mind Frederic Edwin Church, and the divine light ,of Bartlett's unusual but convincing works may draw from the same fount of native inspiration that nourished the 19th-century master of the American Luminist landscape.

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