ART 101 LANDSCAPE NOTES

THE LANDSCAPE TRADITION IN ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY

Ansel Adams, Clearing Winter Storm, 1937. Gelatin silver print.

LANDSCAPE DEFINITIONS

LAND -
Old English (Landskipe, Landscaef) meaning: earth, soil, portion of the
globe.

Gothic (Landschaft, Landscap) meaning: a plowed field, “a land”, a farm plot,
implying spatial measurement.

SCAPE -
Shape, but also related to sheaf, a bundle or collection of stalks or plants.

LANDSCAPE MEANINGS -

a collection of lands, a composition of man-made spaces, not a wilderness.
a synthetic space superimposed on the land to serve a community
a concrete, shared reality.
a portion of land which the eye can view at a glance; the view itself has come to mean a PICTURE OF THAT VIEW.

Extended meanings - cityscape, townscape, wilderness landscape, lunar
landscape, political landscape, etc.

EARLY USES OF LANDSCAPE IN EUROPEAN ART

GENTILE DA FABRIANO
(1370 - 1427)

Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi, 1423. Tempera and gold on wood panel.

Altarpieces = a symbolic world.
Hierarchical scale - scale by importance, not proximity or physical size.
Abstracted backround - gold = divine light, a spiritual dimension.
Figures in architectural niche.
Increasing realism of figures.

Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi, 1423. Tempera and gold on wood panel.

LIMBOURG BROTHERS
(Late 14th - early 15th centuries)

Limbourg Brothers, February, Tres Riches Heures, 1413-16. Tempera on parchment.

Facts become art through love, which unifies them and lifts them to a higher plane of reality;
and, in landscape, this all embracing love is expressed by light.

It is no accident that this sense of saturating light grew out of a school of manuscript
illuminations, and first appears in miniatures.

For in such small images a unity of tone is more easily achieved, and the whole scene can be
given the concentrate brilliance of a reflection in a crystal.

Throughout history landscapes of perception have been small. Large landscapes, with all the
artifice of construction, have been studio made.

- Kenneth Clark, Landscape Into Art.

Limbourg Brothers, February, Tres Riches Heures, 1413-16. Tempera on parchment.

Limbourg Brothers, March, Tres Riches Heures, 1413-16. Tempera on parchment.

Limbourg Brothers, April, Tres Riches Heures, 1413-16. Tempera on parchment.

Limbourg Brothers, Tres Riches Heures, 1413-16. Tempera on parchment.

Limbourg Brothers, The Fall and the Expulsion from Paradise , 1415-16.
Tempera on parchment.

ANDREA MANTEGNA
(1431 - 1506)

Andrea Mantegna, Crucifixion, 1457-59. Tempera on wood.

Contains a new spaciousness that is coherent, with light the unifier.
1 pt. perspective system literally carving out a 3-D space.

Andrea discovered a vastly improved way of painting figures in
perspective from below upwards, and this was a very difficult and
ingenious invention.

- Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, 1550-1568.

Andrea Mantegna, Crucifixion, San Zeno altarpiece, 1457-59. Tempera on wood.

HUGO VAN DER GOES
(1436 - 1482)
THE PORTINARI ALTARPIECE

Hugo van der Goes, The Portinari Alterpiece, 1475. Oil on wood panels.

Hugo van der Goes, The Portinari Alterpiece, 1475. Oil on wood panels.Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (8.3 x 19 feet)

Hugo van der Goes, The Portinari Alterpiece, 1475. Oil on wood panels. Center panel.

Hugo van der Goes, The Portinari Alterpiece, 1475. Oil on wood panels. Right panel.

A powerful narrative woven together with landscape, lights and darks, deep spatial illusion.

A mixture of hieratic and realistic forms and space.

Iconography, fact and symbol together.

Unlimited view, near to far = divine view.

Powerful lights and darks and colors.

The influence of the Portinari Altar, which was erected in Florence in 1478, was felt by many of the Florentine painters and is reflected in particular in the works of Ghirlandaio and Leonardo.

Oil Painting

Opacity of tempera and fresco was a limitation in evoking luminosity, shading with value.

Color and value intensities not possible together in tempera and fresco.

Oil glazes = new luminous possibilities, strong chromatic darks and lights are now possible, yielding much greater spatial dimension.

A new sense of air and atmosphere is possible.

Hugo van der Goes, The Portinari Alterpiece, 1475. Oil on wood panels.

ICONOGRAPHY AND ICONOLOGY

ICONOGRAPHY

Iconography is the study of symbols depicted in a work of art. Traditionally, these symbols
derive from a readily recognizable, common currency of cultural or religious experience.

It is the linking of artistic motifs with themes, concepts or conventional meaning.

For instance, in Western culture, a cross is a familiar shorthand symbol for Christianity.

ICONOLOGY

It (intrinsic meaning) is apprehended by ascertaining those underlying principles which reveal
the basic attitude of a nation, a period, a class, a religious or philosophical persuasion - qualified
by one personality and condensed into one work.

- Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts, 1974.

GIOVANNI BELLINI
(1426 - 1516)

Giovanni Bellini, St. Francis in Ecstasy, 1480-85. Oil on panel.

VENETIAN RENAISSANCE

Oil painting adopted.
New infusion of color.
New integration of landscape into figurative art.
Stronger sense of light - light as unifier.
Light - clear morning light, dry clear, dominant earth colors
A heightened reality -reverie on each thing in the world
Precise iconography - meaning of each thing

Giovanni Bellini, St. Francis in Ecstasy, 1480-85. Oil on panel.

LEONARDO DA VINCI
(1452 - 1519)

Leonardo Da Vinci, Madonna of the Rocks, ca. 1480. Oil on wood panel.

The first work that Leonardo executed in Milan is the so-called Virgin of the Rocks, which
actually expresses the theme of the Immaculate Conception, the dogma that affirms Christ was
conceived without original sin on Mary's part.

For the first time Leonardo could achieve in painting that intellectual program of fusion between
human forms and nature which was slowly taking shape in his view of his art.

Here there are no thrones or architectural structures to afford a spatial frame for the figures;
instead there are the rocks of a grotto, reflected in limpid waters, decorated by leaves of various
kinds from different plants while in the distance, as if emerging from a mist composed of very
fine droplets and filtered by the golden sunlight, the peaks of those mountains we now know so
well reappear.

- Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, 1550-1568.

Unable to resist my eager desire and wanting to see the great multitude of various and strange
shapes made by formative nature, and having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, I
came to the entrance of a great cavern, in front of which I took some time, astonished and
unaware of such a thing.

Bending my back into an arch I rested my tired hand on my knee and held my right hand over
my downcast and contracted eyebrows: often bending first one way and then the other, to see
whether I could discover anything inside, and this being forbidden by the deep darkness within
and after having rained there for some time, two contrary emotions arose in me, fear and desire
- fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvelous things -
within it.

- Leonardo da Vinci

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than with the imagination
awake?

Leonardo Da Vinci, Madonna of the Rocks, ca. 1480. Oil on wood panel.

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503-1505. Oil on wood.

Leonardo uses the landscape form for its expressive power in drawings and paintings, in his figurative art, and as a form on its own.

In the Mona Lisa, he uses a high horizon overlooking a flat plain.

Space and detail almost magically present with a minimum of detail.

New qualities of softness and relief, masses of tone, not outlined, softened and shadowed contours of forms.

Sfumato (smoky) - his technique in which he uses the expressive power of
shadows, concealing information, evoking deep space, inviting the viewer in.

In his writings, he fuses the human body and the earth in an almost mystical sense the world in miniature: bones = rocks, blood = ocean, tides = breathing..

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503-1505. Oil on wood.

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503-1505 (detail). Oil on wood.

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503-1505. Oil on wood.

Leonardo da Vinci, Deluge over a city, 1517-18. Black chalk on paper.

