Landscape painting

Landscape Painting depicts the scenery of the natural world with the views that impact the artists's eye. In an effort to represent the beauty that meets the eye, the artist tries to capture that fleeting moment in time and space, for all time, thus becoming a co-creator along with the original Creator. In these visions may be; endless skies or no sky, clouds of every strata, stars and planets, vistas of mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes and plains, all forms of vegetation, flora and fauna, deserts and oceans, etc. Also may be contained, in a single scene; humans and habitats, conveyances, wagons to ships, aircraft to automobiles, any may play a part. Weather is decidedly a large element of the composition; be it calm and serene, threatening and dramatic, clear or shrouded in mists with sunsets, sunrises, rainbows, or other phenomena that may also add to the portrayal with, most of all, light. There may or may not be form and color, for even the lack of it shows the artist's perception of the quest for artistry. Moreover, from the point of view of the public there is the subtle difference of the merely pictorial and the melding of the artist's own sensibilities and creativity.

The Background of Landscape painting

"Landscape is a state of mind." Swiss essayist, Henri Frederic Amiel, 19th Century.

The effect of light plays an important role in viewing the landscape and we can say that these painters are also painters of light. It has been said that the overall flood of constant heat and light in the Orient created the monochromatic styles there and their use of the line as a graphic description. In Europe the ever shifting seasons and subtleties of changing, suffused light, created a very different style of painting, championed by artists such as the Impressionists, WJM Turner and the Luminists. Light may also have an emotional effect and has been used to create moods that the artist desired in the landscape.

In Western art, Landscape Painting before the sixteenth century, with few exceptions, such as wall pictures in the Hellenistic period, have been mostly a decorative backdrop until the seventeenth century when serious artists of 'pure' landscape were active. Even then, they were thought of as very low on the scale of subject matter, second only to the flowers and fruit varieties.

The oldest recorded views in the West were cut into rock at Valcamonica, near Lake Guarda, Italy, some 2000 years B.C.E. However, these are geometric and not regarded strictly, as art. The pre-classical civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Agean had landscape motifs that are considered art. The Hellenistic period, shows us the first known paintings of a more naturalistic nature.

In the first century C.E., Roman frescoes of landscapes decorated rooms that have been preserved at Pompeii and Herculaneum and the first of 'pure' landscapes.

Traditionally, landscape art depicts the surface of the earth, but there are other sorts of landscapes, such as moonscapes and starscapes for example.

Willard Leroy Metcalf, Indian Summer, Vermont. Metcalf painted large scale landscapes en plein-air.

File:Jane Frank Dorado No2.jpg

Jane Frank (Jane Schenthal Frank, 1918-1986), Aerial Series: Dorado no. 2, 1970: An example of aerial landscape art, acrylic and mixed materials on apertured double canvas, 35"x47". Notice that in this kind of landscape, there is no horizon and no sky.

The word landscape is from the Dutch, landschap meaning a sheaf, a patch of cultivated ground. The word entered the English vocabulary of the connoisseur in the late 17th century.

The Chinese tradition of "pure" landscape, in which the minute human figure simply gives scale and invites the viewer to participate in the experience, was well established by the time the oldest surviving ink paintings were executed.

In Europe, as John Ruskin realized, and Sir Kenneth Clark brought to view, in a series of lectures to the Slade School of Art, London, that Landscape Painting was the "chief artistic creation of the nineteenth century", with the result that in the following period people were "apt to assume that the appreciation of natural beauty and the painting of landscape is a normal and enduring part of our spiritual activity" In Clark's analysis, underlying European ways to convert the complexity of landscape to an idea were four fundamental approaches:

By the acceptance of descriptive symbols,

By curiosity about the facts of nature,

By the creation of fantasy to allay deep-rooted fears of nature,

By the belief in a Golden Age of harmony and order, which might be retrieved.

He said that, 'we are surrounded by things which we have not made and which have a life and a structure different from our own and for centuries have inspired us with curiosity and awe.' He continued to say that, 'Landscape Painting marks the stages in our conception of nature. It's rise and development since the Middle Ages is part of a cycle in which the human spirit attempted once more to create a harmony with its environment.' Sir Kenneth also wrote that, 'landscape painting was an act of faith and in the early nineteenth century as values declined, faith in nature became a form of religion.' and 'Almost every Englishman when asked what he thought was meant by the word 'beauty' would begin to describe a landscape.'

Sir Kenneth also wrote that Rouseau's ideal of total immersion, could be seen in the paintings of both William Turner and Claude Monet.

In a book on the phenomena of Krakatoa, (The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester) the volcanic eruption that could be heard clear across the world, the writer states that "Art was born out of the after-effects of this volcano." After millions of tons of dust were hurled into the air in the East Indies, it disseminated around the world for many years and extraordinary sunsets were seen in unusual colors and hues exciting many landscape painters. One of those was, Frederic Edwin Church, a member of the Hudson River School, an American nineteenth-century painting group. Sunset Over the Ice on Chaumont Bay, Lake Ontario, a watercolor, is said to be the only major painting made after the immediate aftermath of the explosion and stands as vivid testimony to the great eruption. His oil, Twilight in the Wilderness, also has unusual richness of color. J.M.W. Turner the great English master-painter, was also thought to have been influenced by these unusual effects and is famous for painting evening skies colored in the aftermath of the 1815 eruption of Tambora, an earlier but not as lethal eruption. A lesser artist, William Ashcroft, who lived on the River Thames in Chelsea, London, painted some five hundred, plus, watercolors and made notes of the unique tints in the sunsets, for several months. These were shown in exhibition but then locked away in the Natural History Museum, in London, almost forgotten.

Chinese Landscape and Philosophy

Chinese painters over a period of fifteen centuries have developed certain methods that are meant for the beginner to learn and practise before any creative departures. The evolution of Chinese painting over many centuries has been continuous whilst making some adjustments for certain other influences. It has established strong traditions and a self generating force. The simple use of brush and ink on absorbent paper in monochromatic forms and voids coupled with an exclusive choice of subjects from nature form the basis for this language of art. For thousands of years the Chinese people have been farmers struggling with the changes in nature until they began to seek a way of attunement with those forces which became eventually the philosophy of Tao or the Way. a fundamental notion that nature and humanity are one. So, artists aspired also to become one with nature, superceeding other forms such as figure painting. As a result Chinese painting came to have universal appeal. The artist intends the landscape not just for viewing but for a more spiritual journey.

