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Nicholas Poussin - 1594 – 1665
Nicholas Poussin - 1594 – 1665
Landscape with a Calm (Un Tem[p]s calme et serein)
Remarks:
This painting is calm and balanced and classical. The use of the reflection in the lake allows an inverted repetition of the building and this is echoed in the smaller trees closer to the shore which act as a reflection of the larger tree in the foreground on the right.
The tree on the right is balanced by a dark version on the left which helps to frame the picture.
This dark tree on the left is repeated as a smaller tree in the background, drawing the eye of the viewer towards the centre of the picture and the building.
Above the building there are two diagonal lines of clouds which also draw the eye in towards the building and which help to manage the deep space with the background element of the mountains.
The colours are cold and calm and do not overcome the image
There are lots of dark greens and browns which lead up to mid range yellow ochres and tan colours.
The central area of the lake has a mid-toned blue, which is darker than the highlight of the building. This helps to pull the mid tone emphasis and mood of the picture down, creating more atmosphere.
The foreground is darker and the figure in the foreground wears a red jacket to contrast with all the surrounding dark browns and greens.
The space and the pictures divided into a series of bands: the foreground, the lake, the building, the background.
All of these elements combine to make this picture calm, serene and classically balanced.
Claude Gellée (Lorrain) 1600 – 1682
Claude Gellée (Lorrain) 1600 – 1682
– Cincinnati Art Museum 1946.102. An Artist Studying From Nature (1639)
Remarks:
This picture has a great sense of moment and atmosphere. It looks as though it was painted on a beautiful day just before sunset. There is a sense of light and enveloping warmth throughout the picture.
The light is suffused from a hidden, setting sun behind the tree at the centre of the picture.
An artist is showing painting in the foreground – supposedly studying from nature.
This is something of a joke as this picture is very carefully concocted and constructed.
It must have been the work of many hours of careful plotting in the studio. This painting is not the mere work of someone painting on location responding to at the moment, but is instead, planned out like a long and demanding game of chess.
The figures shown are not recognisable individuals but social types, this makes the scene more generic and more composed, rather than being the presentation of an actual event and an actual time observed.
Similarly, the buildings have generalised aspects to them rather than appearing to represent specific buildings and known places.
The sense of calm and radiant pleasure that this picture gives off is called "Arcadian".
Arcadia was the place of perfect existence, a bit like the Garden of Eden, before the fall of man.
So this painting creates a sense of a perfect past which we recognise, and about which, we know very little other than through storytelling.
It gives us a sense of nostalgia for something through which we haven't lived.
It also gives us a sense of yearning to be back in such a perfect place. Every element is balanced and composed, for example, the masts on the boat, which has been ideally tethered to the shore, point languidly (lazily, lathargically) towards the tree. The tree itself, then points down towards the artist, and everything looks serene and content.
Jacob Isaackszoon van Ruisdael 1629 – 10 March 1682)
Jacob Isaackszoon van Ruisdael 1629 – 10 March 1682)
In this picture, there is a lot of light and dark massed to create a sense of drama and atmosphere.
This makes it appear that a storm or bad weather is about to appear
Or, it could be a way of showing that there is a general turbulence of life.
The foreground is dark and shadowy, as is the middle ground.
But there are flashes of light areas in the sky.
These cast brighter illumination in certain parts of the landscape, for example, the boat in the background and the pool of water in the foreground.
Additionally, the Windmill is catching the light. It is the most important part of the picture.
The rest of the picture supports this and gives it meaning.
The Windmill is the central element which occupies the viewers eye. It is the subject of the picture.
It very prominently features a cross made up by the sales of the Windmill. This cross is reminiscent of the crucifix and it is clear that the windmill stands for a Christian faith which is to be buffeted by the forces of the world.
Jan van der Heyden - 1637 – 1712
Jan van der Heyden - 1637 – 1712
– Waddesdon Manor 2560. Amsterdam, Houses on the Herengracht (c. 1670-1790)
Remarks:
This painting is appealing because it presents a somewhat snapshot scene like one taken today with a camera or a phone, so that even though it was painted some 400 years ago it appears modern and 'of the moment'.
The houses seem to be hidden behind the trees, and the shapes of the trees are repeated in the tops of the buildings. This creates a banded and flattening effect across the picture.
This flattening is reinforced further by the reflection of the buildings in the water in the foreground.
The flattening effect is also further heightened by the repeat shapes of the boats and the reflections from the left to the right of the picture.
In this respect, the picture appears highly abstracted and unusual for its time.
Within the larger shapes, the smaller areas such as the windows setup rhythmic intervals across the picture, dividing the space almost like a grid.