Leonardo da Vinci, Landscape drawing for Santa Maria della Neve on 5th August 1473,
1473, Pen and ink.

Leonardo da Vinci, Cavern with ducks,1482-85. Pen and ink on paper.

Leonardo da Vinci, Storm over a landscape, ca. 1500. Red chalk on paper.

Leonardo da Vinci, Birch copse, ca. 1500. Red chalk on paper.

Leonardo Da Vinci, Deluge drawing, 1515-17.

Leonardo's fascination with the properties and power of water is also revealed in the series of
so-called Deluge drawings.

Executed towards the end of his life, ca. 1515–17, these are terrifying apocalyptic visions in
which giant waves furiously rebound over the diminutive forms of man and nature.

Although classified as works of the poetic imagination, they are nevertheless realized with a
keen understanding of the scientific principles governing the behavior of water.

Leonardo Da Vinci, Deluge drawing, 1515-17.

Leonardo da Vinci, Natural disaster, 1517-18. Black chalk, pen and ink on paper.

GIORGIONE
(1477 - 1510)

Giorgione, The Tempest, 1505. Oil on canvas.

A sense of atmosphere permeates everything,
with palpable golden-green light, and deep chromatic darks.

Blurred softened edges.

Light interacting with surfaces.

Landscape dominates although still primarily a figurative painting.

Giorgione may be regarded as an innovator in the development of the oil technique, in rich and
warm colour and in a type of painting independent of a particular position or function.

A poetical and enigmatic beauty seems personal to him, and is clearly apparent in The Tempest,
a dreamlike painting in which impassive figures are set against the background of an
approaching electric storm – its significance lies more in its mood that its subject.

The Tempest is one of the most critically discussed pictures of all time. No one knows what it
represents. The contrast between the darkness of the mood, the tension of the coming storm,
and the calm passivity of the two figures, "the soldier" and "the gypsy", give the painting a great
sense of foreboding.

- Hutchinson’s Encyclopaedia

Giorgione, The Tempest, 1505. Oil on canvas.

Giorgione, The Tempest, 1505 (detail). Oil on canvas.

Giorgione, The Tempest, 1505. Oil on canvas.

But it is not due to its content that the picture is one of the most wonderful things in art.

That this is so may be difficult to see in a scan, but even such an illustration conveys a
shadow, at least, of his revolutionary achievement.

Though the figures are not particularly carefully drawn, and though the composition is somewhat
artless, the picture is clearly blended into a whole simply by the light and air that permeate it all.

It is the weird light of a thunderstorm, and for the first time, it seems, the landscape before which
the actors of the picture move is not just a background. It is there, by its own right, as the real
subject of the painting.

We look from the figures to the scenery which fills the major part of the small panel, and then
back again, and we feel somehow that, unlike his predecessors and contemporaries, Giorgione
has not drawn things and persons to arrange them afterwards in space, but that he really
thought of nature, the earth, the trees, the light, air and clouds and the human beings with their
cities and bridges as one.

In a way, this was almost as big a step forward into a new realm as the invention of perspective
had been. From now on, painting was more than drawing plus coloring. It was an art with its own
secret laws and devices.

- E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art

Giorgione / Titian, Pastoral Symphony, 1508. Oil on canvas.

Arcadian context - another dimension.

Women as goddesses - with goddess -tree transitions.

Figures emanating from the landscape.

The town over men's heads, men in drab urban clothing.

Men in transition to dream state.

Silence, suspended animation, dream-like, reverie.

Forms flowing one to another.

Giorgione / Titian, Pastoral Symphony, 1508. Oil on canvas.

TITIAN
(1490 - 1576)

Titian, Bacchanal of the Andrians, 1523-1525. Oil on canvas.

More spaciousness, breadth.

Grander orchestration.

Landscape dominates in scale and detail.

Looser brushwork existing independently of the forms described.

Sense of opulence.

Pigment evoking flickering play of light.

Evoking sense/experience.

"His fiction of landscape was closer to the experience of the senses than any before.” - Giorgio Vasari

Here Titian reproduces a picture the writer Philostratus saw in Naples in the
second century AD, representing the people of the Greek Island of Andros
making merry on the river of wine that Dionysus had created.

Titian, Bacchanal of the Andrians, 1523-1525. Oil on canvas.

TINTORETTO
(1518 - 1594)

Tintoretto, The Flight into Egypt, 1582-87. Oil on canvas.

Dream landscapes.

Phosphorescent moonlight.

Diaphanous, translucent bodies.

Angels and humans together.

Shimmering surfaces.

Solids dissolving into masses with no solidity, no gravity.

Light as mass, light is the subject.

Dramatic picture space, which match the dark cavernous spaces in which the paintings are hung in Venice.

High and low viewpoints simultaneously.

Recession - around a bisected space (horizontally or vertically) down to up, over horizon and back down.

Turner on Tintoretto:

His landscape art suggests that reality is a momentary glimpse of a
condition of light and atmosphere.

On second thought, it is not so much this as a condition of the spirit, where
sudden and inexplicable flashes illuminate for a moment the vast unknown.

...but even then the landscape is not really the protagonist. That is the light:
a moonlight ,veiling more than it reveals, which Tintoretto threads upon a
pointed brush to pick out with silver the shimmering edges of things
seen; the world he describes in this way seems private and unmaterial.

- Freedberg, Painting in Italy 1500-1600

Tintoretto, The Flight into Egypt, 1582-87. Oil on canvas.

Tintoretto, The Creation of Animals, 1550. Oil on canvas.

Tintoretto, The Ascent to Calvary,1566-67. Oil on canvas.

Tintoretto, St Mary Magdalen,1582-87. Oil on canvas.

Tintoretto, St Mary of Egypt,1582-87. Oil on canvas.

HIERONYMUS BOSCH
(1450 - 1516)

Hieronymus Bosch, Haywain, 1500-02. Oil on panel.

Hieronymus Bosch, Haywain, central panel, 1500-02. Oil on panel.

The subject of sin and its punishments was central to all of Bosch's art. A famous triptych, The
Haywain, contains a progression of sin, from Eden to hell, across its panels.

In the central panel sin is represented through the metaphor of a large wagonload of hay for
which a greedy world grasps.

All the while, the wagon is being pulled by demons towards the right panel - which shows one of
Bosch's earliest depictions of hell.

God appears in the top portion of “Eden,” with a globe in his hand that symbolizes the universe.

The three scenes below depict “The creation of Eve,” “Tasting the forbidden fruit,” and “Adam
and Eve being cast from Eden,” in chronological order.

Early Renaissance works typically used this technique, to present scenes in chronological order
so that they can be read like a story.

Bosch’s “Haywain” (Hay Wagon) comes directly from the Flemish proverb, “The world is a
haystack, and each man plucks from it what he can.”

A haystack is a metaphor for earthly fame, wealth and desires that are transitory, corrupting and
of insignificant value.

The demons exploit men’s hungry pursuits of their desires and pull them into hell.

Hieronymus Bosch, Haywain, left panel,1500-02. Oil on panel.

Hieronymus Bosch, Haywain, right panel, 1500-02. Oil on panel.

ALBRECHT ALTDORFER
(1480 - 1538)

Albrecht Alterdorfer, Landscape with Path,1518. Oil on vellum on wood panel.

Albrecht Alterdorfer, Danube Landscape, c. 1525. Oil on vellum on wood panel.

(Danube Landscape is a) fine example of pure landscape painting - one without a narrative
subject or human figures, unusual for the time. The landscape seems to be a minutely detailed
view of the natural terrain, but a close inspection reveals an inescapable picturesqueness in the
low mountains.

Gigantic lacy pines, neatly contoured shrubberies, and fairyland castle with red-roofed towers at
the end of a winding path. The eerily glowing yellow-white horizon below roiling gray and blue
clouds in a sky that takes up more than half the composition suggests otherworldly scenes.

