Glenn Hirsch, Instructor

Landscape Color

Aerial Perspective

The Energy of Trees

landscape painting

the depiction of natural scenery in a wide view – with elements arranged into a coherent composition. Landscape views may be entirely imaginary or observed from reality.

1400s-1500s European Renaissance

Landscape painting was established as a setting for human activity, often expressed in a religious or mythical subject.

New techniques: Perspective and effects of light to create the feeling of “space” and “distance.”

The idea that a painting is not a flat piece of paper but a “window” to see the world beyond.

Rome, c. 60 BC Rogier van der Weyden 1450

Before the Renaissance After the Renaissance

Rogier van der Weyden 1450 Leonardo da Vinci 1503

1500s-1600s Dutch landscape painting

With the disappearance of religious painting in a Protestant society, Dutch artists painted a style of panoramic landscape with small figures using a high aerial viewpoint.

Then in the 1600s, painters like Rembrandt and Vermeer further developed subtle realist techniques for depicting light and weather.

The word "landscape" comes from the Dutch landschap @ 1600.

Pieter Bruegel1565

Rembrandt1630

Aert van der Neer 1647

1700s

With the rise of capitalism in Europe, artists like Thomas Gainsborough painted landscapes depicting the estates of landowners – with an emphasis on the landscape as a park or “utopia.”

Thomas Gainsborough 1750

1800s-1860s

Spirituality re-entered European landscape in the early 1800s with Romanticism in which Nature is a wild, untamed and mysterious force – providing a direct personal connection with the spirit (similar in many ways to the way people today find spiritual connection in backpacking).

A secular faith in the spiritual benefits to be gained from the contemplation of natural beauty.

Caspar David Friedrich 1820

Albert Bierstadt 1868

1860-1900 Impressionism

These artists made landscape the main source of stylistic innovation in color and composition:

•direct observation•greater variety of color •simplification of shapes to create movement for the eye

Camille Corot 1847Oil sketch en plein air

Jules Bastien-Lepage 1872

Berthe Morisot

Childe Hassam

Monet

Van Gogh

1900-1980 – Modernism: Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism

These artists abandoned realism and used Nature as an inspiration for an endless variety of shape as catalyst for the invention of new color combinations from the imagination.

Surrealists like Dali saw landscapes as ‘dreamscape.’

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

Salvador Dali

Wayne Thiebaud

Richard Diebenkorn

Eddie Fitzgerald

Landscape

Color

Emily Luthra

Emily Luthra

Jessica Riano

Maeve Crogan

Selden Gile

Gerhard Richter Tom Bullard

Landscape

Composition

Cropping –

Shapes go off theedge of the page

Winslow Homer

Staging –

Arranging the shapes to tell a story

A low horizon emphasizes the freedom of the sky

Van Gogh

“Big Sky”

(Emil Nolde, watercolor)

Paul Cezanne, 1901

Abstracting –

Simplifying shape to create movement

Landscape

Light

the ‘true color’ of the house doesn’t exist independently of the light

Claude Monet

spiritual

Joseph Turner

Alphonse Mucha

Night, myth and dream

Twilight the boundary between consciousness and dreams

Caspar David Friedrich

atmospheric

aerialperspective

as objects recede in a landscape space, they appear lighter, duller, cooler

aerial perspective

– things far away look duller and lighter compared to the foreground

Watercolor by Winslow Homerphotograph

Joseph Turner

Gustave Guillaumet

Aerial perspective is not a ‘rule’ it’s a ‘recipe’ to use or not to use

Student work

TREES

To see trees you look up

Kevin Dame

To see trees you look

down

Trees thrust out of the ground

Maeve Crogan

Trees have energy and gesture

Josep Masriera

Watercolor by Winslow Homer

tree technique

trees have figurative gesture

Trees cast a shadow on the ground beneath them

Leaves cluster in branches

Each branch has a top

and a bottom

Sunlight also comes through the branches (lit from behind)

you can illustrate the leaves with precise drawing carefully colored-in

John Singer Sargent

Or you can suggest the leaves with improvised wet-in-wet blobs of color

John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent

Impasto paintingusing a palette knife

Smearing, like butter on toast

Flat, minimal and smooth

Double-Loading and SMEARING 2 COLORS TOGETHER

hard edged PATTERNS

Thin LINES

Press and lift, use the TENSION of the blade

SCRATCHING and scraping

Change the PRESSURE of your hand, create thick and thin in flowing motion

Eddie Fitzgerald

detail

detail

detail

detail

Next week: Architectural Space

Daniel Rabier

Daniel Rabier

Andy Slaton