The Rise of Landscape Painting in the West
The greatest difference between the art of the 19th and the preceding centuries is the increasing importance attached to natural scenery. The Old masters were not altogether inattentive to inanimate Nature, but it did not occur to them that scenery alone could be sufficient subject for a picture.
For the 19th century professional artist, landscape represented a new genre, and a radical departure from the figural drawing that had been the emphasis in their training and in "important art" immediately prior to their time: it relied on a sophisticated theory of the Sublime which placed them in the role of near-priest, interpreter, and teacher.
In the West, the concept of landscape grew very slowly. Nature was traditionally viewed as consisting of isolated objects long before it was appreciated as scene or environment. As a result landscape painting as an independent art was a late development in the West. Many scenes, from the Hellenistic pastoral paintings of antiquity to the religious works of the 16th cent. A.D., contained expansive landscape backgrounds, but they were usually subordinated within a narrative context.
In the East, nature had always preoccupied the minds of the finest artists, in China landscape was regarded as the highest branch of art; but in Europe men thought otherwise, and it was only slowly that landscape crept forward from the background and gradually occupied the whole picture.
Landscape painting in Europe:
Throughout the 18th century, landscape painting had existed primarily for two reasons: as a picturesque setting for some more important, human drama, and as topography, or a quasi-scientific reconstruction of the land masses of a particular area. Both approaches followed conventions of scale, type, and detail; neither was considered to be the significant work of a professional painter. For most artists in training at the beginning of the 19th century, therefore, the notion of working exclusively, or even primarily in landscape was a bizarre one. The situation in France, for example, was not uncommon. Here, artistic education was ordered by genre (first drawing, then painting), by model (first classical casts, then the life model), and by subject (always the human figure). By the time of the regular government-sponsored exhibitions (the Salons) of early 19th-century France, there was a well-established hierarchy of subjects dictating which subjects would be considered the most important, and therefore most worthy, by Salon juries (and therefore, by potential buyers both governmental and private). This hierarchy was headed by subjects predictably predetermined in 18th-century Rococo and Neo-Classical art: history and religious subjects topped the list, with portraiture, especially if treating an important subject, following those. Still life was considered less educational, less uplifting, and therefore less important to the hierarchy; landscape was considered dead last.
The presumption of this hierarchy was, in fact, that landscape could not aspire to the "higher" aims of art--education and inspiration. Actual landscape instruction was therefore minimal, and offered only with the assumption that certain more important subjects might require an outdoor setting. Sketching from nature was allowed, but only as a preliminary stage in one's work, and landscapes included in major exhibitions were notably ignored by critics: although they might be interesting studies, they simply did not merit analysis as works of art. For the French system in particular, landscape's low esteem proved difficult to change. The French Academy's coveted Prix de Rome for art students, for example, had no landscape category until 1817, when "historic" landscapes with some narrative event were reluctantly allowed.
All of these French presumptions about landscapes and their role as background setting rather than as a major means of expression were questioned with the introduction of several new philosophies of nature which began to be promulgated, notably in the northern countries of Western Europe, at the end of the 18th century. It was at this time that Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) formulated his notion of individual "Will," thereby admitting a whole world of non-rational urges that must lie beneath a thin veil of consciousness; at that time also the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) proposed an equation of God with the natural order of the world. In addition, one of the most influential of these new philosophies for landscape art was the even earlier theory of the "Sublime," defined in 1756 by the British statesman and political theorist Edmund Burke (1729-1797). The basis of Burke's beliefs was that the life of feeling and spirit depended on a harmony within the larger order of the universe. The sublime, therefore, was the ultimate experience of divinity, a mixture of awe, fear, and enlightenment produced by the contemplation of a powerful, terrifying nature; for Burke, the sublime was already connected to landscape. The association between the power of nature and a recognition of the divinity behind it was a constant theme of early Romantic writing. In 1797, for example, the German philosopher Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) published his Ideas about Nature Philosophy; in the same year, in a collection of stories entitled Effusions of an Art-Loving Friar, the writer Wilhelm Wackenroder (1773-1798) proclaimed that there exist only two languages through which God allows the human to comprehend the Divine; one of these is reserved for God alone, but the other is given to a few "anointed favorites" who in turn interpret them. As Wackenroder explained, the second language had two components: "They are: nature and art."
The concurrence of these ideas proved fruitful for the beginnings of the "grand tradition" of landscape. German artists, inspired by their contemporaries' writings on the importance of nature for moral and religious education, began to create landscapes that, unlike the French "setting" landscapes, were instead symbolic scenes filled with meaning. When in 1808 Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) exhibited Cross in the Mountains, a landscape intended as an altarpiece for a private chapel, critics condemned his use of landscape for religious expression as sacrilegious. Friedrich responded to these accusations by offering an "Interpretation of the Picture" which identified the natural images as symbols for religious beliefs: "The Cross stands erected on a rock unshakably firm as our faith in Jesus Christ. Evergreen, enduring through all ages, the firs stand round the cross, like the hope of mankind in Him . . ." Friedrich's comments highlight both his view of the landscape as symbol and his belief that the study of nature was an important occupation equal to that of figure study: it could even be a religious image. A work like Friedrich's 1818 Woman in the Morning Sun…a painting in which the figure is uncharacteristically large yet typically faces an infinite landscape--can serve as an example of his approach. The figure, seen from the back, is deliberately anonymous, inviting us as viewers to take her place: with arms outstretched towards an expansive horizon and setting sun, she enacts our desired communion with the landscape as means to a Burkean sublime. The path on which the woman stands ends abruptly before her, a symbol of the limitations of everyday reality. She must instead traverse through meditation the remaining landscape, which leads directly into the sun; that is, into another, more spiritual world. In works such as this, Friedrich not only introduced into art the nature worship common to many writers in Dresden, such as his friends "Novalis" (Friedrich Hardenberg, 1772-1801) and Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853), but also offered a model of compositional devices. His solitary, anonymous figures set against expansive vistas demonstrated, visually, the means by which to entice the viewer to take a place in the composition and therefore a part in the sublime experience.