-Stokstad, Art History, p. 721.

Albrecht Alterdorfer, Danube Landscape, c. 1525. Oil on vellum on wood panel.

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER
(1525 - 1569)

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow, 1565. Oil on panel.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow, 1565. Oil on panel. Detail.

Bruegel's use of landscape also defies easy interpretation, and demonstrates perhaps the
artist's greatest innovation.

Working in the aftermath of the Reformation, Bruegel was able to separate his landscapes from
long-standing iconographic tradition, and achieve a contemporary and palpable vision of the
natural world.

Bruegel executed a series of paintings representing the Seasons, of which The Hunters in the
Snow is one.

Though rooted in the legacy of calendar scenes, Bruegel's emphasis is not on the labors that
mark each season but on the atmosphere and transformation of the landscape itself.

These panoramic compositions suggest an insightful and universal vision of the world—a vision
that distinguishes all the work of Bruegel.

The powerful compositions, brilliantly organized and controlled, reflect a sophisticated artistic
design.

- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

ROOT 2 RECTANGLE

ROOT 2 RECTANGLE CONSTRUCTION

By turning a compass open to the diagonally opposite corners of a square, an extension can be
created beyond the square, producing the "root-2" rectangle whose long and short sides are as
1.414... to 1. This rectangle has some lovely geometric properties.

When divided in half, each part is a smaller, turned replica of the whole. Furthermore, the small
diagonals of each half cross the diagonal of the whole precisely at right angles.

It is the dimension of the intelligently designed British stationery. When the paper is folded, it
becomes smaller but retains its proportion. Different, but same.

Countless examples of paintings, architecture, jewelry, pottery and much more are known to
display this particular ratio.

It is found worldwide and from all times in cultures and carries the same symbolism wherever it
appears.

The square, of course, is a worldwide symbol of the Earth, of physical, material manifestation.

Since the root-2 rectangle is the first born of a series of root rectangles which emerge from this
foundation square, the root-2 rectangle has been a worldwide a symbol of "birth".

That's why it's so common as the rectangle of diplomas and found in the design of doors and
floor plans of sacred buildings and elsewhere.

So it would be appropriate ratio for a painting which depicts the birth of the universe.

Bible Moralisee, ca. 1250

This Bible is one of the two oldest examples of the "moralized bible" which conveyed the ideas
through pictures, using the words as captions.

The picture is sometimes called "G*D The Architect Of The Universe" or simply "G*D The
Geometer" and is known by other names.

It depicts Deity creating the universe as a golden sphere using a geometer's divider or
"compass". Within the sphere of the living cosmos we see its Soul.

Root 2 Rectangles in the Bible Moralisee.

The side of the rectangle here runs from the tip of the nose down through the hand, and exactly
upon the vertical divider leg to become the axis mundi through the center of the newly forming
universe.

- from Geometric Analysis of A Biblical Illumination by Michael S. Schneider

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c. 1558.
Oil on canvas, mounted on wood.

Charles Bouleau,
The Painter's Secret Geometry: A Study of Composition in Art.
Harcourt, Brace & World, NY. 1963.
(Out of print.)
ND 1475 .B6813 1980

ANNIBALECARRACCI
(1560 - 1609)
Annibale Carracci, Fishing, ca. 1600. Oil on canvas.

Elevated Viewpoint:

Horizon line elevated above figures.
Clarifies the foreground - middle distance transition.

Foreground Ledge:

Stage-like ledge in the foreground, often for principle figures.
Strongest colors - values - textures projecting space forward

Repoussoir:

Framing device on one or both sides of the foreground picture edge.
Silhouette forming a kind of theatrical proscenium arch.
Usually a tree, bush, or architectural detail.
Dramatically separates foreground and middle distance planes

Recession:

Usually a zig-zag linear movement or movements from front to back.
Meandering paths - rivers, paths, fallen tree trunks, figures moving through pathways.
Wolfflin: “a devaluation of the surface.”

Middle Distance:

Hidden to exaggerate the separation of fore and mid planes.
Often a body of water with far bank completing the mid distance.

Architecture:

Often ruins.
Defines transitions to middle distance or to backround.

Linear Perspective:

Moving in several directions from middle distance to backround.
Vanishing points at each side of the picture.

Far Distance:

Suggestion of infinity beyond horizon.
Use of atmospheric perspective.
Sky, usually with a setting sun, mountains, golden light

Annibale Carracci, Fishing, ca. 1600. Oil on canvas.

Annibale Carracci, The Flight into Egypt,1603. Oil on canvas.

The "classical," composed, measured and ideal landscape of the Flight into Egypt, is one of the
works that set the ground rules for seventeenth-century painting.

The restful setting, the gently undulating planes that extend to the distant horizon, and even the
boat - a symbol of life - floating on a peaceful river in the foreground create a most unusual
Atmosphere.

CLAUDE LORRAIN
(1600 - 1682)

Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Merchants, c. 1630. Oil on canvas.

Claude Lorrain, byname of Claude Gellée, French artist best known for, and one of the greatest
masters of, ideal-landscape painting, an art form that seeks to present a view of nature more
beautiful and harmonious than nature itself.

The quality of that beauty is governed by classical concepts, and the landscape often contains
classical ruins and pastoral figures in classical dress.

The source of inspiration is the countryside around Rome - the Roman Campagna - a
countryside haunted with remains and associations of antiquity.

The practitioners of ideal landscape during the 17th century, the key period of its development,
were artists of many nationalities congregated in Rome. Later, the form spread to other
countries.

Claude, whose special contribution was the poetic rendering of light, was particularly influential,
not only during his lifetime but, especially in England, from the mid-18th to the mid-19th century.

Claude Lorraine, Landscape with Shepherds - The Pont Molle, 1645. Oil on canvas.

Claude was acquainted not only with the facts, but also with the laws of nature; and the German
painter Joachim von Sandrart relates that he used to explain, as they walked together through
the fields, the causes of the different appearances of the same landscape at different hours of
the day, from the reflections or refractions of light, or from the morning and evening dews or
vapours, with all the precision of a natural philosopher.

He elaborated his pictures with great care; and if any performance fell short of his ideal, he .
altered, erased and repainted it several times over.

Claude Lorrain, Landscape with the Finding of Moses, 1637-39. Oil on canvas.

Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Dancing Figures,1648. Oil on canvas.

Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Dancing Figures, (detail), 1648. Oil on canvas.

Claude Lorrain, Sunrise, 1646-47. Oil on canvas.

Claude Lorrain, Pastoral landscape with Lake Albano and Castel Gandolfo, 1639. Oil on canvas.

Claude Lorraine, Ulysses Returns Chryseis to Her Father, ca. 1600. Oil on canvas.

Claude Lorraine, Seaport at Sunset, 1639. Oil on canvas.

Claude Lorraine, Landscape with Acis and Galathe, 1657. Oil on canvas.

Claude Lorraine, Landscape with Rest in Flight to Egypt, 1647. Oil on canvas.

Claude Lorraine, Landscape with Paris and Oenone, 1648. Oil on canvas.

NICOLAS POUSSIN
(1594 - 1665)

Nicolas Poussin, Landscape wiath Saint John of Patmos, 1640. Oil on canvas.

Nicolas Poussin, Storrmy Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe, 1651. Oil on canvas.

Nicolas Poussin,Winter, 1660-64. Oil on canvas.

REMBRANDT VAN RIJN
(1606 -1669)

Rembrandt, The Three Trees, 1643. Etching.

Drypoint etching - all line.
Rich atmospheric chiaroscuro effects of light and shadow.
Vibrant line - pulsing, sweeping lines.

Details -
figures: draughtsman top of hill right.
Carriage approaching him.
Man fishing left front, woman beside him.
Grazing animals and workers in mid-distance.
Lovers in foreground bushes.