Japanese Painting Traditions

As nearly all forms of art, Japanese early painting had been under the influence of the Chinese culture. By and by, new and specifically Japanese styles were developed and painting schools were established. Each school practized their own style. But the Chinese influence remained strong until the beginning of the Edo period (1603-1867). There is a general term to describe painting in Japanese style - yamato-e.

Painting Schools and Styles

• Suibokuga or Sumi-e, is the term for painting in black ink. It was adopted from China and strongly influenced by Zen Buddhism. During the 15th century ink painting gained a more Japanese style of its own.

• Kano Masanobu (1453-1490) and his son Kano Motonobu (1476-1559) established the Kano painting school. It began as a protest against the Chinese ink painting technique in black. The Kano school used bright colors and introduced daring compositions with large flat areas that later should dominate the ukiyo-e designs. The Kano school split into several branches over the time, but remained dominant during the Edo period. Many ukiyo-e artists were trained as Kano painters.

• The nanga painting style was strong at the beginning of the 19th century during the bunka and bunsai era. The advocates of this style painted idealized landscapes and natural subjects like birds and flowers for a cultural elite. The style was rather Chinese.

Japanese painters used a wide variety of media over the centuries. The only one you will not find until the late nineteenth century, is the Western media of the framed canvas.

Japanese paintings may evoke an association with landscapes and natural scenes drawn with a few simple brush strokes.

European Painting

Nature as Divine Power

Early in the fifteenth century, Landscape Painting was established as a genre in Europe, as a setting for human activity, often expressed in a religious subject, such as the themes of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, the Journey of the Magi, or Saint Jerome in the Desert.

With Christian religion came the idea of nature as a manifestation of divine power. This led to the symbolic view of nature, from the 'real to the 'unreal' landscapes of Byzantine art. Later the first realistic scapes came from Siena, with Ambrogio Lorenzettis' frescoes. Avignon was also a center of factual landscape detail in the decorative walls at the Palace of the Popes, 1343. In the north, in France and Burgundy. manuscripts such as the Tres Riches Heures by the Duke of Berry (Book of the Hours) created as seasonal calendars and painted by artists from the Low aCountries showing nature in miniature perfection and this style inspired the Italians.

Anticipating future artists

Titian's landscapes of his native Cadore, Ruggero and Angelica in a Landscape, Pen and brown ink, with clumpy trees, rushing streams and vivid blue hills, are echoed in countless landscapes through the ages, especially in both Constable and Turners's work in England.

During the French Baroque Era, Claude Lorrain's, 1600–82, glowing paintings, had a transcendental feeling of the perfect and came from direct observations of nature whilst Nicolas Poussin (1648) had a strict geometry and he believed in a moral character in painting and wanted to control nature with intellectual creativity and many artists studied and tried to emulate these artists, including those in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Spiritual Reaction

Mannerism was a reaction to the Renaissance, a way to depict Spirituality over Humanism. A form of Expressionism, it had a love of visual excitement akin to the Gothic tradition, everything was for effect. Tintoretto, Saint Mary of Egypt in Meditation, 1585, Oil on canvas and El Greco, the Greek, 1541-1614, View of Toledo, Oil on canvas, were great examples. Peter Paul Rubens', 1577-1640, landscapes were full of both naturalism and romantic escapism. The Hurricane, 1624, Oil on wood, is typical and his rainbows anticipated Turner.

The Northern naturalism

Sixteenth- century Flemish landscape began with Joachim Patinir and lasts over a hundred years and ends with the refined Jan Breughel the Elder, or Velvet or Flower Breughel, with sublime religious subjects, as in, Sodom and Gomorrah, Oil on copper. His father, Pieter Breghel the Elder, or Peasant Breughel (for his portrayals of that life) was considered the greatest of Flemish painters of the period with his combination of Italian maniera or style and Netherlands realism. Hunters in the Snow, 1565, Oil on wood is believed to be, December or January, from a series of the Months.

Dutch painters soon moved towards a new naturalism unhampered by literary or classical allusions. This commitment to landscape for its own sake was novel in it's time. Light became the dominant theme and realism needed by a newly rich class. These were the honest tributes to this Northern landscape of flat fields and low skies. The new Dutch syle began with Hercules Seghjers of Haarlem, 1590-1638, with a kind of imaginative realism as in, Rocky Landscape, Oil on canvas, and a golden light that Rembrandt admired, owning several of his work. Names such as Esias van der Velde and Jan van Goyen developed such themes from around 1615 and Jacob von Ruisdael, with The Beach at Egmond-aan-Zee, Oil on canvas. de Konink, Cuyp and Meindert Hobbema, with, Avenue Middelharnis, 1689, Oil on canvas, also contributed to the naturalistic movement. Rembrandt added his own ideal paintings of sombre force, with his supreme genius, in a few oils, he rearranged nature drastically, vis a vis, The Stone Bridge, Oil on wood, Jan Vermeer's masterpiece, View of Delft is a well planned painting with an incredible subtle variety of tone.

The new French and English Schools

In France during the reign of Louis XIV, the argument as to which was more important, color or drawing came to a head. The partisans of drawing favored Poussin, whilst those of color, Rubens. This battle was won when, a product of the Rococo period, Antoine Watteau was accepted into the French Academy in 1717, with his Embarkation for Cythera. This painting has wistful lovers in a theatrical tableau and it began the career of the most famous French colorist and painter of lovers and musicians of the eighteenth century. This later led to the idylls of Jean-Honore Fragonard, 1732-1806, the last great painter of the eighteenth century, who along with Watteau, seemed to consider nature as well-tended parks and gardens and the latter contemplated the world with more than delight and painted it with freshness and freedom. The Shady Avenue, 1736-76, Oil on wood, a fine example.