The fact that the Germans were espousing the sublime theories of Burke, a British writer, suggests that an interrelationship of ideas in these two countries existed; for example, not only similar theories but even similar phrases can be found in the contemporary writings of Novalis and the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Corresponding to Friedrich's generation of German Romantics, therefore, was an equally important group of English artists who also created sublime landscapes. This generation, usually represented by Joseph Mallord William Turner and John Constable (1776-1837), sought expression of the sublime through two different yet complementary means, termed "nature terribilita" and "nature champetre." The depiction of a "terrible" nature--one that overpowered and dominated humanity by virtue of its spectacular effects, from mountaintop views to hurricane winds--was the sublime vision most directly related to Burke's original definition and that which fascinated Turner. Constable, on the other hand, preferred what his friend Wordsworth called a "tranquil sublimity" in nature--one that inspired by means of enduring presence and calm harmony. While the "terribilità" landscape might emphasize elemental power and spatial infinity, the countryside scene stressed harmonious coexistence in a continuum of eternity. For both artists, however, the notion of landscape as sublime continued to mean, as it did for the German Romantics, the use of the landscape as symbol, and the belief in nature as education. Rather than follow the 18th-century model of landscape as setting or topography, the 19th-century European landscape had become an uplifting moral and spiritual experience.
English Watercolour Episode:
In the second half of the 18th century, helped by the revolutionary changes in technology like improvement in pencils and paper quality, a British School of watercolourist emerged. The pioneer was Alexander Cozens who invented the way of composing monochrome landscapes by what he called ‘blot drawing’ using ink blots to stimulate the imagination.
The English watercolour school is important for 4 reasons:
1) They aroused a wide and eventually global, interest in landscape as such.
2) They improved landscape painting by making it a universal practice to sketch in the open air, usually with watercolour , thus producing material which could be later turned into large-scale oils in the studio.
3) They encouraged a much more subtle and accurate study and reproduction of natural colour.
4) They promoted atmospheric painting- that is accurate and sophisticated rendering of skies, clouds, sunlight and other weather-effects.
The ease with which watercolours could be carried about in remote and fascinating mountain districts, for instance aided all these objects.
All these achievements entered the mainstream of painting and worked themselves out in the efforts of countless artists in the 19th century and beyond. Thus the ‘English Watercolour Episode’ is a key moment in the history of painting.
Barbizon school:
An informal school of French landscape painting that flourished c.1830–1870. Its name derives from the village of Barbizon, a favorite residence of the painters associated with the school. Théodore Rousseau was the principal figure of the group, which included the artists Jules Dupré, Narciso Diaz de la Peña, Constant Troyon, and Charles Daubigny. These men reacted against the conventions of classical landscape and advocated a direct study of nature. Their work was strongly influenced by 17th-century Dutch landscape masters including Ruisdael, Cuyp, and Hobbema. Corot and Millet are often associated with the Barbizon group, but in fact Corot's poetic approach and Millet's humanitarian outlook place them outside the development of the school. The Barbizon painters helped prepare for the subsequent development of the impressionist schools.
They rejected the Academic tradition, abandoning theory in an attempt to achieve a truer representation of life in the countryside, and are part of the French Realist movement.
Some of the artists to promote landscape paintings:
Claude Gellee:
The artist who is usually considered to have been the father of modern landscape painting was a Frenchman, Claude Gellee (1600-82), born near Mirecourt on the Moselle, who at an early age went to Rome, where he remained practically for the rest of his life. Claude’s interest was entirely in Nature and particularly in the illumination of Nature. He was the first artist who “set the sun in the heavens,” and he devoted his whole attention to portraying the beauty of light; but thought his aerial effects are unequalled to this day and though his pictures were approved and collected in his own day by the Kind of Spain, Pope Urban VIII and by many influential Cardinals, yet the appreciation of pure landscape was so limited then that Claude rarely dared to leave figures out of his pictures and was obliged to choose subjects which were not simply landscapes but gave him an excuse for painting landscapes.
In Claude’s “Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca”, we are not disposed to ask which is Isaac and which is Rebecca or try to discover what all the figures are doing because to us the beauty of the landscape is an all-sufficient reason for the picture’s existence. Our whole attention is given to the beautiful painting of the trees and the lovely view that lies between them, to the golden glow of the sky to the flat surface of the water with its reflected light and to the exquisite gradations of the tones by which the master has conveyed to us the atmosphere of the scene and the vastness of the distance he depicts.
In his “Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba”, we are at once conscious that the conscious that the glorious rendering of the sun in the sky and its rays on the rippled surface of the sea constitute the principle interest of the picture; this was what primarily interested the painter and his building, shipping and people are only on many accessories wit which he frames and presents to us his noble vision of light. To Claude’s contemporaries these titles and the figures, which justified them, had far more importance than they have to us and it was by professing to paint subjects, which the taste of his day deemed elevating and ennobling that Claude was able to enjoy prosperity and paint the landscapes which are truly noble.
Nicolas Poussin:
Another Frenchman, also a contemporary of Claude, Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), is regarded as a pioneer of landscape painting though he was also a figure painter of great ability who upheld the classical style of the antique in his Biblical and pagan figure subjects. Poussin worked chiefly in Rome.
Richard Wilson:
Richard Wilson known as ‘the father of British landscape’ is one of the saddest stories in British art. Though acknowledged to be one of the most eminent men of his day, and attaining a modest measure of success in middle life, Fortune turned her back on him.
Although it is by landscape painting that Richard acquired lasting fame, his life began as a portrait-painter. There has been a general belief that Wilson did not attempt landscape painting till he found himself in Italy, but it has recently been ascertained that he unquestionably painted landscape before he left England. In Italy Wilson devoted more and more of his time to landscape till he finally established himself in Rome as a landscape painter. His beautiful pictures of Italian landscape, in which dignity of design was combined with atmospheric truth and loveliness of colour, soon gained him a great reputation in that city and his landscapes were bought by the Earl of Pembroke etc. when he returned to England in 1756, his reputation preceded him and he enjoyed a considerable measure of success when he established himself in London at the Covent Garden. But unfortunately for Wilson the taste of the 18th century was severely classical, and after the first novelty of his Italian landscape wore off, only two enlightened patrons like Sir Richard Ford, were capable of appreciating the originality and beauty of the landscape he painted in England. The full measure of Wilson’s greatness can be seen in the splendor of the flaming sunset sky in ‘The Tiber, with Rome in the Distance’ reveals how Wilson showed the way to Turner, the sweet simplicity and natural beauty of ‘The Thames near Twickenhan’ proves him also to have been the artistic ancestor of Constable.