Rembrandt, The Three Trees, 1643. Etching.

Rembrandt, The Omval, 1645. Etching.

Rembrandt, Stormy Landscape, ca. 1638. Oil on wood.

In this dramatic view with deep emotional overtones, threatening storm clouds, pierced by bursts
of warm sunlight, fill the land with darkness.

Here Rembrandt imposes his brilliant imagination upon nature. The drama of the
chiaroscuro does not describe meteorological conditions, but embodies Rembrandt's reaction to
the mysterious forces of the sky and the earth.

- Web Gallery of Art

Rembrandt, The Mill, ca. 1650. Oil on canvas.

Jacob van Ruisdael, The Sluice, 1648. Oil on panel.

Ruisdael's dramatic, naturalistic rendering of landscapes and his emotional use of color support
his reputation as the principal Dutch landscape painter in the second half of the 1600s.

His masterful compositions, meticulous draftsmanship, and thick impasto made quiet subjects
such as trees or the flat Dutch countryside into deep sources of contemplation.

Though earlier Dutch artists used trees merely as decorative compositional devices, Ruisdael
imbued them with forceful personalities.

Jacob van Ruisdael, View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds, c 1665. Oil on canvas.

The View of Haarlem, one of several paintings of this subject, is breathtaking in its subjugation
of multifarious detail - houses and trees and workers in the bleaching-fields - to a single unified
vision of heroic scale and grandeur.

The eye moves rapidly across the level ground and its shifting patterns of light and dark to the
distant horizon.

Rising dramatically over the land is the immense vault of heaven which, with its great clouds
rolling upward and forward in majestic progression, has the effect of lifting the whole scene from
the plane of the local and particular to the realm of the infinite and spiritual.

The spatial illusionism of Roman Baroque ceiling paintings finds its northern counterpart in the
skies of Ruisdael.

"Light and shadow never stand still."
Spotlighting as drama.
Overhead view.

Open form - hidden axes, horizon subdued creating deep recession and avoiding locked in lower plane.
Ease of transitions.
Solutions to rendering a flat landscape.

Jacob van Ruisdael, View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds, c 1665. Oil on canvas.

Jacob van Ruisdael, The Jewish Cemetery, 1655-60. Oil on canvas.

(Ruisdael’s) Jewish Cemetery is a thought-provoking view of silent tombs, crumbling ruins, and
stormy landscape, with a rainbow set against dark, scudding clouds. Ruisdael was greatly
concerned with spiritual meanings of the landscape, which he expressed in his choice of such
environmental factors as the time of day, the weather, the appearance of the sky, or the abstract
patterning of sun and shade.

The barren tree points its branches at the tombs. Here the tombs, ruins, and fallen and blasted
trees suggest an allegory of transience. The melancholy mood is mitigated by the rainbow, a
traditional symbol of renewal and hope.

- Stokstad, Art History, p. 811.

Jacob van Ruisdael, The Jewish Cemetery, 1655-60. Oil on canvas.

Jacob van Ruisdael, Two Watermills and an Open Sluice, 1653. Oil on canvas.

Jacob van Ruisdael, Dead Tree by a Stream at the Foot of a Hill, 1650-1660. Black chalk, point of brush, and light and dark gray washes.

Jacob van Ruisdael, Rough Sea with a Pier, 1650-55. Oil on canvas.

Jacob van Ruisdael, A Village in the Winter, 1665. Oil on canvas.

JOHN CONSTABLE
(1776 - 1837)

John Constable, The Hay Wain, 1837. Oil on canvas.

J.M.W. TURNER
(1775 - 1851)

J.M.W. Turner, The Fighting "Temeraire" tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838.
Oil on canvas.

J.M.W. Turner, The Fighting "Temeraire" tugged to her last berth to be broken up, detail, 1838.
Oil on canvas.

J.M.W. Turner, The Fighting "Temeraire" tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838.
Oil on canvas.

J.M.W. Turner, Ulysses deriding Polyphemus - Homer's Odyssey, 1829. Oil on canvas.

J.M.W. Turner, Ulysses deriding Polyphemus - Homer's Odyssey, detail, 1829. Oil on canvas.

To take the first, around 1800 the painter was clearly attracted to the notion of the Sublime, that
power of spatial enormity in reality or amplification through art which produced sensations of
grandeur, mystery and even horror through the reduction of the spectator to physical
insignificance.

At the turn of the new century Turner's identification with sublimity led him to paint a number of
works in an upright format, scenes in which the spectator is located at a low viewpoint, so that
we are over-whelmed by the scale and grandeur of the settings they project, as well as by the
mysterious darkness that fills many of them.

- Eric Shanes, Turner.

J.M.W. Turner, Snowstorm, 1842. Oil on canvas.

J.M.W. Turner, Sunrise with Sea Monsters, c. 1845. Oil on canvas.

J.M.W. Turner, Sunrise with Sea Monsters, detail, c. 1845. Oil on canvas.

.In certain watercolours he suspended altogether the definition of a specific subject, leaving
almost everything in doubt but the positive existence of colour.

Many of the exhibited paintings began the same way; the act of defining a particular scene
was postponed until the varnishing days when the paintings were already hanging, and then
performed with astounding brilliance.

Then, particularly in the pictures that remained in Turner's studio, specific colour gradually
dissolved into a general medium of vision, like a bright vapour - the hue of lucent air.

There is rarely any doubt about the things represented, but they are formed out of a common
elemental medium that washes over and through them.

- Simon Wilson, Tate Gallery, An Illustrated Companion.

J.M.W. Turner, Sunrise with Sea Monsters, c. 1845. Oil on canvas.

J.M.W. Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed, 1844. Oil on canvas.

J.M.W. Turner, Shade and Darkness - the Evening of the Deluge, 1843. Oil on canvas.

J.M.W. Turner, Sun Setting over a Lake, c. 1840. Oil on canvas

In the final set especially, drawings that were possibly made between 1846 and 1850, we can
apprehend a continuous pulse running behind and through the outlines of discrete objects; the
visible universe becomes filled with a primal sense of energy.

These characteristics are equally evident in a group of oil paintings made after about 1843 from
the old 'Liber Studiorum' images, works in which light, colour and energy are all intensified to the
utmost degree, dissolving forms in the process.

These paintings do not celebrate merely the physical world: their pulsating energies, intensities
of light and dissolutions of form are clearly expressions of something beyond the physical.

Given Turner's lifelong attraction to academic idealism, at whose core lay a Platonic
metaphysical system that the painter had accepted at an early age, there can be absolutely no
doubt that in his late, radiant images the artist was projecting an ideal reality, one corresponding
to the world of the Ideas delineated by Plato.

And there is no inconsistency between Turner's lifelong identification with such a metaphysical
system and his supposed statements that 'The Sun is God', for the brilliant light in these late
paintings is far more than simply the hedonistic sunshine later beloved of the French
Impressionists.

Instead we are looking at Turner's deity, the essence and fount of creation, the godhead itself,
its energies running trough everything.

- Eric Shanes, Turner.

J.M.W. Turner, Sun Setting over a Lake, c. 1840. Oil on canvas

J.M.W. Turner, Colour Beginning, 1819. Watercolor.

J.M.W. Turner, Norham Castle, Sunrise, c. 1835-40. Oil on canvas.

J.M.W. Turner, Norham Castle, Sunrise, detail, c. 1835-40. Oil on canvas.

LATER DEVELOPMENTS IN PAINTING AFTER TURNER

PAUL CEZANNE
(1839 - 1906)

Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from Les Lauves, 1902-06. Oil on canvas.

CLAUDE MONET
(1840 -1926)

Claude Monet, Rouen Cathedral Morning (left) Sunlight (right), 1894

Claude Monet, The Japanese Bridge, 1918-24. Oil on canvas.