Thomas Gainsborough, a portraitist, in England, belonged to a period in which his fellow countrymen tried to make actual 'places' into living versions of classical paintings. When these formal gardens were then used as starting points of landscape paintings, history had gone full circle, as in Landscape with a Bridge, after 1774, Oil on canvas.

The Romantic North

In Northern countries the Romantic view of nature varied enormously. Painters either were sternly realistic or tried to show off the characteristic beauties of their country. German artist, Caspar David Friedrich, 1774–1840, was the exception and the greatest exponent of the Romantic landscape in northern Europe. Mountain Landscape with Rainbow, 1809, Oil on canvas, conveys a sense of mystery of the bewilderment of man confronted with the huge Creation. His conveyance of the romantic and the sublime also had great influence later in American painting as with the English painter, John Martin.

The Impressionists and Post-Impressionists

From a small exhibition given by a few close friends working in the same way together, came the name for their genre. The freshness and immediacy of execution, shocked the public and the neglect of proper 'subjects' by Monet, Pissarro, Sisley and Cezanne. Monet's Impression: Sunrise gave rise to the sarcastic comment, "an exhibition of impressionists."

When the Impressionists were at their best, they wove a pattern of light and shade over their canvases, eliminating hard outlines and graded shading. Their sheer use of pure color would have amazed their predecessors. Black and brown were removed for color absorbed them. Claude Monet 1840-1926, profited from working with Pierre Auguste Renoir, 1841-1919, who'd been a painter of china. As plein air artists they'd finish canvases in their studios, with Monet's on a house boat at one point.

The Japanese influence

Japanese woodcut prints (in the ukiyo-e or the Floating World genre) were very popular at this time. Monet owned many and they influenced many artists and especially, Van Gogh, Gaughin, Manet and Degas, all who included references to them in their paintings. A master whose work showed them a new way to organize their subjects in space, Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) made a print, Fuji which was a design of calligraphic brilliance and demonstrated a fleeting moment captured in an eternal pattern.

Impressionism's influence

Other nations were influenced by this style including America, especially Childe Hassam. An American living in London, James Abott McNeill Whistler had a lot of success with his beautiful Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge, 1870-02, Oil on canvas. Another American staying in England, John Singer Sargeant, 1856-1925, known primarily as a portraitist, was also an excellent realist, landscape painter and embraced some of Impressionism's ideal of capturing the quality of light, which he did with his unique method of small flickering streaks of brilliant color, as in Home Fields, 1885, Oil on canvas. He even had the opportunity to capture Monet painting in a work, Claude Monet, Sketching at the Edge of a Wood, ca. 1887, Oil on canvas. In later life he again made his name with watercolors of European scenes.

Symbolism

Symbolism came as a reaction to naturalism and Impressionism, trying to make a synthesis between nature and the artist,s personal idea. The Pont-Aven school, in Brittany, used this idea in landscape and revolved around Paul Gaughin, 1848-1903. Using the techniques of Emile Bernard; large flat areas of color often with dark outlines, not unlike stained glass, as in Les Alyscamps, 1888, Oil on canvas, After a spell living with Van Gogh in Provence, Gaughin journeyed to Panama and finally ended his days in Tahiti.

Freedom in the Twentieth Century

Freed from many old constraints, artists began to experiment more and more, with happy results; Henri Matisse, 1869-1954, a brilliant colorist with, The Blue Room, The Bluff, 1907, Oil on canvas and a leading spirit of the the Fauves "wild beasts," with vivid and highly decorative motifs, Raoul Dufy with sketchy frivolity and decorative color, Maurice Utrillo and his beloved winter Paris-scapes, Vlaminck (1876-1958) laying on thick layers of oil with a knife, etc.

The American landscape

In The Beginning, All the World was America - John Locke

In the woods, is perpetual Youth. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. - Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nature

Young America

In America the young nation began with it's influences chiefly from England and the European tradition. gradually, over time as if molded by the landscape itself, uniquely American genres and styles were born with more than an occasional nod back over the ocean.

The thoroughly American branch of painting, based upon the facts and tastes of the country and people is .....landscape James Jackson Jarves in his book The Art-idea, 1864.

The Hudson Valley Painters

Many of the landscapes produced in the eighteenth century were strictly topographical; views of towns or beauty spots and were often made by military men. In the early decades of the nineteenth, landscape began to be created as pure and ideal. Thomas Doughty, 1793-1852, from Philadelphia began with picturesque composition, whilst History painter Washington Allston, Diana On a Chase 1805, trained in London, with his allegorical scenes rooted in the Italian tradition and naturalized by the English, gave stimuli to Thomas Cole's ambitious program to create a uniquely American landscape art. Coming of Age

Church's greatest rival was Albert Bierstadt, with his sensational paintings of the American West. Born In Germany in 1830 and with his family, moved to America at age two and later returned to Dusseldorf to study painting. On return in 1859, he went on an expedition the explore the Rocky Mountains. The great picture that he made on his return was The Rocky Mountain, Lander's Peak, 1863, Oil on linen. His style was cool, objective and very detailed and had already been proved by a Swiss painting of Lake Lucerne. His technique was to make pencil sketches and small oil studies. His brothers ran a photographic studio and he also used a camera. His work was known as new Ideal landscape as in Among the Sierra Mountains, California shown in London in 1868, 'not fiction but portraiture', was the reaction. Sunset in the Yosemite Valley, 1868, Oil on canvas, was described by the artist as the Garden of Eden, 'the most magnificent place I was in,' recalling Cole's Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, 1827-8, Oil on canvas. As a result of paintings from this area, in 1864, during the Civil War, landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted (creator of Central Park, in New York City) drafted a bill for the preservation of Yosemite Valley, for the nation which President Abraham Lincoln signed into law.

A New Century, New Ideas.