The grid reinforces the rectangular composition and equal distribution of elements across it in a flattened space.
There is a freedom in the brush handling, particularly so in the sky, with the clouds and in some of the effects of the painting of the trees when seen in shadow, in front of the buildings.
The reflections have also been loosely brushed in, and it is possible to see elements of underpainting underneath the white facade of the building towards the centre left of the picture. We can see how the painting was made and how the layering of colours combine to create effects.
Meindert Hobbema 1638-1709
Meindert Hobbema 1638-1709
Remarks:
This is a very famous painting which is currently in the collection of the National Gallery in London.
Again the picture is divided into flat areas which almost divide the canvas into simple geometric shapes.
The lines of the tops of the trees create a 'V shape' which cuts down through the middle of the picture towards the centre.
The horizon line which is a horizontal line running from left to right is placed low and only occupies the bottom third of the painting.
This bottom third is divided through the 'central V', the road disappearing in perspectival space (in perspective), the horizontal lines of branching roads, and the gridlike effect of the tethered plants in the bottom right corner.
On either side of the road, there are buildings which create roughly equal triangular shapes and which break up the horizon line.
Although most of the painting is covered with the sky, and there are large cloud formations within the sky, the painting is still and calm and suggests equilibrium.
This is a landscape which is static, still, and unruffled. It is calm and it is all of a single piece.
The brushstrokes are soft and fluid and this creates poetic or lyrical form of abstraction behind the every day elements of the trees, the road, and the buildings.
Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697 – 1768), known as Canaletto
Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697 – 1768), known as Canaletto
Remarks:
This artist is famous for his intensely organised and detailed paintings which show large panoramic views of townscapes.
In his paintings, we expect to see accurate representations of space and detailed elements within that space.
This painting is no exception, it shows the Grand Canal in Venice looking towards the Rialto Bridge.
Every element is highly achieved and the details set up a rhythm within the picture which creates a cohesive sense of the whole image. (everything is seen as part of one whole, not a lot of separate details piled together and uniques like items in a. shopping bag but an intricate system of parts that fit together to make something like the mechanism of a watch).
So that, if we think of someone playing the piano, the pattern of the repeating chimney pots sets up a left-hand kind of rhythm against the larger intervals of the gondoliers running over the canal – a right hand rhythmn.
The windows in the buildings can be seen as smaller dotted intervals over the larger shapes of the buildings.
The sky is light and airy with a sense of the sun being out of sight and just off-camera, to the left of the picture.
It is though, still lighting up the air and revealing buildings on the right-hand side of the canal.
Those on the left are left in shadow, however, between these buildings we imagine gaps as light streams through and is shown falling across surfaces and hitting walls and window frames.
The people shown on the gondolas are not individuals (we don't think 'look, there is Mr so and so'), they are more generalised as types and in this respect, the surface of the painting appears almost populated by robots or machine men, again reminding us of a clock.
In a way, you could say that the chimneys and the people equate to the same thing. They provide rhythmic intervals within the picture of objects rather than showing us psychological types or actual people with unique personalities.
There is a great deal to admire in this picture in terms of the clarity and organisation of the space and the way in which Canaletto has looked closely at every element.
Canaletto has been able to combine all of these separate elements into one cohesive picture.
He did a lot of paintings that work in this way, like this one, and you could argue that this is something of a put-together-painting: repeating known effects in a series of combinations and variations on a theme.
Canaletto would often use previously achieved elements which he would then combine to make new works from standard formulas. In this way, he could maximise his output and produce lots of paintings for sale as 'off the peg' combinations of given effects.
A bit like a mix and match Taylor who will provide patterns, stripes and dots in trousers, jackets and waistcoats in different combinations to make different suits from the same basic range.
Francesco Lazzaro Guardi 1712 – J 1793
Francesco Lazzaro Guardi 1712 – J 1793
View of the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore
Remarks:
The other great famous Venetian scene painter of the time is Guardi.
Just as Canaletto is famous for being very clear and precise, so too is Guardi well known for smudging and joining together elements to create one cohesive whole.
In his paintings, everything is merged together and highlights or light areas are used to distinguish between an underlying mid tone colour which covers everything and darkened areas of shadow.
For example, the grey-green colour which can be found in the water of the canal (this is the same canal as in the Canaletto just further towards the mouth) is used throughout the shadows of the buildings which surround it.
Again, the grey-green mid tone is found underlying the sky in the clouds towards the top parts of the picture.
The other colours and tones found in the picture are variations which move away from this unifying, central value of the mid tone grey.