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, The Clouds, 1903. Oil on canvas.

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, Green Reflection, 1916-23. Oil on canvas.

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1919-26, oil on canvas

Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), 1950. Oil on canvas.

In "Autumn Rhythm," as in many of his paintings, Pollock first created a complex linear skeleton
using black paint. For this initial layer the paint was diluted, so that it soaked into the length of
unprimed canvas, thereby inextricably joining image and support.

Over this black framework Pollock wove an intricate web of white, brown, and turquoise lines,
which produce the contrary visual rhythms and sensations: light and dark, thick and thin, heavy
and buoyant, straight and curved, horizontal and vertical.

Textural passages that contribute to the painting's complexity — such as the pooled swirls
where two colors meet and the wrinkled skins formed by the build-up of paint — are barely
visible in the initial confusion of overlapping lines.

Although Pollock's imagery is nonrepresentational, "Autumn Rhythm" is evocative of nature, not
only in its title but also in its coloring, horizontal orientation, and sense of ground and space.

- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

CAMILLE COROT AND THE BARBIZON SCHOOOL

PLEIN AIR PAINTING

Plein air, a French word, literally translates as 'open air', and is defined as painting or drawing
done outside, in the open air.

These works were taken directly from nature, and infused with a feeling of the open air.

A relatively recent practice, painting outdoors became an important dimension of the landscape
work of the Impressionists and painters of the Barbizon school.

The Barbizon School was a group of landscape artists working in the region of the French town
of Barbizon. They rejected the Academic tradition, abandoning theory in an attempt to achieve a
truer representation of the countryside.

Members included Charles-Francois Daubigny. Camille Corot and Jean-Francois Millet are also
sometimes loosely associated with this school.

The Barbizon School artists are often considered to have been forerunners of the
Impressionists, who took a similar philosophical approach to their art.

Camille Corot, First Leaves, Near Mantes, 1855. Oil on canvas.

Camille Corot, The Sin-le-Noble Road near Douai, 1873. Oil on canvas.

Camille Corot, View of Saint Lo with the River Vire in the Foreground, ca. 1850-55.
Oil on canvas.

THE LANDSCAPE TRADITION IN AMERICA

TRANSCENDENTALISM

American transcendentalism was an important movement in philosophy and literature that
flourished during the early to middle years of the nineteenth century (about 1836-1860).

It began as a reform movement in the Unitarian church, extending the views of William Ellery
Channing on an indwelling God and the significance of intuitive thought.

It was based on "a monism* holding to the unity of the world and God, and the immanence of
God in the world."

For the transcendentalists, the soul of each individual is identical with the soul of the world and
contains what the world contains.

* The view in metaphysics that reality is a unified whole and that all existing things can be
ascribed to or described by a single concept or system.

Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Walt Whitman, and Louisa May Alcott are the best known proponents of this
movement.

Transcendentalism, like other romantic movements, proposes that the essential nature of
human beings is good and that, left in a state of nature, human beings would seek the good.

Society is to blame for the corruption that mankind endures. Hawthorne's juxtaposition of the red
rose, the flower of nature, and the rusty, blackened prison, the "black flower" of society,
exemplifies this perspective.

Transcendentalism really began as a religious movement, an attempt to substitute a
Romanticized version of the mystical ideal that humankind is capable of direct experience of the
Holy.

- Donna M. Campbell, "American Transcendentalism."

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation
between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to
them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and
yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me,
when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature.

HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL

The Hudson River School was a group of painters, led by Thomas Cole, who painted
images of America's wilderness, in the Hudson River Valley and also in the newly opened West.

The use of light effects, to dramatically portray such elements as mist and sunsets, developed
into a subspecialty known as Luminism.

Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt, and
Thomas Moran are the best known painters of this movement.

The first coherent school of American art, the Hudson River painters, helped to shape the
mythos of the American landscape.

Beginning with the works of Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand and evolving into the Luminist
and late Romantic schools, landscape painting was the prevalent genre of 19th century
American art.

Like the vast nation that lay before them, which they celebrated not chauvinistically but with a
sense of awe for its majestic natural resources and a feeling of optimism for the huge potential it
held, the Hudson River painters depicted a New World wilderness in which man, minuscule as
he was beside the vastness of creation, nevertheless retained that divine spark that completed
the circle of harmony.

As Thomas Cole maintained, if nature were untouched by the hand of man--as was much of the
primeval American landscape in the early 19th century--then man could become more easily
acquainted with the hand of God.

Sharing the philosophy of the American Transcendentalists, the Hudson River painters created
visual embodiments of the ideals about which Emerson, Thoreau, William Cullen Bryant, and
Whitman wrote.

Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits, 1849. Oil on canvas.

A painting which has become a virtual emblem for the Hudson River School is the dramatic
canvas by Asher B. Durand, KINDRED SPIRITS.

In it Durand depicts himself, together with Cole, on a rocky promontory in serene contemplation
of the scene before them: the gorge with its running stream, the gossamer Catskill mists
shimmering in a palette of subtle colors, framed by foliage.

In the foreground stands one of the school's famous symbols--a broken tree stump-- what Cole
called a "memento mori" or reminder that life is fragile and impermanent; only Nature and the
Divine within the Human Soul are eternal.

Tiny as the human beings are in this composition, they are nevertheless elevated by the
grandeur of the landscape in which they are in harmony.

As Cole and Durand firmly believed, if the American landscape was a new Garden of Eden, then
it was they, as artists, who kept the keys of entry.

- Thomas Hampson, I Hear America Singing. (PBS)

THOMAS COLE
(1801 - 1848)

Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts,
after a Thunderstorm (The Oxbow), 1836. Oil on canvas..

Thomas Cole was born in Lancashire, England in 1801. The Cole family emigrated to America in
1818. He spent several years in Steubenville, Ohio designing patterns and probably also
engraving woodblocks for his father's wallpaper manufactory.

During a stay in Philadelphia, from 1823 to 1824, Cole determined to become a painter and
closely studied the landscapes exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy.

His technique improved greatly and his thinking on the special qualities of American scenery
began to crystallize.

Cole next moved to New York, where the series of works he produced following a sketching trip
up the Hudson River in the summer of 1825 brought him to the attention of the city's most
important artists and patrons.

From then on, his future as a landscape painter was assured.

By 1829, when he decided to go to Europe to study firsthand the great works of the past, he had
become one of the founding members of the National Academy of Design and was generally
recognized as America's leading landscape painter.

A second trip to Europe, in 1841-42, resulted in even greater advances in the mastery of his art:
his use of color showed greater virtuosity and his representation of atmosphere, especially the
sky, became almost palpably luminous.

He encouraged and fostered the careers of Asher B. Durand and Frederic E. Church, two artists
who would most ably continue the painting tradition he had established.

Though Cole's unexpected death after a short illness sent a shock through the New York art
world, the many achievements that were his legacy provided a firm ground for the continued
growth of the school of American landscape.

- From American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School.

Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: The Pastoral or Arcadian State, 1834. Oil on canvas.

Thomas Cole, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, 1827-28. Oil on canvas.

Thomas Cole, Mount Aetna from Taormina,1844. Oil on canvas..

Thomas Cole, View on the Catskill - Early Autumn, 1837. Oil on canvas..

Thomas Cole, Landscape with Tree Trunks, 1825. Oil on canvas.

Thomas Cole, Mountain Sunrise, Catskill, 1826. Oil on canvas.

Thomas Cole, Genesee Scenery, 1847.Oil on canvas..

Thomas Cole, Schroon Mountain, Adirondacks, 1838. Oil on canvas..

Thomas Cole, Falls of Kaaterskill, 1826. Oil on canvas..

Thomas Cole, View of the Round-Top in the Catskill Mountains, 1827. Oil on panel.

ASHER B. DURAND
(1796 - 1886)

Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits, 1849. Oil on canvas.