Wilson’s landscapes went begging in his own day. He was the first English artist to show his countrymen not only the beauty of Nature but also the beauty of their own country.
Rembrandt: (Dutch school)
Overwhelmed by his domestic sorrows, neglected by his former patrons Rembrandt turned to Nature for consolation. He wandered around the countryside recording all he saw. Practically all his landscapes were painted between 1640 and 1652. Many of his most beautiful landscape etchings were also executed during this period. The most famous of them all “The Three Trees’ was done in 1643. It shows a view of Asterdam form a slight eminence outside the town and a storm-cloud and its shadow are used to intensify the brilliance of the light and the dramatic aspect of this mood of Nature. This is landscape in the grand style; but its homelier, more intimate note appealed equally to the artist. A lovely example of the picturesque corner portrayed for its own intrinsic beauty in the etching executed in 1645 know as ‘Six’s Bridge’.
Paul Sandby:
Paul Sandby a contemporary of Richard Wilson, famed as ‘the father of water colour art’ was one of the first to popularize landscape by going about the country sketching gentleman’s mansions and parks. Landowners were pleased to purchase his and other artists watercolour views on their estates, and their pride in their own property was gradually converted by these artists to an appreciation of the beauties of Nature.
William Turner:
The establishment of landscape in the popular estimation as a branch of art, equal to the highest achievements of portraiture or historical painting, was finally achieved by Turner, the greatest glory of British art.
Turner met the brilliant water colorist Thomas Girtin and was influenced by him. In 1797 Turner exhibited his first oil picture, a study of moonlight, at the Royal Academy, most of the view he painted at the time was in watercolour.
Turner owed most of his diligent study of Nature, to a most poetic painter in watercolors, John Robert Cozens. Cozens was indeed Turners immediate predecessor in watercolour and the first to produce those atmospheric effects which Turner rivaled and excelled.
Turner looked beyond the mere details to a larger treatment of Nature, seizing all the poetry and sunshine, and the mists of morn and eve, with the grandeur of storm and the glow of sunset. In feeling his way to this period of his first style Turner looked not only to nature but also to the example of his great predecessors, Claude, Richard Wilson and the Dutch painters of the 17th century.
The influence of the Dutch school and particularly of Van de Velde, is apparent in many of his early works ‘Calais Pier’. Already however Turner had improved on Van de Velde, who was never able to interpret weather so truly and vigorously as it is painted in the rolling sea and windy sky of this stimulating sea-piece.
Turner spent much time traveling, visiting France, Switzerland, Italy and the Rine and producing innumerable watercolors as well as some of his finest oil painting.
That splendor of the sky, which was to be the peculiar glory of Turner is first indicated in his ‘Sun rising through Vapor’ painted in 1807.
After 1820 a great change was manifest in his manner of painting. In the early paintings dark predominated with a very limited portion of light, and he painted solidly throughout with a vigorous and full brush; but his later works are based on a light ground with a small portion of dark and using opaque touches of the purest orange, blue, purple and other powerful colors. Turner obtained infinitely delicate gradations, which produced a splendid and harmonious effect. This new manner is first seen in his ‘Bay of Baiae’ painted in 1823 and six years later in 1829, it is revealed in all its glory in one of Turners most poetical works ‘Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus’ in which as Redgrave has said “while in no way gaudy, it seems impossible to surpass the power of colour which he has attained, or the terrible beauty in which he has clothed his poetic conception.” In this glorious picture, “a work almost without parallel in art,” the nominal subject has little more power over us today than it has in the Claudes. Turner’s painting attracts us primarily, not as an illustration to a familiar story from Homer, but as glowing piece of colour, a magnificently decorative transcription of a flaming sunrise. And with all this the picture is a ‘magic casement’ through which our imagination looks in all the intoxication of triumph, of final victory after perils escaped; and though Turner himself probably did not know it and few who look upon his master piece are conscious of the fact, this picture subconsciously expresses the elation, the pride and even the touch of insolence, that all England felt after her victorious issue from the Napoleonic wars.
As Turner altered his style of oil painting, so also he revolutionized his practice in watercolour. Originally, in common with the older embers of the Early English Water-color School, Turner began a drawing by laying in the gradations of light and shade with gray or some other neutral tint, and afterwards represented the hue of each object by tinting it with colour; but this he found resulted in a certain heaviness of aspect. Accordingly, in his later watercolors he proceeded to treat the whole surface of his drawing as colour, using at once the pigments by which the scene might most properly be represented. By delicate hatching he achieved wonderful qualities of broken hues, air tints, and atmosphere, so that the view when finished glowed and sparkled wit the brilliance of Nature’s own colors. This method of putting on the colour direct, without any under-painting of the subject in light and shade, has been to a great extent the foundation of modern painting.
As he grew older, and particularly after his visit to Venice in 1832, Turner became more and more ambitious of realizing to the uttermost the fugitive radiances of dawn and sunset. Light, or rather the colour of light, became the objective of his painting, to the exclusion of almost everything else, and few of his contemporaries could follow his as he devoted his brush more and more to depicting the pageant of the heavens.
His work was severely criticized and held up to ridicule and mirth by Thackeray and others, he was regarded as a madman and accused of ‘flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face’. Even ‘The Flinging Temeraire’ which seems to us so poetic today in its contrast of moonlight with sunlight, to match the contrast between the sailing ship that was passing away and the steamer that heralded the future, even this work was deemed to be exaggerated and extravagant and to most of the admirers of his earlier picture paintings like ‘The Approach to Venice’ were utterly incomprehensible.
Thomas Gritin:
A contemporary to Turner was Thomas Girtin. He died at an early age and would have probably have rivaled Turner as a painter in oils. Although his career was cut short he lived long enough to make himself one of the greatest painters in watercolors. In this medium his style was bold and vigorous and by suppressing irrelevant detail he gave a sense of grandeur to the scenes he depicted. His chief sketching-ground was the northern countries, and particularly its cathedral cities, and his favorite subjects were the ruins of our old abbey and castles and the hilly scenery of the north.