Winslow Homer another great painter began as an illustrator in Boston and served as an artist during the Civil War, he was famous foe wood engravings and soon his oils and watercolors became as popular. He travelled extensively and saw Japanese prints in France and took the best ideas of the west and the east and made them his own. He described the physical phenomena of the sea with spontaneity in both watercolor and oil. His West Point, Prout's Neck, 1900, Oil on canvas, combined these elements of style, a new vision for a new century.

The first Moderns

Marsden Hartley was one of the first great modern painters, although an itinerant, constantly struggling with his personal life and finances and unable to settle, he alternated between Nova Scotia, Maine, New England and New York. His paintings of The Last Stone Walls, Dogtown (Gloucester, Mass.) 1936-7, oil on canvas, reminiscent of Pynkham Ryder, point the way to future modernism.

Charles Sheeler, born 1883, studied with William Merritt Chase at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts as did other great painters of the period. He later worked as an architectural photographer to supplement his painting and used photographs as source material for paintings and drawings throughout his career.

American Regionalism, the Mid-West

Grant Wood's Fall Plowing 1931 Oil on canvas, at a time of great financial depression shows an ideal mid-western agrarianism. grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry are considered the trinity of Regionalism, an anti-dote to modern art. Wood had studied Flemish art and was highly stylized but Alexandre Hogue made stronger comments on the abuse and exploitation of the land with his The Crucified Land 1939 Oil on canvas, and paintings of the Dust Bowl.

Georgia O'Keefe who'd made her mark in New York City with her enlarged and close-up flower paintings moved to New Mexico permanently, after her husband, photographer, Alfred Stieglitz's death in 1946. Moving between abstraction and realism she portrayed the Southwest and the desert with sensuality and ambiguity as in Black Place 11 Oil on canvas.

Cape Cod

Milton Avery, with the intensity of O'Keefe and mainly self-taught he painted almost abstract, sweet natured views of the New England coast. His reductive style, from small sketches to water colors to oils, led to free and lyrical poems of nature, vis a vis, Tangerine Moon and Wine Dark Sea, 1959, Oil on canvas. His work led to the pure abstract fields of color painted by his friend, Mark Rothko.

Edwin Dickinson, Rock Edge Palisades 1953 Oil on canvas, was another artist whose tone poems seem to belong both to the 1980s and to the 1880s both. He was a master of tonality and delicate chromatic shifts, who'd studied as had O'Keefe, with William Merritt Chase but belonged to no one group and produced some of the most dream-like images of the twentieth century.

Towards Realism and a new Realism

Andrew Wyeth for all the argument about his work is indeed a painter of significance and realism. Whilst the son of the great illustrator NC Wyeth and in the tradition of Howard Pyle and Albrecht Durer, he is a superb draftsman and master craftsman. At first his work was thought of as photographic but with the advent of Photo Realism (in the 1970s) it was realized just how interpretive he was. Ring Road 1985, Tempera, shows an almost Oriental feeling and abstraction. However, his work is always painterly and tactile.

In the mid-nineteen fifties and sixties came a shift from abstract to figurative painting on both the East and West coasts. In California, the influences included Matisse; Richard Diebenkorn, View From a Porch Oil on canvas, 1959, Wayne Thiebaud, Coloma Ridge, 1967-68, Acrylic and Pastel on canvas David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Landscape Afternoon 1959 Oil on canvas, Paul Wonner, James Weeks and Theophilus Brown, West Coast realists from the fifties, in the late sixties, became known as the Bay Area figurative painters. In the East, the Abstract Expressionists had held sway but that began to change too.

Painterly Realism, Romantics and Expressionists.

Artists such as James Weeks, Berkshire Landscape 1972-3 Acrylic on canvas, developed from Abstract Expressionism and were known as 'painterly.' The Bay Area artists never lost their painterly traits since the fifties. Others include; Jane Freilicher Thicket and Field 1984 Oil on canvas, Paul Reiska, Horseleech Pond, Indian Red Sky, 1984, Oil on canvas, Vincent Arcilesi, Grand Canyon, 1975, Oil on canvas, George Nick Over Pemigewasset River 1986 Oil on canvas, Richard Crozier Owlshead from Mount Battie 1986, Oil on canvas, and the plein-air premier-coup paintings of Nebraska by Keith Jacobshagen, such as, N.W. 84th St. & Agnew Rd 1983 Oil on paper. Others include, from the eighties, Don Nice, Sheila Gardner, Susan Shatter, John Gordon, and William Nichols,

The rebirth of impressionism in America: The 1950s and beyond.

In the 1950s, a quarter of a century after the death of Monet, major museums in America started having exhibitions of the original French Impressionists paintings, and in so doing Impressionism was reborn. The resurgence of interest in Impressionism continues to this day, and is especially evident in the continued popularity of plein-air painting.

Tradition continues.

In the Hudson Valley region today are many painters continuing the tradition of those pioneers of the past. Amongst them are two artists who have taught at the State University of New York at New Paltz, in the Fine Arts program. This college sits in view of the beautiful Shawgunk Mountain ridge, with it's famous Mountain House and a favorite of international climbers, at the beginning of the Catskill mountain chain.

The Inner Landscape

Other artists who work with an abstract or surrealistic style to explore the inner landscapes of ourselves and our imagination, include; Jan Parker in Hawaii and Benny Andersson in New Jersey.

Benny Andersson paints "visual prayers, intended to promote deep reflection and healing within the viewer and to have a spiritual and uplifting effect on the soul, to keep dreams alive." He likes to see artists as "messengers of truth and beauty." His landscapes, full of unique imagery, cosmic and earthly visions, recall Hieronymus Bosch and are endowed with transparent colors as clear as glass. Unlike Bosch, He shows us worlds free from danger, impurity and abuse and allows us to see nature as through the eyes of the newborn child.

Other Nations, other landscapes

Whilst Europe, Asia and The United states of America, hold a central place in the public eye and in the general History of Art, other civilizations have some elements of landscape painting in varying degrees. In India and Persia and Turkey, these are mostly found in jewel-like miniature paintings, in which depictions of flora and lanscape appear. In India, Bhudda is often in the relief carvings of stupas or shrines, depicted sitting beneath a tree, under which his mother Maya gave birth to him. In Indian Mogul art are Lovers in a Landscape c.1760-70, Miniature, New Delhi, National Museum.