Asher B. Durand,The Beeches, 1845. Oil on canvas.

These are the embodiment of his Hudson River School style. With the death of Cole, in 1848,
Durand was recognized as the leader of American landscape painting.

- from American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School

Asher B. Durand, In the Woods, 1855. Oil on canvas.

Asher B. Durand, Sketch from Nature, 1855. Graphite on paper.

Asher B. Durand, Interior of a Wood, c. 1850. Oil on canvas.

Asher B. Durand, Study from Nature: Rocks and Trees, c. 1836. Oil on canvas.

Asher B. Durand, Summer Afternoon, 1865. Oil on canvas.

Asher B. Durand, Early Morning at Cold Spring, 1850. Oil on canvas.

Asher B. Durand, Dover Plains, Dutchess County, New York, 1848. Oil on canvas.

FREDERIC CHURCH
(1826 - 1900)

Frederic Church, Niagara Falls, from the American Side, 1867. Oil on canvas.

Frederic Church, Niagra Falls, 1857. Oil on canvas.

Extraordinarily gifted as a draftsman and a colorist, Church reached his early maturity by 1848,
the year he took a studio in New York City, traveled widely and collected visual materials
throughout New York and New England, particularly Vermont, and turned out a number of
pictures, all of which sold well.

As did so many contemporary landscape painters, Church settled into his own pattern of travel,
hiking, and sketching from spring through autumn, followed by winter in New York painting.

In April 1853, Church set forth on an adventurous trip through Colombia and Ecuador.
Church's first finished South American pictures, shown to great acclaim in 1855, transformed his
Career.

For the next decade he devoted a great part of his attention to those subjects, producing a
celebrated series that became the basis of his ensuing international fame.

From 1854 through 1856, in addition to retracing familiar paths, he followed new ones as well,
visiting Nova Scotia, traveling widely in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and going several
times to take sketches of Niagara Falls.

His final artistic legacy was a multitude of breathtaking small oil sketches, mostly of Olana or of
the area around Millinocket Lake in Maine, or of Mexico, where he began wintering in 1882.

These are at once a magnificent testimony to his undiminished gifts as a draftsman, painter, and
colorist and one of the glories of American art.

- from "American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School"

Frederic Church, Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860. Oil on canvas.

Frederic Church, Rainy Season in the Tropics, 1866. Oil on canvas.

Frederic Church, Aurora Borealis, 1865. Oil on canvas.

Frederic Church, Heart of the Andes, 1859. Oil on canvas.

Frederic Church, Heart of the Andes, 1859. Oil on canvas. (detail).

Frederic Church, At the Base of the American Falls, Niagra, 1856. Oil on canvas.

Frederic Church, Schoodic Peninsula from Mount Desert, Sunrise, ca.1850-55. Oil on canvas.

Frederic Church, Sunset across the Hudson Valley, 1870. Oil on canvas.

ALBERT BIERSTADT
(1830 - 1902)

Albert Bierstadt, Looking Down Yosemite Valley, 1865. Oil on canvas.

Albert Bierstadt, Sunset in the Yosemite Valley, 1868. Oil on canvas.

Born in Germany, he emigrated at age two to America. Little is known about Bierstadt's early
artistic training.

After 1850, his collaboration with a daguerreotypist who produced theatrical presentations of
American scenery laid the foundation for his lifelong interests in photography and North
American topography.

In 1853, Bierstadt returned to Europe to study at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in Germany and to
travel extensively on the Continent.

Although he had entered that period of formal training with only rudimentary capabilities, he
emerged from it an ambitious, technically proficient master whose tastes for European scenery
had been considerably enhanced in the process.

His career decisively expanded in 1859, when he traveled to the territories of Colorado and
Wyoming, for a time in the company of a United States government survey expedition headed
by Colonel Frederick W. Lander.

The purpose of Bierstadt's trip was to procure sketches for a series of large-scale landscape
paintings of the American West.

Bierstadt rode the crest of success for the next decade. He made two additional western
journeys, one in 1863, the other from 1871 to 1873.

- from "American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School"

Albert Bierstadt, Rocky Mountains, “Lander’s Peak, 1863. Oil on canvas.

Albert Bierstadt, The Great Trees, Mariposa Grove, California, 1876. Oil on canvas

Albert Bierstadt, Seal Rock, c. 1872. Oil on canvas.

Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, 1868. Oil on canvas.

THOMAS MORAN
(1837 - 1926)

Thomas Moran, Golden Gateway to the Yellowstone, 1893. Oil on canvas..

Thomas Moran, the son of poor immigrant handweavers, was entirely self-taught.

The example of two painters obsessed him: Claude Lorrain and Turner. He was able to spend a
year in England in 1861 studying Turner and copying his works in oil and watercolor:

in particular, Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus, 1829, which Ruskin had called
"the central picture in Turner's career."

Moran kept his full-size copy of Ulysses in his studio thereafter, and it is not difficult to see why
the painting had such a deep effect on him..

Its high-keyed, unusually saturated color - yellows, ochers, crimsons, and rolling tracts of
impasted white cloud - is just what Moran would reach for in his landscapes of the Green River
and of Yellowstone.

Turner's vision of Polyphemus' island, the crags on which the giant mistily reclines, is
remembered in Moran's later visions - or, as he insisted, accurate transcriptions - of Western
scenery.

The turning point in Moran's career came in 1871, when Dr. Ferdinand Hayden, director of the
United States Geological Survey, invited him to join an expedition into the Yellowstone area of
Wyoming.

Besides Moran, Hayden brought along a former stagecoach driver turned photographer, William
Henry Jackson.

William Henry Jackson using his 20x24” camera.

With his cumbersome cameras, tripods, developing equipment, and fragile glass plates (some of
them twenty by twenty-four inches, yielding the largest outdoor photographs ever attempted) all
loaded onto pack mules, Jackson now worked alongside Moran.

He provided the objective record of Yellowstone's world of wonders, for a public which believed
the camera couldn't lie.

Moran's watercolors, more interpretative, supplied the color. The photographs confirmed the
reality of Moran's strange sketches of fumaroles, sulfur pinnacles, and Dantesque hot lakes.

Moran's approach was more dramatic and romantic, but Jackson's photographs revealed new,
bold directions after they began working together.

Moran helped Jackson hunt down the best spots to set up his large cameras and Jackson's
shots in turn helped Moran, who used the images when he returned home to complete his
enormous, full-color landscapes paintings.

- Buffalo Bill Historical Center

Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 1872. Oil on canvas..

Hayden had been busy lobbying Congress, with the enthusiastic backing of the Northern Pacific
Railroad's directors, to set aside Yellowstone as a national park - a museum of American
sublimity.

To prove its uniqueness, he displayed Moran's sketches and Jackson's photographs; and in
March 1871 President Grant signed into law an act of Congress protecting the whole Y
ellowstone area, thirty-five hundred square miles of it, in perpetuity.

- From Robert Hughes, American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America.

Thomas Moran, The Chasm of the Colorado, 1873-74. Oil on canvas.

Thomas Moran, The Devil's Slide, Yellowstone, 1871. Watercolor..

Thomas Moran, The Devil's Den on Cascade Creek, 1872. Watercolor..

Thomas Moran, Hot Springs of Gardiner's River, 1872. Watercolor..

Thomas Moran, Excelsior Geyser, Yellowstone Park, 1873.
Watercolor and pencil on paper.

Thomas Moran, Mountain of the Holy Cross, 1875. Oil on canvas..

MARTIN JOHNSON HEADE
(1819 - 1904)

Martin Johnson Heade, Approaching Thunderstorm, 1859. Oil on canvas.

Martin Johnson Heade, Lake George, 1862. Oil on canvas.

Martin Johnson Heade, Approaching Storm, Beach Near Newport, 1866-67. Oil on canvas.