Girtin’s White House at Chelsea is an apt example of his splendid work. This wonderful view across the Thames, at sunset, the ‘masses’ formed chiefly out of clouds in shadow, the White House and its reflection standing out on the low, dark horizon, is a work of pure genius, executed with the most astonishing delicacy of touch. The paint has floated down onto the paper and there is no sign if a human hand in the brushwork.
Girtin’s skill can be analyzed under six heads. He drew the inspiration for his designs not from him imagination but from nature, searching around the country-side until he found what he wanted. Then he rearranged the forms, but not so drastically as to dim the natural effect. Girtin achieves a delicate counterpoint between earth and sky, which are not so much divided by a horizon as united by the overall light-system. Fourthly he eliminates all the details except when he needs to emphasis a significant small shape and patch of colour. His pictures have remarkable breadth, depth and area, which make them seem much bigger than they actually are. Fifth, his exact colouring, created by many washes when needed, bring out the actual texture of ground, whether moss, furze, grass, rock, peat, heather, bracken, all seen from a distance, with the reassuring fidelity, so that one is at home within the depths of his paintings. Finally, Girtin was full of tricks and constantly inventing new ones.
Peter De Wint:
A younger student with Turner and Girtin was Peter De Wint. De Wint loved to paint direct from Nature and was never so happy as when in the fields. His subjects are principally chosen in the eastern and northern countries, and though often tempted to the extend his studies to the Continent, the love of England and English scenery was so strong that, except for one visit to Normandy, he never left these shores. He formed a style of his own, notably for the simplicity and breadth of light and shade, and the fresh limpidity of his colour. He was a great purist in technique and objected to the use of Chinese white and body colour, which he thought tended to five a heavy effect to a drawing. He excelled in river scene and ‘The Trent near Burton’ is a beautiful example of his tender and faithful rendering of a typical English scene.
David Cox:
David Cox is best at portraying a windy day or in stormy weather. He paid attention to the surrounding scenery and learned to render the varied effects of Nature and the aspects of morning, noon and twilight. In 1829 he made a tour on the Continent, choosing his subjects on the coasts and in the market-places of Antwerp and Brussesl and the crowded bridges of Paris but he liked best the scenery of his own country particularly the mountainous country of Wales and Scotland whose gloomy passes he pained with great effect and grandeur. He also painted many views of the Thames and of the country round London, but till he was past fifty he worked exclusively in water colour. In 1839 Cox became acquainted with Muller, he watched him at work and henceforward devoted himself more to oils than to water colour. During these later years Cox gave himself chiefly to oil-painting: his best pictures were seldom seen in London during his own lifetime and when shown not generally appreciated. David Cox’s work is distinguished its light, its vigor and its spaciousness. His picture ‘A windy day’ also known as ‘Crossing the Common’ is a happy example of the scene and weather he excelled in rendering.
John Constable:
One of the greatest English painters along with Turner is John Constable. But while Turner succeeded Constable failed the explanation can be found in the totally different character of the landscapes painted by the two artists. Turner as Claude used some human figures in his paintings but Constable was true to the pure form of landscape painting and did not use human figures.
After spending some years working in the picturesque tradition of landscape and the manner of Gainsborough, Constable developed his own original treatment from the attempt to render scenery more directly and realistically, carrying on but modifying in an individual way the tradition inherited from Ruisdael and the Dutch 17th-century landscape painters.
Constable turned away from the pictorial conventions of 18th-century landscape painters, who, he said, were always `running after pictures and seeking the truth at second hand'. Constable thought that `No two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of the world', and in a then new way he represented in paint the atmospheric effects of changing light in the open air, the movement of clouds across the sky, and his excited delight at these phenomena, stemming from a profound love of the country: `The sound of water escaping from mill dams, willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts and brickwork, I love such things. These scenes made me a painter.'
He never went abroad, and his finest works are of the places he knew and loved best, particularly Suffolk and Hampstead, where he lived from 1821. To render the shifting flicker of light and weather he abandoned fine traditional finish, catching the sunlight in blobs of pure white or yellow, and the drama of storms with a rapid brush.
Constable worked extensively in the open air, drawing and sketching in oils, but his finished pictures were produced in the studio. For his most ambitious works--`six-footers' as he called them--he followed the unusual technical procedure of making a full-size oil sketch, and in the 20th century there has been a tendency to praise these even more highly than the finished works because of their freedom and freshness of brushwork.
Théodore Rousseau
He is the greatest landscape painter of his time together with Camille Corot. He was born on April, 15, 1812, and when Jean-Francois Millet became the painter of country works and intimist scenes of the farm from his arrival in Barbizon, Theodore Rousseau was the one of clusters of tall trees and glades in the forest. Though he was called “ the perpetual refused of the salons ” he was more famous than Millet when he settled in Barbizon around 1844.
At the young age of nineteen, Théodore Rousseau abruptly entered the art world of Paris when he received the admiration of many of his fellow artists. His future success appeared secure. His landscapes offered fresh and unique images of rural France, showing his substantial talent as a colorist and interpreter. As time passed, his artistic career failed to progress at the steady pace some may have envisioned, finding only occasional spurts of academic acceptance, his demise plagued by frequent Salon refusals. He began to be known more as “Le Grand Refusé”, or the “great rejected one,” an evaluation that hovered over his career. What remained constant was the admiration bestowed upon him by other progressive artists and when he was allowed to exhibit, popularity with the public. Throughout his artistic career Rousseau proved a challenge to the Salon tradition and established the dominant traits of his artistic temperament, which were, as noted by Nicholas Green in the exhibition catalog Théodore Rousseau: 1812-1867 (London: Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, 1982, pg. 9): “a religious humility before nature combined with an arrogance about the rightness of his point of view, a scorn for 19th century civilization along with a determination to succeed.” Despite many difficult setbacks orchestrated by classically oriented Salon jurors, Rousseau remained unwavering in his intense devotion to his work and the furtherance of the appreciation and importance of landscape painting in France.