Therefore, we see lights and darks in the gondolas and the people
Guardi carries his technique of jumping out from the mid tone throughout: we see light and dark in the windows; and the illuminated surfaces of the buildings; and we see like some darks in the sky and the highlights of the clouds.
Every event, every light or dark detail, stands out in relief against the central mid tone colour.
The painting looks as though it had a warm underpainting colour, maybe pink or red in colour, which has been put down and over which the grey of the mid tone has been established.
The grey is modulated somewhat as well, so that it is warm in some places, then cold in other parts. This is done to contrast with over painted elementsthe buildings or the clouds in the sky.
Yellows and greens are applied throughout the building-work and the water of the lagoon and the canal. All of those colours are applied in smears to lift them from the grey green the mid tone.
Towards the left of the painting, in the foreground area of the architecture, there is a lot more pink/red added to warm up that part of the picture and bring it further forward from the rest of the architecture.
The clear organisation of the architectural space and its regular and sharpened drawing helps bring this painting to life and gives it a strong structure set against the all pervading grey mid tone.
Casper David Friedrich - 1774 - 1840
Casper David Friedrich - 1774 - 1840
The Tree of Crows (also known as Raven Tree) is an oil painting of 1822 by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. Acquired by the Musée du Louvre in 1975
Remarks:
This painting is full of Romantic drama. That is, romantic with a capital letter R.
Romanticism was a movement inert spreading from the end of the eighteenth century in contrast or response to the previous classicism. Romantic art is dramatic and dynamic.
This Friedrich is a German painting which sets itself up against the static and classical example of French art that had dominated Europe in the years after the Renaissance through to the 18th century.
Here, in this painting, although there is a great deal of observed detail, it seems that nature has been imagined rather than recorded.
The branches of the trees take on what is called the "pathetic fallacy". This means that they appear to have personalised or "humanised" aspects.
The branches appear as though flailing arms or desperate fingers struggling against the forces of nature such as the wind.
The birds themselves also seem to be caught in flight or, whirling around, as though on the surface of a whirlpool in the air.
The colours are slightly too bright and become sickly so that, for example, the sunset is rendered with a mid tone yellow.
Seen from behind the tree, it has a feverish or unsettling quality.
This is quite unlike the illuminated tree in the painting by Claude.
By contrast with the Claude, in this painting, the birds, the branches, and other trees all have moved from the vertical or the horizontal and now occupy energised and dynamic diagonal forms.
This suggests a world of movement, change and destabilisation.
The mid tone of the green in the mound behind the tree doesn't look balanced and harmonious with the yellows and pinks of the sunset: it is lighter than we expect a green to be, and it is therefore somewhat unsettling.
We call this kind of colourisation 'discordant' we expect green applied to nature to be a deeper, lower emerald green, but here it is shown as if in a misty green against the reds and browns of the tree.
The tree itself is dark in the sunlight and very light toned when set against the darker areas, so that it too has an unsettling effect and has a slightly magical and theatrical air like a scene from an opera or a play.
The overall effect of the drawing and of the placement of objects and their colouration is to create a dreamlike intensity which is destabilising and uneven.
All in all, the picture is very much like a scene from an opera. It is full of drama and appears ill at ease with itself.
The paint has been used in very thin layers, from large soft areas, stained in with a rag or sponge, to small strokes painted in carefully in thin paint.
Despite all this, attention is not drawn to individual brushstrokes although there is definitely a "hand-painted" feel to the entire surface.
The whole picture appears to have been worked and well made but it appears to have been worked over and laboured by hand rather than to present itself as an image the first place.
Thomas Girtin 1775 - 1802
Thomas Girtin 1775 - 1802
Remarks:
The watercolour of the White House at Chelsea is Thomas Girtin's most famous painting.
It is well known for three reasons:
Firstly it is in the collection of the Tate Gallery
Secondly, it has an easy to grasp technical feat in that the White House at the centre of the picture is made through bare paper and thus it appears as a feat of the skill of the artist to create a whole painting centred around plain paper
And thirdly, this painting is famous because the careful layering and washes of watercolour create a sense of mood and atmosphere which is appealing.
The foreground is largely abstracted through the overlapping washes of colour and the most prominent feature is the disintegrating reflection of the White House making an elongated vertical and shaky rectangle.
Above the house, there are dark, looming clouds and a darkening sky which is falling into shadow.
The White House has, as its foil, the dark silhouette of the land towards the right which is still in daylight and the brooding menace of the Windmill which is entirely in shadow towards the left.