Martin Johnson Heade, Thunder Storm on Narragansett Bay, 1868. Oil on canvas.

Heade, Martin Johnson, View from Fern-Tree Walk, Jamaica, 1870. Oil on canvas.

Martin Johnson Heade, Newburyport Meadows, ca. 1872-78. Oil on canvas.

JOHN FREDERICK KENSETT
(1816 - 1872)

John Frederick Kensett, October Day in the White Mountains, 1854. Oil on canvas.

Kensett began his career as an engraver, but grew increasingly restless at the engraver's trade
and eager for a career in the fine arts.

In 1840, he sailed for Europe, where he lived and worked in England and Paris and toured the
Rhine region, Switzerland, and Italy.

In his working practice: he spent the summers sketching the White Mountains, Lake George, the
Newport coast, or the Adirondacks and the winters painting in his Washington Square (New
York) studio.

Although Kensett's initial popularity stemmed from a series of classically balanced, arcadian
landscapes he produced in the 1850s, by the 1860s he had evolved another manner, for which
he is most admired today.

It consists of an asymmetrical, reductive composition; a subdued, near-monochrome palette;
and an interest in the effects of light and atmosphere rather than topography.

- from American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School

John Frederick Kensett, View on the Hudson, 1865. Oil on canvas.

John Frederick Kensett, Newport Coast, ca.1865-70. Oil on canvas.

John Frederick Kensett, Eaton's Neck, Long Island, 1872. Oil on canvas.

John Frederick Kensett, Sunset on the Sea, 1872. Oil on canvas.

LUMINISM

An American art movement of the 19th century, Luminism was an outgrowth of the Hudson
River school.

In its concern for capturing the effects of light and atmosphere it is sometimes linked to
impressionism.

Its practitioners included Frederick E. Church, John F. Kensett, and Martin
Johnson Heade.

They painted majestic landscapes and seascapes bathed in the mystical light of a pristine sky
with an emphasis on Nature’s grand scale.

- The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition.

Textureless, atmospheric tonality combined with an open "unframed" basically, horizontal
composition and as subject matter, large spatial concepts in smallish scale is at the heart of the
Luminist Movement.

Luminism is the antithesis of "painterly." In preparing to paint the Parthenon, Sanford Robinson
Gifford said, "It is not to be a painting of a building, it is to be a painting of a day."

In the 19th Century, new discoveries in the sciences about light and its effects opened the door
to new ways of thinking about light, vision, and color.

In France, painters began going outdoors to paint in the light and discovered the effects of light
on surfaces. Monet, Corot, Van Gogh, for example, began to probe the spectrum of surface
effects and the dynamic range of what they saw, and they tried to record it.

At the same time, in America, artists were discovering dramatic land forms that cried out to be
recorded in a traditional way - recorded, not interpreted as in France.

The result was a movement of traditional painters, mostly European trained, into the American
Landscape, such as Bierstadt, Cole, Church, and Kensett.

But these paintings were unlike any seen before. They had a commonality of appearance that
was based on the use of light, in a different way.

Turner had started a new movement at the beginning of the century in his attempt to portray
atmospheric effects. But this newer approach was more interested in painting the light itself. We
have named this approach, "Luminism."

We can, however, find a likely starting point in a book written by the great British critic John
Ruskin. In his book (1850) "Modern Painters" Ruskin praises Turner's palette and his
atmospheric paintings.

The Luminists utilized a Venetian glazing technique in their landscapes to control light and
shadow in a more transparent way than was being done in European landscapes.

Also the arrival of new brighter, warmer synthetic colors - violets, cobalt blues and yellows,
provided the necessary colors to evoke the American light which was labeled as "different."

So, what does a Luminist painting look like?

Structurally, horizontals are stressed with a smooth recession of planes, using receding
horizontal lines or bands. There is usually some short vertical or diagonal form present.

The light is cool in hue, hard edged, not diffused, with minute tonal changes that are difficult to
see, even up close. The point here is to minimize the feeling that you are looking at "paint."
(Monet also uses these minute tonal changes but the emphasis is also on the tactile quality of
"paint.")

This technique requires virtually no trace of brushmarks (called "stroke"). This lack of "stroke"
also serves to heighten textural effects.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND LUMINISM.

Photography's great strength is to be able to do exactly what the Luminist painters were trying to
do. The photograph is the most natural graphic equivalent to painting.

Luministic style requires crystalline light, ability to record atmospheric phenomenon, flat and
open palpable space, simple forms and an avoidance of any literary associations.

19th CENTURY AMERICAN LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHERS

WILLIAM HENRY JACKSON
(1843 -1942)

William Henry Jackson, Teapot Rock, Near Green River Station, Wyoming, 1869. Albumen print.

William Henry Jackson, Mountain of the Holy Cross, Colorado, 1873. Albumen print.

William Henry Jackson, Old Faithful, 1870. Albumen print.

In 1870 William Henry Jackson accompanied geologist Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden on an
expedition across Wyoming, along the Green River, and eventually into the Yellowstone Lake
area.

Jackson's images were the first published photographs of Yellowstone. Partly on the strength of
these photographs, the area became America's first national park in March 1872.

William Henry Jackson, Diamond River Canyon, Colorado, ca. 1880. Albumen print

William Henry Jackson using his 20x24” camera.

In the 1880s several railroad companies hired Jackson to document the mountains and deserts
through which the trains snaked their way, hoping the photographs would lure tourists to visit the
West.

Jackson traveled with his own photographic lab on a special train. He photographed on glass
plate negatives (measuring nearly two feet high and termed “mammoth”) that required an
enormous box camera and a heavy tripod to support it.

However cumbersome the equipment, the extraordinary results convey the overwhelming scale
of the landscape, the play of light, and the intricate textures of the canyon wall.

- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

As a professional photographer of the 1880s, Jackson was also a pioneer-he had to know how
to do everything, from composing, focusing and exposing the picture, to sensitizing the plate and
developing it.

Moreover, Jackson used "wet-plate" or collodion processing, which required performing all the
necessary operations on the spot, because development could not wait.

However, this process gave him the advantage of seeing his work immediately-he could take the
same picture over and over until nightfall if necessary, making any changes that he wanted to
until he was satisfied.

This meant hauling cartloads of equipment weighing up to 120 lbs to the scene: two or three
cameras as big as some television sets; as many as 100 glass plates for negatives; a variety of
lenses and tripods for each of the cameras; a tent to set up as a darkroom; jugs of chemicals
and an assortment of incidental gear.

- Buffalo Bill Historical Center

William Henry Jackson, Grand Canon of the Colorado, 1880. Albumen print.

William Henry Jackson, Tower of Babel, Garden of the Gods, Colorado, 1880. Albumen print.

William Henry Jackson, Canon of the Rio Las Animas, Colorado, 1880. Albumen print.

EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE
(1830 -1904)

Eadweard Muybridge, Kee-Koo-Too-Yem (Water Asleep), Mirror Lake,
Valley of the Yosemite, 1867. Albumen print.

Eadweard Muybridge, Mirror Lake, Valley of the Yosemite, 1872. Albumen print.

Eadweard Muybridge, Valley of the Yosemite from Mosquito Camp, 1872. Albumen print.

Eadweard Muybridge, Glacier Rock,Valley of the Yosemite, 1872. Albumen print.

T. H. O’SULLIVAN
(1840 - 1882)

T. H. O’Sullivan, Rock Formations, Pyramid Lake, Nevada, 1868. Albumen print.

T.H. O’Sullivan, Ancient Ruins in the Canon De Chelle, N.M. 1873. Albumen print.

T.H. O’Sullivan, Canon De Chelle, Walls of the Grand Canon About 1200 Feet in Height, 1873.
Albumen print.

Timothy O'Sullivan (1840-1882) is best-known for his stark panoramas of western landscapes.
After assisting Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, the Irish-born O'Sullivan joined the
"United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian."