Bibliography:
Websites:
http://www.ibiblio.org
http://media.dickinson.edu
Books:
Art: A New History – Paul Johnson
The Story Of Art – E.H. Gombrich
Art Through The Ages – Gardner
A History Of Art – general editor: Sir Lawrence Gowing
Sherline Pimenta
Modern Western Art
M.V.A. Part I
April 2006
M.S.U. Baroda
For the 19th century professional artist, landscape represented a new genre, and a radical departure from the figural drawing that had been the emphasis in their training and in "important art" immediately prior to their time: it relied on a sophisticated theory of the Sublime which placed them in the role of near-priest, interpreter, and teacher.
In the West, the concept of landscape grew very slowly. Nature was traditionally viewed as consisting of isolated objects long before it was appreciated as scene or environment. As a result landscape painting as an independent art was a late development in the West. Many scenes, from the Hellenistic pastoral paintings of antiquity to the religious works of the 16th cent. A.D., contained expansive landscape backgrounds, but they were usually subordinated within a narrative context.
In the East, nature had always preoccupied the minds of the finest artists, in China landscape was regarded as the highest branch of art; but in Europe men thought otherwise, and it was only slowly that landscape crept forward from the background and gradually occupied the whole picture.
Landscape painting in Europe:
Throughout the 18th century, landscape painting had existed primarily for two reasons: as a picturesque setting for some more important, human drama, and as topography, or a quasi-scientific reconstruction of the land masses of a particular area. Both approaches followed conventions of scale, type, and detail; neither was considered to be the significant work of a professional painter. For most artists in training at the beginning of the 19th century, therefore, the notion of working exclusively, or even primarily in landscape was a bizarre one. The situation in France, for example, was not uncommon. Here, artistic education was ordered by genre (first drawing, then painting), by model (first classical casts, then the life model), and by subject (always the human figure). By the time of the regular government-sponsored exhibitions (the Salons) of early 19th-century France, there was a well-established hierarchy of subjects dictating which subjects would be considered the most important, and therefore most worthy, by Salon juries (and therefore, by potential buyers both governmental and private). This hierarchy was headed by subjects predictably predetermined in 18th-century Rococo and Neo-Classical art: history and religious subjects topped the list, with portraiture, especially if treating an important subject, following those. Still life was considered less educational, less uplifting, and therefore less important to the hierarchy; landscape was considered dead last.
The presumption of this hierarchy was, in fact, that landscape could not aspire to the "higher" aims of art--education and inspiration. Actual landscape instruction was therefore minimal, and offered only with the assumption that certain more important subjects might require an outdoor setting. Sketching from nature was allowed, but only as a preliminary stage in one's work, and landscapes included in major exhibitions were notably ignored by critics: although they might be interesting studies, they simply did not merit analysis as works of art. For the French system in particular, landscape's low esteem proved difficult to change. The French Academy's coveted Prix de Rome for art students, for example, had no landscape category until 1817, when "historic" landscapes with some narrative event were reluctantly allowed.
All of these French presumptions about landscapes and their role as background setting rather than as a major means of expression were questioned with the introduction of several new philosophies of nature which began to be promulgated, notably in the northern countries of Western Europe, at the end of the 18th century. It was at this time that Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) formulated his notion of individual "Will," thereby admitting a whole world of non-rational urges that must lie beneath a thin veil of consciousness; at that time also the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) proposed an equation of God with the natural order of the world. In addition, one of the most influential of these new philosophies for landscape art was the even earlier theory of the "Sublime," defined in 1756 by the British statesman and political theorist Edmund Burke (1729-1797). The basis of Burke's beliefs was that the life of feeling and spirit depended on a harmony within the larger order of the universe. The sublime, therefore, was the ultimate experience of divinity, a mixture of awe, fear, and enlightenment produced by the contemplation of a powerful, terrifying nature; for Burke, the sublime was already connected to landscape. The association between the power of nature and a recognition of the divinity behind it was a constant theme of early Romantic writing. In 1797, for example, the German philosopher Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) published his Ideas about Nature Philosophy; in the same year, in a collection of stories entitled Effusions of an Art-Loving Friar, the writer Wilhelm Wackenroder (1773-1798) proclaimed that there exist only two languages through which God allows the human to comprehend the Divine; one of these is reserved for God alone, but the other is given to a few "anointed favorites" who in turn interpret them. As Wackenroder explained, the second language had two components: "They are: nature and art."
The concurrence of these ideas proved fruitful for the beginnings of the "grand tradition" of landscape. German artists, inspired by their contemporaries' writings on the importance of nature for moral and religious education, began to create landscapes that, unlike the French "setting" landscapes, were instead symbolic scenes filled with meaning. When in 1808 Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) exhibited Cross in the Mountains, a landscape intended as an altarpiece for a private chapel, critics condemned his use of landscape for religious expression as sacrilegious. Friedrich responded to these accusations by offering an "Interpretation of the Picture" which identified the natural images as symbols for religious beliefs: "The Cross stands erected on a rock unshakably firm as our faith in Jesus Christ. Evergreen, enduring through all ages, the firs stand round the cross, like the hope of mankind in Him . . ." Friedrich's comments highlight both his view of the landscape as symbol and his belief that the study of nature was an important occupation equal to that of figure study: it could even be a religious image. A work like Friedrich's 1818 Woman in the Morning Sun…a painting in which the figure is uncharacteristically large yet typically faces an infinite landscape--can serve as an example of his approach. The figure, seen from the back, is deliberately anonymous, inviting us as viewers to take her place: with arms outstretched towards an expansive horizon and setting sun, she enacts our desired communion with the landscape as means to a Burkean sublime. The path on which the woman stands ends abruptly before her, a symbol of the limitations of everyday reality. She must instead traverse through meditation the remaining landscape, which leads directly into the sun; that is, into another, more spiritual world. In works such as this, Friedrich not only introduced into art the nature worship common to many writers in Dresden, such as his friends "Novalis" (Friedrich Hardenberg, 1772-1801) and Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853), but also offered a model of compositional devices. His solitary, anonymous figures set against expansive vistas demonstrated, visually, the means by which to entice the viewer to take a place in the composition and therefore a part in the sublime experience.