Canada

As explorers, naturalists, mariners, merchants and settlers arrived on the shores of Atlantic Canada in the early centuries of its exploration, they were confronted by what they saw as a hostile and dangerous environment and an unforgiving sea. These Europeans tried to cope with the daunting new land by mapping, recording and claiming it as their own. Their understanding of the specific nature of this land and its inhabitants varied greatly, with observations ranging from highly accurate and scientific to outlandish or fantastic. These observations are documented in the landscape works they produced. In more recent times some of the best examples of Canadian landscape art can be found in the works of the Group of Seven.and the British Columbia forest-scapes of Emily Carr. The indigenous peoples of Canada, the Inuit and First Nations' peoples, created their art work as part of their daily lives and did not have languages for art. In examples of hunting and fishing, the waters and other natural elements are a backdrop to the action.

"Artistic expression is a spirit, not a method, a pursuit, not a settled goal, an instinct, not a body of rules." - Foreward, Group of 7 Exhibition of Paintings, exhibition catalog, Art Gallery of Toronto, 1922.

Amongst the thousands of artists that have worked in these extensive and vast lands, here are a few, some who have been influenced by European and American traditions and a few who have created their own.

George Back, 1796-1878, Broaching to, - Canoe crossing the Melville Sound, 1821, Watercolor, from sketchbook. Made during a heroic voyage on an overland Artic expedition to the Coppermine River.

James Pattison Cockburn, 1779-1847, General Hospital, Quebec, 1830, Watercolor and gum arabic over graphite on wove paper. A Major General and Commander of the Royal Artillery in British North America, he was able to use his sketchbooks on his tours of Upper and Lower Canada. At his home garrison at Quebec City, he was to paint many points of view.

William Brymner, 1855-1925, A Wreath of Flowers, 1884, Oil on canvas. An influential teacher at the Art Institute of Montreal, this was painted in England with some knowlege of Impressionism.

Franklin Carmichael, 1890-1945, Bay of Islands 1930, Watercolor on paper. The youngest member of the Group of Seven artists, giving a panoramic view north of Lake Superior.

Emily Carr, 1871-1945, Red Cedar, 1931-33, Oil on canvas and Sky, 1935, Oil on wove paper. Speaking of her love for the beauty of Canadas' woods, she asked, "Am I one-idea'd, small, narrow? God is in them all." Her depictions of a cloud-filled heaven radiates with life and energy which she noted reflected her spiritual beliefs. She is also remembered for her depictions of First Nations' villages.

Jack Chambers, 1931-1978, Towards London No. 1 1968-9, Oil on Mahogany. Working from a photograph, he states that he wants to capture "this eternal present." The year that he finished this painting he published an essay, "Perceptual Realism."

Alfred Joseph Casson, 1898-1992, Hillside Village. 1927, Watercolor on paper. As a member of the Group of Seven he painted the Ontario hillside town to be different from the others and because he loved these old but disappearing places. He helped form the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Color.

Latin America

Painted in Latin America

Love of travel and adventure has historically been an important characteristic of American cultural identity. In the 19th Century, these interests were manifested in a vogue for travel literature and artist renderings, especially paintings of exotic places, an interest that reached an unprecedented peak in the mid-century. Some artists traveled to the far North of the American continent, creating images of icebergs and frozen seas; others made their way to the far West, capturing nature's wonders there, while still others headed South to the Hispanic-speaking countries of Latin America. These artists from the United States, traveling throughout Central and South America, Heart of the Andes, as well as the appearance of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.recorded in their paintings and drawings an extraordinary body of images of those regions. The height of artistic activity in the area took place between approximately 1830 and 1880, when draftsmen and painters, both famous and less known, set forth independently or in association with expeditions. Some were purposeful explorers inspired by the natural sciences, while others were simply wanderers, influenced by romantic ideas. For many of these artists, the experience was the turning point in their careers.

Frederic Edwin Church's (1826-1900) painting, Heart of the Andes, (1859) is arguably the single most important and enduring of the Latin American landscapes created by a North American artist. However, the first noted artists to set sail for southern shores were Titian Peale (1799-1885) and Frederick Catherwood (1799-1854) in the late 1830s. Norton Bush (1834-1894), who became known as California's premier 'painter of the tropics', and Henry Ferguson (1842-1911), who had been inspired by Church's work, were among the last of the painters in the 1870s to return home from Latin American journeys. Often artists stayed for long periods of time, or made multiple trips. George Catlin (1796-1872), Jacob Ward (1809-1891) and Ferguson each spent up to five years traveling there. Church, Andrew Warren (?-1873), Martin Heade (1819-1904), Catherwood and Bush all made multiple journeys. The western panoramas of Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) and Thomas Moran (1837-1926) certainly followed the lead of Church's picture.

It has been said that New York, artist Norton Bush was encouraged by Church to specialize in 'tropical' views, but it is likely that Bush's fascination with the tropics was fueled by his own journey in 1853 from New York to San Francisco, which took him across the jungles of Nicaragua. After he settled in San Francisco, his patrons were enthusiastic about the exoticism of his luminous works, such as Jungle Scene Sunset. After Church's tropical paintings began to win acclaim in the 1850s, Bush's works began to be praised as close California equivalents, and he became the most prolific and successful California painter of 'tropicals'. In search of subject matter, he made trips to Panama in 1868, and South America in 1875.

Another California specialist in 'tropicals' was Fortunato Arriola (1827-1872), a Mexican painter who was working in San Francisco by 1858. Arriola's works reflect the smooth surfaces and glowing atmosphere of luminism, and he composed pictures, at times fanciful, of tropical subjects, some of them from memory.

Others important works are Louis Mignot's (1831-1870) Lagoon of the Guayaquil; Heade's Passion Flowers and Hummingbirds; and James Whistler's (1834-1903) Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Valparaiso. Critics have repeatedly noted that for artists who painted in Latin American their visits gave rise to some of their finest and most original works, and was an experience that had permanent influence on their style.