The painting has spaces established at regular intervals by the boats and the mooring spars. These are broken into smaller units by the integers of the arches of the bridge immediately to the right of the White House.
All of these elements combine to set up a sense of order, space and time. In this respect, the painting is interesting because it is ordered and measured, yet has a brooding sense of atmosphere.
Although there is space and tranquillity, there is also something slightly unsettling about the scene.
If the Windmill for Jacob van Ruisdael is an image of Christian faith, what is it for Girtin?
Possibly an antiquated past which has had its day. Something which is now falling into shadow and which is no longer the centre of attention.
The Parisian Street scene, Denbigh Castle and the newly discovered London Street saying offer highly detailed visions of architectural spaces and masses.
The most interesting of these is the scene from London, with the large blue dome of St Paul's occupying the centre top half of the painting.
This large blue shape is offset by the rising ‘U shape’ of the warm tones of the street and the buildings within it.
The viewer is given a sense of a low point of view which looks up towards the imposing mass of St Paul's Cathedral via the teeming human thoroughfare of the street.
In this way we are led from earthly concerns and the fragile structures of mankind through to the timeless immensity of God.
However, it is interesting to note that the more one looks at the picture, the more one contemplates it, the details of the people in the shops in the foreground occupy more and more of the viewers attention leading away from the configurations and thoughts of God.
Girtin continued...
The Parisian Street scene, Denbigh Castle and the newly discovered London Street saying offer highly detailed visions of architectural spaces and masses.
The most interesting of these is the scene from London, with the large blue dome of St Paul's occupying the centre top half of the painting.
This large blue shape is offset by the rising ‘U shape’ of the warm tones of the street and the buildings within it.
The viewer is given a sense of a low point of view which looks up towards the imposing mass of St Paul's Cathedral via the teeming human thoroughfare of the street.
In this way we are led from earthly concerns and the fragile structures of mankind through to the timeless immensity of God.
However, it is interesting to note that the more one looks at the picture, the more one contemplates it, the details of the people in the shops in the foreground occupy more and more of the viewers attention leading away from the configurations and thoughts of God.
John Sell Cotman - 1782 - 1842
John Sell Cotman - 1782 - 1842
Remarks:
Cotman is one of the foremost watercolour painters of British art history, and possibly of all art history.
The painting of the bridge in Yorkshire is a good example of his work.
The picture is divided into clear geometric shapes. Masses of light and dark areas are divided into clear areas and set one against the other, so that the light clouds touch the dark silhouettes of the landscape and this is in turn intersected by the light tone of the bridge which sits above the dark shadow of the landscape and the reflection in the water.
In the foreground, the viewer meets areas of light rock and dark water which alternate towards the extreme foreground.
Then, dark rocks are set out against light water.
There is everywhere a simple, 'blankness' which envelops all of the elements and which makes the whole picture very static and calm.
This is even more calm than the painting by Claude or the one by Poussin, in that it doesn't seem to allude to another story.
We get a sense that the scene is what was seen by the viewer and there is no more to tell.
We are not offered the view of the bridge as some kind of means to elaborate the difficulty of human choices, or the journey one must take in life, or any other poetic metaphor but instead, we are merely shown an attractive geometric shaped bridge which appeared as a light tone against the dark background.
Once again, the repeating elements and their inversions as reflections combine in effect to flatten the picture and the bands of elements running across the picture's surface again reinforce its flatness almost like the stripes in a piece of material.
In the painting of the cows crossing the river, Cotman takes a scene which has epic and biblical portents to it, and again, reduces it to a schematic and flat story of tones, shapes and colours. The tones and colours of the animals, the river and the countryside are reduced to abstract shapes which convey a sense of the scene.
They also show the light at the given time and point of observation and yet seem to leave the job of representing the scene and instead just set up a harmonious arrangement of shapes to exist on the painting.
We are told nothing about the realities of our agricultural life.
We are told nothing about the vagaries of working with farm animals or the price of meat.
We learn little or nothing about the essential characteristics of the English countryside, and yet, this painting creates a memorable image which is pleasing and harmonious and which is carried off to a high-level of finish through its apparent artless simplicity.
It is somehow unforgettable even though it doesn't appear to show us anything very much.
The painting of the aqueduct is possibly one of Cotman's most well-known images and it is immediately easy to understand why.
This painting has all of the attributes of his other paintings and also boasts an intriguing composition.
The bridge – the viaduct, aqueduct we're not even sure – is cut off at either end. We do not know where it leads to or where it comes from.
The viewer does not even know what it carries. And yet we see it as a series of repeating abstract shapes and simultaneously, as a hard and fast architectural reality.