The fact that the Germans were espousing the sublime theories of Burke, a British writer, suggests that an interrelationship of ideas in these two countries existed; for example, not only similar theories but even similar phrases can be found in the contemporary writings of Novalis and the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Corresponding to Friedrich's generation of German Romantics, therefore, was an equally important group of English artists who also created sublime landscapes. This generation, usually represented by Joseph Mallord William Turner and John Constable (1776-1837), sought expression of the sublime through two different yet complementary means, termed "nature terribilita" and "nature champetre." The depiction of a "terrible" nature--one that overpowered and dominated humanity by virtue of its spectacular effects, from mountaintop views to hurricane winds--was the sublime vision most directly related to Burke's original definition and that which fascinated Turner. Constable, on the other hand, preferred what his friend Wordsworth called a "tranquil sublimity" in nature--one that inspired by means of enduring presence and calm harmony. While the "terribilità" landscape might emphasize elemental power and spatial infinity, the countryside scene stressed harmonious coexistence in a continuum of eternity. For both artists, however, the notion of landscape as sublime continued to mean, as it did for the German Romantics, the use of the landscape as symbol, and the belief in nature as education. Rather than follow the 18th-century model of landscape as setting or topography, the 19th-century European landscape had become an uplifting moral and spiritual experience.
English Watercolour Episode:
In the second half of the 18th century, helped by the revolutionary changes in technology like improvement in pencils and paper quality, a British School of watercolourist emerged. The pioneer was Alexander Cozens who invented the way of composing monochrome landscapes by what he called ‘blot drawing’ using ink blots to stimulate the imagination.
The English watercolour school is important for 4 reasons:
1) They aroused a wide and eventually global, interest in landscape as such.
2) They improved landscape painting by making it a universal practice to sketch in the open air, usually with watercolour , thus producing material which could be later turned into large-scale oils in the studio.
3) They encouraged a much more subtle and accurate study and reproduction of natural colour.
4) They promoted atmospheric painting- that is accurate and sophisticated rendering of skies, clouds, sunlight and other weather-effects.
The ease with which watercolours could be carried about in remote and fascinating mountain districts, for instance aided all these objects.
All these achievements entered the mainstream of painting and worked themselves out in the efforts of countless artists in the 19th century and beyond. Thus the ‘English Watercolour Episode’ is a key moment in the history of painting.
Barbizon school:
An informal school of French landscape painting that flourished c.1830–1870. Its name derives from the village of Barbizon, a favorite residence of the painters associated with the school. Théodore Rousseau was the principal figure of the group, which included the artists Jules Dupré, Narciso Diaz de la Peña, Constant Troyon, and Charles Daubigny. These men reacted against the conventions of classical landscape and advocated a direct study of nature. Their work was strongly influenced by 17th-century Dutch landscape masters including Ruisdael, Cuyp, and Hobbema. Corot and Millet are often associated with the Barbizon group, but in fact Corot's poetic approach and Millet's humanitarian outlook place them outside the development of the school. The Barbizon painters helped prepare for the subsequent development of the impressionist schools.
They rejected the Academic tradition, abandoning theory in an attempt to achieve a truer representation of life in the countryside, and are part of the French Realist movement.
Some of the artists to promote landscape paintings:
Claude Gellee:
The artist who is usually considered to have been the father of modern landscape painting was a Frenchman, Claude Gellee (1600-82), born near Mirecourt on the Moselle, who at an early age went to Rome, where he remained practically for the rest of his life. Claude’s interest was entirely in Nature and particularly in the illumination of Nature. He was the first artist who “set the sun in the heavens,” and he devoted his whole attention to portraying the beauty of light; but thought his aerial effects are unequalled to this day and though his pictures were approved and collected in his own day by the Kind of Spain, Pope Urban VIII and by many influential Cardinals, yet the appreciation of pure landscape was so limited then that Claude rarely dared to leave figures out of his pictures and was obliged to choose subjects which were not simply landscapes but gave him an excuse for painting landscapes.
In Claude’s “Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca”, we are not disposed to ask which is Isaac and which is Rebecca or try to discover what all the figures are doing because to us the beauty of the landscape is an all-sufficient reason for the picture’s existence. Our whole attention is given to the beautiful painting of the trees and the lovely view that lies between them, to the golden glow of the sky to the flat surface of the water with its reflected light and to the exquisite gradations of the tones by which the master has conveyed to us the atmosphere of the scene and the vastness of the distance he depicts.
In his “Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba”, we are at once conscious that the conscious that the glorious rendering of the sun in the sky and its rays on the rippled surface of the sea constitute the principle interest of the picture; this was what primarily interested the painter and his building, shipping and people are only on many accessories wit which he frames and presents to us his noble vision of light. To Claude’s contemporaries these titles and the figures, which justified them, had far more importance than they have to us and it was by professing to paint subjects, which the taste of his day deemed elevating and ennobling that Claude was able to enjoy prosperity and paint the landscapes which are truly noble.
Nicolas Poussin:
Another Frenchman, also a contemporary of Claude, Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), is regarded as a pioneer of landscape painting though he was also a figure painter of great ability who upheld the classical style of the antique in his Biblical and pagan figure subjects. Poussin worked chiefly in Rome.
Richard Wilson:
Richard Wilson known as ‘the father of British landscape’ is one of the saddest stories in British art. Though acknowledged to be one of the most eminent men of his day, and attaining a modest measure of success in middle life, Fortune turned her back on him.
Although it is by landscape painting that Richard acquired lasting fame, his life began as a portrait-painter. There has been a general belief that Wilson did not attempt landscape painting till he found himself in Italy, but it has recently been ascertained that he unquestionably painted landscape before he left England. In Italy Wilson devoted more and more of his time to landscape till he finally established himself in Rome as a landscape painter. His beautiful pictures of Italian landscape, in which dignity of design was combined with atmospheric truth and loveliness of colour, soon gained him a great reputation in that city and his landscapes were bought by the Earl of Pembroke etc. when he returned to England in 1756, his reputation preceded him and he enjoyed a considerable measure of success when he established himself in London at the Covent Garden. But unfortunately for Wilson the taste of the 18th century was severely classical, and after the first novelty of his Italian landscape wore off, only two enlightened patrons like Sir Richard Ford, were capable of appreciating the originality and beauty of the landscape he painted in England. The full measure of Wilson’s greatness can be seen in the splendor of the flaming sunset sky in ‘The Tiber, with Rome in the Distance’ reveals how Wilson showed the way to Turner, the sweet simplicity and natural beauty of ‘The Thames near Twickenhan’ proves him also to have been the artistic ancestor of Constable.