Motivations for mid 19th-century artists to travel South were varied. One reason was a basic curiosity about the southern parts of the Western hemisphere because for some Americans it was a time of a developing interest in Pan-Americanism, a sense of shared community with all peoples, North and South, of the American continent. It was a growing awareness of the uniqueness of the Western hemisphere, and some major painters had begun to think of 'Western landscape' not only in national but also hemispheric terms. In relation to Latin America, an increasing number of United States citizens were beginning to regard that region as a 'member of the family' and not foreign. Central and South America, according to the Monroe Doctrine, were considered geographical extensions of the United States, a sort of American 'spiritual property'. These attitudes, albeit proprietary, began to manifest themselves in politics, economics, science and art.

United States travelers filled with a spirit of exploration and inspired by literature, scientific curiosity and adventure took advantage of newly established steamship and railroad lines, and headed south into areas such as Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Brazil and Argentina. Henry Walke's (1809-1896) painting U.S.S. North Carolina Entering the Harbor at Rio de Janeiro (1848) recalls what sailing must have been like along the coasts.

Drexel's fellow Philadelphian, Titian Peale, stirred by Humboldt's accounts, made his first of several trips to South America in 1830, and was the earliest forerunner of the artist-naturalists who were to make numerous expeditions South. Peale's second trip was in 1838-39, as part of the Charles Wilkes (1798-1877) Expedition, which included draftsmen Alfred Agate (1812-1846) and Joseph Drayton (1795-1856).

The Mexican War of the 1840s, along with the California Gold Rush, signaled an irreversible turn of interest towards Central and South America. The discovery of gold attracted countless travelers from the East, many of them journeying to the gold fields on ships via South America's Cape Horn or the Isthmus of Panama. Charles Christian Nahl (1818-1878) was one of numerous artists who became familiar with the dangers of the Panama route, which he recorded in such paintings as Incident on the Chagres River. He painted additional scenes of life on the Isthmus of Panama onto the walls of a San Francisco restaurant and hostelry, The Railroad House, which were regarded by later artist and Latin-American traveler Charles Dorman Robinson (1847-1933) to be un-excelled for 'truth, color, or design'.

New York landscape and genre painter Alburtus Del Orient Browere, (1814-1887), lured by the prospect of gold, traveled between East and West during the 1850s, first via Cape Horn, and later via the Isthmus. His landscapes, perhaps inspired by the views recently exhibited by Frederic Church, detail the tropical scenery he observed while making these travels.

One of the lesser-known artists who did significant travel in Central America just before the Civil War was DeWitt Hitchcock (1832-1901). He traveled with Ephraim George Squier making landscape views of Nicaragua, San Salvador, Honduras and Panama. These scenes were subsequently lithographed for a publication, Squier’s Notes on Central America and were of special interest to United States capitalists who were planning shipping ventures and already thinking of a canal in Panama.

In the 1860s, noted eastern artist Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) journeyed overland to California, but returned to New York via the Isthmus. Peter Baumgras (1827- 1903) of Washington D.C. exhibited Panamanian and Mexican subjects at the Art Association in 1872 and 1873, after visiting California via the Panamanian route. Heading to California to paint in the early 1870s, Lemuel M. Wiles (1826-1905) of New York also traveled through Panama and Central America, which resulted in his painting, Coast of Santa Cruz.

Swiss-born Agassiz was in the forefront of those opposing Darwin's theories in Origin of the Species. Taking a stand against the philosophy of evolution, he set forth to Brazil with his wife to explore such questions. Enlisted as a draftsman artist for the expedition was Jacques Burkhardt (1808-1867), creator of works such as Fishing Among the Rocks (1865/1866, watercolor on paper).

It was only as people of the North learned more about those regions that preconceived notions would be altered, and age-old myths about what lay south of our borders lingered until late in the 19th Century. What artists created were primarily landscape images, although some, such as George Catlin depicted native Indians. In general, nature took precedence over living inhabitants or depictions of ruins of earlier civilizations. These 19th-century artists perceived Latin America in terms of vast, uncultivated, primeval space, as was also often the case in views painted then of the northern continent, where nature was emphasized over culture. Latin America was seen as a Garden of Eden, and references to Eden, Arcadia, paradise, Atlantis, etc were often applied to the views depicted.

Church is famous for his Andean panoramas. Mignot, who traveled with Church to Ecuador in 1857, is known for his lush and dreamy riverscapes, a subject no doubt familiar to him from his childhood growing up in South Carolina. Whistler is noted for his nocturnes, especially of the harbor at Valparaiso, in which he often incorporated elements of oriental design. As it had been since the time of Columbus' explorations for the East Indies, Latin America continued to be linked with the Orient, and Whistler's threading together of the two is symbolic of a recurrent theme in history, where Latin America as the meeting place of East and West.

John Mix Stanley (1814-1872) had traveled across the Isthmus in 1853, en route east after spending time in the northwest painting portraits, landscapes, and working in association with a Pacific Railroad survey. Martin Heade visited the region in 1866, and the following year exhibited his Lagoon in Nicaragua. Lake Nicaragua became an important theme also in Norton Bush's art during the 1870s, exemplified by Sunset over Lake Nicaragua. Other artists from the United States, including Andrew Warren painted many pictures of the Nicaraguan scenery around this time, a fact that reflects the public's demand for such images. In 1883, Church painted Twilight on the Isthmus of Panama.

Many artists went South seeking to explore questions of the earth's origins. George Catlin, for example, was intrigued with the role volcanoes played in the earth's formation. Primarily a painter of the American West, and an expatriate living in London and Paris, he spent five years traveling extensively in South America. No other artist searched more urgently for answers to the questions of the origins of America's people. Many of his Latin American works were sketches, but an example of his oils is Ambush for Flamingos (1857).

Vignettes of penitent natives, wayside crosses, and mission churches were, however, often included as touches of 'local color', and served as elements of romanticism. Thatch-roofed village churches and gold-domed cathedrals became stock features in many panoramic landscapes. Colonial churches are recognizable by their domes and steeples, as in Andrew Warren's The Old Cathedral of Panama. The frequency with which they are evident in Church's works, such as the dome visible in Mountains of Ecuador (1855), prompts the viewer to question whether they may have also served as a double function pun on that artist's own name, as he was known to sometimes sign his letters home with the picture of a church.