It is bisecting and cutting through the countryside.
It is imposing human logic upon nature, and yet we do not know whether that is good or bad, or whether it has any purpose at all beyond conveying water.
Nature has conveyed water in the foreground and the bridge is reflected in that, it may be that Cotman is showing us that despite our best efforts the natural world already provides for us and it is folly merely to spend all that time, effort and labour replicating what already exists.
The sky has been produced by staining and the application of wet on wet techniques, so that dollops of diluted blue paint have bled and spread throughout the soaked surface. This is also achieved across the architectural surface of the pale yellow ochre viaduct, however, edges are delineated with the careful, fine application of dark tones in single brushstrokes.
There is also an added focus on detail provided through the direct application of wet paint onto semi-wet ground, such as for example, the foliage in the back space of the central arch.
This foliage helps to provide a focal point to the picture.
The foreground of the picture has a dull version of the colours seen in the actual viaduct so that it is half a tone darker than the real building and yet, it stands in the foreground in front of the solid structure, in this way, Cotman has been able to use brighter colours which are then pushed back into the deeper space of the picture and allowed slightly darker, and duller, colours to come to the foreground. All of that is difficult to do.
This painting has a great deal of blankness about it too. There are essentially three clumps of foliage: a dark one, a mid toned one, and a light one which is slightly moved to the foreground of the painting.
Behind the foliage there is a field or plain receding back towards a dark horizon and a mid toned sky with dark clouds which seem to threaten to blot it out.
Interestingly, there is a hard, almost straight, edge to some of the cloud. This creates a flat line echoing the horizon and then a strong leading diagonal which takes the eye of the viewer from the top left edge down towards the central right area of the sky.
This is a bold and interesting affect and the straight edge works well against the soft curves and masses of the foliage in the foreground.
Once again, there seems to be an emphasis on abstraction achieved through the composition of simple and large shapes.
It is important to remember that Cotton was painting in the early 19th century, and yet much of our interpretation is based on 20th-century ideas, such as abstract and autonomous areas of paint.
In this respect, these elements within the picture serve no descriptive purpose but only embellish or provide structure for a strong composition.
John Constable 1776 – 1837
John Constable 1776 – 1837
Sketches at Brighton and Hove
Remarks:
In the 1820s and 1830s the artist John Constable moved to Brighton in order to safeguard the health of his sickly wife who suffered from tuberculosis.
He thought, and hope, that the fresh, CM would help her weakened lungs and prevent her further illness. Unfortunately that was not to be the case.
Despite the fact that Constable did not like Brighton and the people who live there, he produced many exciting sketch works in and around Brighton which show a great deal of his painting to its best effect.
Amongst these are two very good examples shown here. The first of these shows the Downs and early evening.
Constable would go out painting 'en plein air' – that means working outside in the open air – he would use a box which could fold out onto extendable legs and function as an easel.
It was also a way of carrying his paints and brushes around with him.
In addition, he would pre-paint pieces of card with different coloured grounds so that he could choose a suitable colour on which to begin his quick sketches.
The colour of the ground helped as a form of under painting. He often used green, blue, pink, brown, blue-grey as choices for these grounds.
In the case of this first painting here, he has used a dark grey brown colour and painted largely warm colours over the top.
We can see bands of yellow ochre, burnt sienna, pink and cream as well, as burned umber towards the top of the painting.
The pale blue grey colour of the horizon is pushed into the deep space of the background by the dark masses of burned umber in the top part of the picture and the dark green grey colour of the foliage on the Downs.
This compression of the subject into a series of horizontal bands helped to create a sense of the landscape stretching out on either side of the painting.
The strong colour of the bottom of the clouds – tinted by the dying rays of the sun into alizarin crimson and cadmium orange, provides a focal point in terms of colour.
This strong element is offset by its complimentary(opposite colour on the colour wheel) in the dark green of the foliage.
This painting gets better and better, the more one looks at it. And so the more detail one notices in terms of the colour and the handling of paint.
Constable has used thin layers and washes of paint and then applied wet on wet layers and detail over-the-top.
The next painting here by John Constable is the view across Hove towards Shoreham.
Today this would be an architectural view with lots of flats and houses
In Constable's day, this was uninhabited lawns, grass and hills.
This small and lively sketch is a masterpiece of painting by Constable which has had a big impact on me and the intentions I have for painting.
I intend to discuss this work in detail as it is of great interest to me but I should point out here that I'm immediately drawn to the way that he uses a range of painting effects to create space and points of interest in what is a seemingly uninteresting, and sparse, fairly uninhabited viewpoint.
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