Wilson’s landscapes went begging in his own day. He was the first English artist to show his countrymen not only the beauty of Nature but also the beauty of their own country.
Rembrandt: (Dutch school)
Overwhelmed by his domestic sorrows, neglected by his former patrons Rembrandt turned to Nature for consolation. He wandered around the countryside recording all he saw. Practically all his landscapes were painted between 1640 and 1652. Many of his most beautiful landscape etchings were also executed during this period. The most famous of them all “The Three Trees’ was done in 1643. It shows a view of Asterdam form a slight eminence outside the town and a storm-cloud and its shadow are used to intensify the brilliance of the light and the dramatic aspect of this mood of Nature. This is landscape in the grand style; but its homelier, more intimate note appealed equally to the artist. A lovely example of the picturesque corner portrayed for its own intrinsic beauty in the etching executed in 1645 know as ‘Six’s Bridge’.
Paul Sandby:
Paul Sandby a contemporary of Richard Wilson, famed as ‘the father of water colour art’ was one of the first to popularize landscape by going about the country sketching gentleman’s mansions and parks. Landowners were pleased to purchase his and other artists watercolour views on their estates, and their pride in their own property was gradually converted by these artists to an appreciation of the beauties of Nature.
William Turner:
The establishment of landscape in the popular estimation as a branch of art, equal to the highest achievements of portraiture or historical painting, was finally achieved by Turner, the greatest glory of British art.
Turner met the brilliant water colorist Thomas Girtin and was influenced by him. In 1797 Turner exhibited his first oil picture, a study of moonlight, at the Royal Academy, most of the view he painted at the time was in watercolour.
Turner owed most of his diligent study of Nature, to a most poetic painter in watercolors, John Robert Cozens. Cozens was indeed Turners immediate predecessor in watercolour and the first to produce those atmospheric effects which Turner rivaled and excelled.
Turner looked beyond the mere details to a larger treatment of Nature, seizing all the poetry and sunshine, and the mists of morn and eve, with the grandeur of storm and the glow of sunset. In feeling his way to this period of his first style Turner looked not only to nature but also to the example of his great predecessors, Claude, Richard Wilson and the Dutch painters of the 17th century.
The influence of the Dutch school and particularly of Van de Velde, is apparent in many of his early works ‘Calais Pier’. Already however Turner had improved on Van de Velde, who was never able to interpret weather so truly and vigorously as it is painted in the rolling sea and windy sky of this stimulating sea-piece.
Turner spent much time traveling, visiting France, Switzerland, Italy and the Rine and producing innumerable watercolors as well as some of his finest oil painting.
That splendor of the sky, which was to be the peculiar glory of Turner is first indicated in his ‘Sun rising through Vapor’ painted in 1807.
After 1820 a great change was manifest in his manner of painting. In the early paintings dark predominated with a very limited portion of light, and he painted solidly throughout with a vigorous and full brush; but his later works are based on a light ground with a small portion of dark and using opaque touches of the purest orange, blue, purple and other powerful colors. Turner obtained infinitely delicate gradations, which produced a splendid and harmonious effect. This new manner is first seen in his ‘Bay of Baiae’ painted in 1823 and six years later in 1829, it is revealed in all its glory in one of Turners most poetical works ‘Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus’ in which as Redgrave has said “while in no way gaudy, it seems impossible to surpass the power of colour which he has attained, or the terrible beauty in which he has clothed his poetic conception.” In this glorious picture, “a work almost without parallel in art,” the nominal subject has little more power over us today than it has in the Claudes. Turner’s painting attracts us primarily, not as an illustration to a familiar story from Homer, but as glowing piece of colour, a magnificently decorative transcription of a flaming sunrise. And with all this the picture is a ‘magic casement’ through which our imagination looks in all the intoxication of triumph, of final victory after perils escaped; and though Turner himself probably did not know it and few who look upon his master piece are conscious of the fact, this picture subconsciously expresses the elation, the pride and even the touch of insolence, that all England felt after her victorious issue from the Napoleonic wars.
As Turner altered his style of oil painting, so also he revolutionized his practice in watercolour. Originally, in common with the older embers of the Early English Water-color School, Turner began a drawing by laying in the gradations of light and shade with gray or some other neutral tint, and afterwards represented the hue of each object by tinting it with colour; but this he found resulted in a certain heaviness of aspect. Accordingly, in his later watercolors he proceeded to treat the whole surface of his drawing as colour, using at once the pigments by which the scene might most properly be represented. By delicate hatching he achieved wonderful qualities of broken hues, air tints, and atmosphere, so that the view when finished glowed and sparkled wit the brilliance of Nature’s own colors. This method of putting on the colour direct, without any under-painting of the subject in light and shade, has been to a great extent the foundation of modern painting.
As he grew older, and particularly after his visit to Venice in 1832, Turner became more and more ambitious of realizing to the uttermost the fugitive radiances of dawn and sunset. Light, or rather the colour of light, became the objective of his painting, to the exclusion of almost everything else, and few of his contemporaries could follow his as he devoted his brush more and more to depicting the pageant of the heavens.
His work was severely criticized and held up to ridicule and mirth by Thackeray and others, he was regarded as a madman and accused of ‘flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face’. Even ‘The Flinging Temeraire’ which seems to us so poetic today in its contrast of moonlight with sunlight, to match the contrast between the sailing ship that was passing away and the steamer that heralded the future, even this work was deemed to be exaggerated and extravagant and to most of the admirers of his earlier picture paintings like ‘The Approach to Venice’ were utterly incomprehensible.
Thomas Gritin:
A contemporary to Turner was Thomas Girtin. He died at an early age and would have probably have rivaled Turner as a painter in oils. Although his career was cut short he lived long enough to make himself one of the greatest painters in watercolors. In this medium his style was bold and vigorous and by suppressing irrelevant detail he gave a sense of grandeur to the scenes he depicted. His chief sketching-ground was the northern countries, and particularly its cathedral cities, and his favorite subjects were the ruins of our old abbey and castles and the hilly scenery of the north.
Girtin’s White House at Chelsea is an apt example of his splendid work. This wonderful view across the Thames, at sunset, the ‘masses’ formed chiefly out of clouds in shadow, the White House and its reflection standing out on the low, dark horizon, is a work of pure genius, executed with the most astonishing delicacy of touch. The paint has floated down onto the paper and there is no sign if a human hand in the brushwork.