Directed by Army Lieutenant George M. Wheeler, the survey had field seasons in 1871, 1873,
and 1874. Although earlier surveys had stressed scientific documentation, Wheeler hoped to
encourage settlement.

O'Sullivan's pictures were among the first to record the prehistoric ruins, Navajo weavers, and
Pueblo villages of the Southwest.

- Hearst Museum of Anthropology

T. H. O'Sullivan, Sand Dunes, Carson Desert, 1867. Albumen print.

T.H. O’Sullivan, Vermillion Creek Canyon, 1867. Albumen print.

T.H. O’Sullivan, Black Canyon, Colorado River,from Camp 8, Looking above, 1871.
Albumen print.

CARLETON WATKINS
(1829 - 1916)

Carleton Watkins, Coast View Number One, 1863. Albumen print.

Carleton Watkins, The Cliff House from the Beach, San Francisco, after 1867. Albumen print.

Carleton Watkins, Twin Redwoods, Palo Alto,1870. Albumen print.

Carleton Watkins, Agassiz Rock and the Yosemite Falls, from Union Point, 1878-81.
Albumen print.

At twenty-one, Carleton Watkins left New York and headed out to California to make his fortune.

After working as a daguerreotype operator in San Jose, he established his own practice and
soon made his first visit to the Yosemite Valley.

There he made thirty mammoth plate and one hundred stereograph views that were among the
first photographs of Yosemite seen in the East.

Partly on the strength of Watkins's photographs, President Abraham Lincoln signed the 1864 bill
that declared the valley inviolable, thus paving the way for the National Parks system.

In 1865 Watkins became official photographer for the California State Geological Survey. He
opened his own Yosemite Art Gallery in San Francisco two years later.

The walls were lined with 18 x 22-inch prints in black walnut frames with gilt-edged mats.
Such elegant presentation did not come cheap, and Watkins was accused of charging exorbitant
prices.

A poor businessman, he declared bankruptcy in 1874 and his negatives and gallery were sold to
photographer Isaiah Taber, who began to publish Watkins’s images under his own name.

Watkins, however, continued to photograph, and seven years later became manager of the
Yosemite Art Gallery, then under different ownership.

The San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed the contents of his studio, which he
had intended to preserve at Stanford University.

- The Getty Museum

Viewers around the country were entranced by Watkins' photographs. Ralph Waldo Emerson
declared that his images of the massive sequoia, Grizzly Giant, "made the tree possible," for
these photographs provided evidence of its existence.

The landscape painter, Albert Bierstadt, saw Watkins' photographs at the Goupil Gallery in New
York in 1862, purchased numerous works, and was inspired by them to visit the Yosemite
Valley.

- National Gallery of Art

As specimens of the photographic art they are unequaled. The views are...indescribably unique
and beautiful. Nothing in the way of landscapes can be more impressive.

Exhibition review of Yosemite Valley photographs by Carleton Watkins at Goupil Gallery, New York, The New York Times, 1862

Carleton Watkins, Buckeye Tree, California,1872-78. Albumen print.

Carleton Watkins, Hanging [Profile] Rock, Echo Canyon, Utah, 1873-74. Albumen print.

Carleton Watkins, Cape Horn near Celilo, 1867. Albumen print.

Carleton Watkins, Cape Horn, Columbia River, 1867. Albumen print.

Hired by the Oregon Steam Company, Watkins departed in July 1867 on an expedition up the
Willamette and Columbia Rivers to photograph their scenic beauty as well as the company's
railways, which ran along unnavigable stretches of the rivers.

The breathtaking scenery of the Columbia Gorge, considered second only to that of Yosemite,
provided Watkins with many fresh subjects for his new gallery.

. The Columbia River series, which consists of 60 large negatives and 136 stereographs taken
along the route upriver to Cape Horn, represents a high point in Watkins' career.

In addition to panoramas, he made photographs documenting subjects from different points of
view in order to give viewers the sense that they too were traveling along the river.

- National Gallery of Art

Carleton Watkins, Mendocino River from the Rancherie, Mendocino Co., California, 1863-68
Albumen print.

Carleton Watkins, The Golden Gate from Telegraph Hill,1868. Albumen print.

Carleton Watkins, The Wreck of the Viscata,1868. Albumen print.

Carleton Watkins, City Front from Rincon Hill in 1860. Albumen print.

Although the foreground is a velvety black, the buildings receding behind the New York Grocery
& Liquor Store become progressively lighter towards the horizon.

The setting sun bathes the facades in light, showing that Carleton Watkins made this exposure
late in the afternoon.

He took the picture near the present-day anchor of the Bay Bridge, on the east side of the San
Francisco peninsula.

- The Getty Museum

Carleton Watkins, Yo Semite Falls. 2630 ft., 1861. Glass stereograph.

STEREOGRAPH

A pair of matched but slightly offset photographs mounted on a single support of either glass or
heavy cardboard, popular from the late 1850s onward.

Viewed through a stereoscope, they give the illusion of a single three-dimensional image.

This stereograph demonstrates Carleton Watkins's preoccupation with the foreground as a
defining element of space in his landscape photographs.

Although Yosemite Falls is the principal subject, the strongly vertical trees and the cabin with its
diagonal striping of sunlight and shadow dominate the image.

Nevertheless, the falls are perfectly framed between the trees just above the cabin, their
distance evident in the severe shift in tone between the area of the foreground and the
mountains.

When viewed through the stereoscope viewer, which gives a three-dimensional effect, the
contrast between the planes of focus becomes even more apparent.

- The Getty Museum

Carleton Watkins, Yosemite Falls, View from the Bottom,1878-81. Albumen print.

Carleton Watkins, Yosemite Falls (River View), 1861. Albumen print.

Carleton Watkins, Mirror view of El Capitan, 1872. Albumen print.

Carleton Watkins, Washington Column, 2052 ft., Yosemite,1872. Albumen print.

ANSEL ADAMS
(1902 - 1984)

Ansel Adams, Clearing Winter Storm, 1937. Gelatin silver print.

Ansel Adams, Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, 1960. Gsp.

Ansel Adams, El Capitan, Yosemite, n.d. Gsp.

Ansel Adams, Gate of the Valley, Yosemite National Park, California, n.d. Gsp.

Ansel Adams, Oak Tree, Snowstorm, Yosemite National Park, California, 1948. Gsp.

Ansel Adams, Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake
Denali National Park, Alaska, 1947. Gsp.

Ansel Adams, The Tetons - Snake River, Wyoming, 1942. Gsp.

Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941. Gsp.

Ansel Adams, Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada, from Lone Pine, California, 1944. Gsp.

Ansel Adams, Mount Williamson - the Sierra Nevada, 1945. Gsp.

Ansel Adams, Evening Cloud, Ellery Lake, Sierra Nevada, California. n.d. Gsp.

Ansel Adams, Aspens, Northern New Mexico, 1958. Gsp.

EDWARD WESTON
(1886 - 1958)

Edward Weston, Dunes, Oceno, 1936. Gsp.

Edward Weston, Dunes, Oceano, 1936, Gsp.

Edward Weston, Point Lobos, 1936, Gsp.

THE WESTERN LANDSCAPE IN AMERICAN FILM

JOHN FORD

Stagecoach 1939

My Darling Clementine 1946

3 Godfathers 1948

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon 1949

The Searchers 1956

ANTHONY MANN

Winchester ‘73 1950

Bend of the River 1952

The Naked Spur 1953

The Far Country 1954

The Man from Laramie 1955

HOWARD HAWKS

Red River 1948

JOHN STURGES

Bad Day at Black Rock 1955

Gunfight at the OK Corrall 1957

SAM PECKINPAH

Ride the High Country 1962

The Wild Bunch 1969

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid 1973

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