Numerous 19th-century American artists headed for Latin America mid-century, to experience its balance of familiar and foreign, as well the 'otherness' that they sought. Because of their varied experiences, this group of adventurous individuals redefined themselves as American artists by going South instead of West. They helped shape our visions of these little-known lands, as well as adding to a feeling of Americanism in a hemispheric sense. Through them, Latin America has made a significant contribution to the development of American landscape painting.

Compiled and written by Teta Collins, April 2005

Sources:

Katherine Emma Manthorne, author of Tropical Renaissance, North American Artists Exploring Latin America, 1839-1879; Biographical and auction data of the AskART database

email: registrar@AskART.com

Australia

Back to Australian Tales

from the collection of Warrnambool Art Gallery, Hamilton Art Gallery, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Geelong Gallery, Benalla Art Gallery, Lismore Regional Art Gallery, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Devonport Gallery and Arts Centre, Logan Art Gallery and University of South Australia Art Museum.

This small selection of Australian landscape painting, beginning with the period of European settlement, highlights different ways of depicting land and organising pictorial space. Of course for a long time before the arrival of Europeans, Aboriginal people were interpreting aspects of their land through song, art, dance and ceremony.

It is interesting to note changes in regards to creating the illusion of depth in landscape painting. In the past a horizon line was used to create a sense of vast space. The resulting effect was that it positioned the viewer at a distance from the landscape. Later, as indigenous and contemporary art influenced artists and as we have come to know the landscape better, the use of a horizon has diminished or totally disappeared.

Eugene von Guerard and Thomas Clark both arrived in Australia in the early 1850s yet they depict land in quite different ways. Von Guerard (1811-1901) painted 'Tower Hill' as an idyllic landscape where the Aboriginal group, shown in the foreground, appear to live in a latter-day paradise. Between the contrast of the detailed foreground and the distant horizon one senses the artist's desire to explore this unknown land.

'Muntham' by Thomas Clark (1814-1883), painted approximately five years later than 'Tower Hill' shows measured paddocks, denuded hills, grazing animals and farm-workers - no sense of the unknown here! Our eyes tend to settle in the valleys where the homestead nestles. Unlike von Guerard, Clark is not interested in exploration or botanical correctness but rather in belonging and ownership.

In von Guerard's later painting of 1884, 'Old Ballarat as it was in the summer of 1853-54', the genesis of a city is captured. By showing cleared land and a horizon of disappearing wilderness, von Guerard may also be questioning the price of progress.

Fredrick McCubbin (1855-1917) painted 'A Bush Burial' in 1890 when the colony was experiencing the worst drought and depression in its history and this possibly influenced the choice of subject. McCubbin creates an engulfing, claustrophobic landscape by barely suggesting any horizon and compressing midground and background. In contrast, the bush folk are portrayed as heroic figures.

There is no sense of the heroic in Clarice Beckett's work. Instead, Beckett (1887-1935) pays homage to the everyday scenes and small events that we all experience. Misty suburban landscapes are painted with a transient beauty that suggests the impermanence of existence. Beckett often painted plein air - completing her work outside rather than in the studio. Between the heroics of McCubbin and the cherished everyday events seen in Beckett's work, we could speculate on how World War 1 may have had an effect on the choice of subject matter deemed worthy enough to paint.

Albert Namatjira (1902-1959) grew up on the Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission near Alice Springs and knew the Central Australian desert intimately. A characteristic common to most of Namatjira's landscapes is the sense of energy within the land. Though his paintings conform to European traditions of landscape painting in that they contain foreground, midground, background and distant horizon, the forms pulsate through the patterning of shadows across the painting, making the land itself appear to breathe.

Sidney Nolan (1917-1992), like McCubbin, was interested in depicting narratives in the landscape. In 'Kelly at the Mines' the horizon appears disjointed and forms are not anchored in space. Instead they seem to float and the landscape becomes the locale for surreal dramas: a dreamed place. The Ned Kelly series was painted during World War 11 when Nolan was himself hiding out from army authorities after deserting.

In 'Yellow Landscape', Fred Williams (1927-82) also disturbs the organisation of pictorial space by evaporating the horizon line in what appears to be searing heat, allowing the tree forms to float in heat and space. Through thoughtful distillation of forms accompanied by gestural brush strokes, Williams transforms half-cleared, unremarkable scrub into a kind of calligraphic meditation on observation.

In 'Eagle Landscape' by William Robinson (b. 1936) the horizon line is totally abandoned and the viewer is made to feel that they are surrounded by the landscape as one simultaneously sees above, below, through and over. As the title suggests, this painting may well be an imagined bird's view as it swoops over hilltops. Robinson often depicts the land close to his home and this gives his paintings a sense of familiarity and sensitivity to the connections between land and living things.

'Leaving a Mountain' by Bea Maddock (b. 1934) has very little sense of depth as one mountain dominates the horizon. Instead we are made aware of how the landscape was observed: slowly, bit by bit. The artist might be suggesting that intimate knowledge of the land can only be gained through slow observation. Her work often has a feeling of being wrought from earth as she uses ochres from her native Tasmania mixed with encaustic (pigment mixed with molten wax).

Kathleen Petyarre (b. circa 1940) was born on Utopia Station, north-east of Alice Springs. Common themes in Petyarre's paintings are the Dreaming stories she inherited from her mother and father. There is a feeling of immense space in Petyarre's paintings though there is no hint of a horizon line and the subject matter may be as minute as the trail a lizard leaves across sand. The viewer is made to feel that they are surrounded by and submerged in the landscape.

Deborah Vaughan

http://archive.amol.org.au/discovernet/tales/landscape.asp

The Importance of Landscape painting

In the need to represent nature comes the need to show it. We all wish to share that which we love and landscapes are no exception. When gazing on a Chinese panorama in some long dim past dynasty, surely we share and relive the emotions felt by that artist. This way is the way not only of feeling but of intelligence for we now begin to learn of our history far and wide. The artist becomes a recorder of feelings and fact, delving into the mysteries of how things are and come to be.