Girtin’s skill can be analyzed under six heads. He drew the inspiration for his designs not from him imagination but from nature, searching around the country-side until he found what he wanted. Then he rearranged the forms, but not so drastically as to dim the natural effect. Girtin achieves a delicate counterpoint between earth and sky, which are not so much divided by a horizon as united by the overall light-system. Fourthly he eliminates all the details except when he needs to emphasis a significant small shape and patch of colour. His pictures have remarkable breadth, depth and area, which make them seem much bigger than they actually are. Fifth, his exact colouring, created by many washes when needed, bring out the actual texture of ground, whether moss, furze, grass, rock, peat, heather, bracken, all seen from a distance, with the reassuring fidelity, so that one is at home within the depths of his paintings. Finally, Girtin was full of tricks and constantly inventing new ones.
Peter De Wint:
A younger student with Turner and Girtin was Peter De Wint. De Wint loved to paint direct from Nature and was never so happy as when in the fields. His subjects are principally chosen in the eastern and northern countries, and though often tempted to the extend his studies to the Continent, the love of England and English scenery was so strong that, except for one visit to Normandy, he never left these shores. He formed a style of his own, notably for the simplicity and breadth of light and shade, and the fresh limpidity of his colour. He was a great purist in technique and objected to the use of Chinese white and body colour, which he thought tended to five a heavy effect to a drawing. He excelled in river scene and ‘The Trent near Burton’ is a beautiful example of his tender and faithful rendering of a typical English scene.
David Cox:
David Cox is best at portraying a windy day or in stormy weather. He paid attention to the surrounding scenery and learned to render the varied effects of Nature and the aspects of morning, noon and twilight. In 1829 he made a tour on the Continent, choosing his subjects on the coasts and in the market-places of Antwerp and Brussesl and the crowded bridges of Paris but he liked best the scenery of his own country particularly the mountainous country of Wales and Scotland whose gloomy passes he pained with great effect and grandeur. He also painted many views of the Thames and of the country round London, but till he was past fifty he worked exclusively in water colour. In 1839 Cox became acquainted with Muller, he watched him at work and henceforward devoted himself more to oils than to water colour. During these later years Cox gave himself chiefly to oil-painting: his best pictures were seldom seen in London during his own lifetime and when shown not generally appreciated. David Cox’s work is distinguished its light, its vigor and its spaciousness. His picture ‘A windy day’ also known as ‘Crossing the Common’ is a happy example of the scene and weather he excelled in rendering.
John Constable:
One of the greatest English painters along with Turner is John Constable. But while Turner succeeded Constable failed the explanation can be found in the totally different character of the landscapes painted by the two artists. Turner as Claude used some human figures in his paintings but Constable was true to the pure form of landscape painting and did not use human figures.
After spending some years working in the picturesque tradition of landscape and the manner of Gainsborough, Constable developed his own original treatment from the attempt to render scenery more directly and realistically, carrying on but modifying in an individual way the tradition inherited from Ruisdael and the Dutch 17th-century landscape painters.
Constable turned away from the pictorial conventions of 18th-century landscape painters, who, he said, were always `running after pictures and seeking the truth at second hand'. Constable thought that `No two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of the world', and in a then new way he represented in paint the atmospheric effects of changing light in the open air, the movement of clouds across the sky, and his excited delight at these phenomena, stemming from a profound love of the country: `The sound of water escaping from mill dams, willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts and brickwork, I love such things. These scenes made me a painter.'
He never went abroad, and his finest works are of the places he knew and loved best, particularly Suffolk and Hampstead, where he lived from 1821. To render the shifting flicker of light and weather he abandoned fine traditional finish, catching the sunlight in blobs of pure white or yellow, and the drama of storms with a rapid brush.
Constable worked extensively in the open air, drawing and sketching in oils, but his finished pictures were produced in the studio. For his most ambitious works--`six-footers' as he called them--he followed the unusual technical procedure of making a full-size oil sketch, and in the 20th century there has been a tendency to praise these even more highly than the finished works because of their freedom and freshness of brushwork.
Théodore Rousseau
He is the greatest landscape painter of his time together with Camille Corot. He was born on April, 15, 1812, and when Jean-Francois Millet became the painter of country works and intimist scenes of the farm from his arrival in Barbizon, Theodore Rousseau was the one of clusters of tall trees and glades in the forest. Though he was called “ the perpetual refused of the salons ” he was more famous than Millet when he settled in Barbizon around 1844.
At the young age of nineteen, Théodore Rousseau abruptly entered the art world of Paris when he received the admiration of many of his fellow artists. His future success appeared secure. His landscapes offered fresh and unique images of rural France, showing his substantial talent as a colorist and interpreter. As time passed, his artistic career failed to progress at the steady pace some may have envisioned, finding only occasional spurts of academic acceptance, his demise plagued by frequent Salon refusals. He began to be known more as “Le Grand Refusé”, or the “great rejected one,” an evaluation that hovered over his career. What remained constant was the admiration bestowed upon him by other progressive artists and when he was allowed to exhibit, popularity with the public. Throughout his artistic career Rousseau proved a challenge to the Salon tradition and established the dominant traits of his artistic temperament, which were, as noted by Nicholas Green in the exhibition catalog Théodore Rousseau: 1812-1867 (London: Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, 1982, pg. 9): “a religious humility before nature combined with an arrogance about the rightness of his point of view, a scorn for 19th century civilization along with a determination to succeed.” Despite many difficult setbacks orchestrated by classically oriented Salon jurors, Rousseau remained unwavering in his intense devotion to his work and the furtherance of the appreciation and importance of landscape painting in France.
Bibliography:
Websites:
http://www.ibiblio.org
http://media.dickinson.edu
Books:
Art: A New History – Paul Johnson
The Story Of Art – E.H. Gombrich
Art Through The Ages – Gardner
A History Of Art – general editor: Sir Lawrence Gowing
Sherline Pimenta
Modern Western Art
M.V.A. Part I
April 2006
M.S.U. Baroda
posted by Dr. Sherline Pimenta K. | 12:17 AM
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