Landscape painting not only gives us view into this material universe in an image frozen in time and space, but takes us back to that very moment of it's conception. Not only history but philosophy and even religion may be embedded with the artists' individual stamp, thoughts and ideas. Science too is present, in an examination of the scene, it's light, form and color skillfully rendered by the painter, akin to the botanical illustrator. Most of all we feel the emotion of one standing in awe, striving to bring that moment to life, reborn in another form, the painting, a work of art.

For many, the tranquil depictions of nature give respite and relaxation, calming of the soul and spirit in one's own home. Yet, more than a sense of wonder is felt in the public and private galleries of art. Moreover, we now experience in this modern life, more and more, not only the visions of this physical creation but also the abstract, exploration and landscapes of our inner worlds, as noted by current artist Jan Parker.

The great romantic, Lafcadio Hearn wrote from Japan, a century ago:

....As the scene, too swiftly receding diminishes,....I vainly wish I could buy this last vision of it,,,,,and delight my soul betime with gazing thereon.

Related -scapes

• Vedute is the Italian term for view, and generally used for the painted landscape, often cityscapes which were a common 18th century painting thematic.
• Skyscapes or Cloudscapes are depictions of clouds, weatherforms, and atmospheric conditions.
• Moonscapes show the landscape of a moon.
• Seascapes depict oceans or beaches.
• Riverscapes depict rivers or creeks.
• Cityscapes or townscapes depict cities (urban landscapes).
• Hardscapes are paved over areas like streets and sidewalks, large business complexes and housing developments, and industrial areas.
• Aerial landscapes depict a surface or ground from above, especially as seen from an airplane or spacecraft. (When the viewpoint is directly overhead, looking down, there is of course no depiction of a horizon or sky.) This genre can be combined with others, as in the aerial cloudscapes of Georgia O'Keeffe, the aerial moonscapes of Nancy Graves, or the aerial cityscapes of Yvonne Jacquette.
• Inscapes are landscape-like (usually surrealist or abstract) artworks which seek to convey the psychoanalytic view of the mind as a three-dimensional space. [For sources on this statement, see the Inscape (visual art) article.]

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Arthur, John. Spirit of Place, Contemporary Landscape Painting & The American tradition 1989. Bullfinch Press ISBN 0-821-21707-0
• Bazarov, Konstantin, Landscape painting,1981. London: Octopus Books; NY: Mayflower Books, OCLC 8686498
• Brigante, Guiliano, The View Painters of Europe, Phaidon Press Ltd., 1979. ISBN 0-714-81407-5
• Carli, Enzo. The Landscape In Art, from 3,000 B.C.E. to Today 1979 Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., Milano English translation copyright Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A.,Milano ISBN 0-688-03678-3
• Clark, Sir Kenneth, Landscape into Art, Slade Lectures,1949. Harper and Row, ISBN 0-060-10781-2
• Dreikausen, Margret, "Aerial Perception: The Earth as Seen from Aircraft and Spacecraft and Its Influence on Contemporary Art"1985 (Associated University Presses: Cranbury, NJ; London,; Mississauga, Ontario:) ISBN -879-82040-3
• Guggenhein Museum, Russia! Nine Hundred Years of Masterpieces and Master Collections 2005, Guggenheim-Museum publications, ISBN 0-89207-329-2
• Jeffares, Bo Landscape Painting 1979. Mayflower Books Inc. NYC ISBN 0-831-75413-3
• Kiers, Judikje; Fieke, Tissink, The Golden Age of Dutch Art, Thames and Hudson Ltd., 2000. ISBN 0-500-23774-3
• Leonard, Elizabeth Painting the Landscape 1984. Watson-Guptill Publications, ISBN 0-8230-3655-3
• McShine, Kynaston. Editor. The Natural Paradise, Painting in America 1800-1950 1976. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.. ISBN 0-870-70505-9.
• Newlands, Anne, Canadian Art, From its beginings. Firefly Bokks Ltd., 2000, ISBN 1-55209-450-2
• Novak, Barbara, Nature and culture: American landscape and painting, 1825-1875,1980. NY: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-195-02606-3
• Shanes, Eric, Turner The Masterwoks Portland House, 1990. ISBN 0-517-01509-9
• Sullivan, Edward J., Editor, Latin American Art, in the Twentieth Century Phaidon Press Ltd., 1996, ISBN 0-7148-3210-3
• Wilton, Andrew; T J Barringer; Tate Britain (Gallery); Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.; Minneapolis Institute of Arts. American sublime : landscape painting in the United States, 1820-1880 (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-691-09670-8
• Wong, Wucius, The Tao of Chinese Painting, Principles & Methods, Hong Kong, Everbest Printing Co. Ltd.; NY: Design Press, 1991. ISBN 0-830-69010-7
• Wilton Andrew & Tim Barringer 2002 American Sublime, Landscape Painting in the United States, 1820-1880Princeton University Press ISBN 0-691-09670-8
• Winchester, Simon, 2003, Krakatoa, The Day the World Exploded, 27 August 1883: the Penguin Group, ISBN 0-670-91126-7

External links

Canada

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/PaulKane-RiverScene-ROM.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Drumdancer_%28Iqaluit%29.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/EmilyCarr.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/%27The_Toll_Gate%27%2C_oil_on_canvas_painting_by_Cornelius_Krieghoff%2C_1859%2C_17_x_24_in.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Kane_The_Surveyor.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Mount_St_Helens_erupting_at_night_by_Paul_Kane.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Maurice_Cullen_-_Summer_Landscape.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Midsummer.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Apple_Time%2C_unknown_date%2C_by_Helen_McNicoll%2C_Canadian%2C_1879-1915.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/EastMural_-_TopOfTheNorthHill1850s.JPG

Japan

• http://images.artelino.com/images/images/japanese-painting2.jpg Retrieved October 7, 2007.