Landscapes of California and America - a catalogue

For those who enjoy the paintings of the Californian and American landscape art, you can review many landscapes of the 19th and early 20th century by various artists - including Edgar Payne (1883-1947) - in this auction catalogue by John Moran Auctioneers.  

The painting is by Percy Gray

"A Lane Of Eucalyptus Trees," 1924

20 x 14" Watercolor on paper board under plexiglass

The Digital Catalogue can be found on issuu. It can even be downloaded!

Highlights include works by Edgar Alwin Payne, Percy Gray, Jack Wilkinson Smith, Ben Abril, Millard Sheets, Jessie Arms Botke, William J. McCloskey, and many more

The auction was held on Tuesday - so you can even find out what sold and for how much.

It's a good guide to what people like - and what they're prepared to pay for a landscape (or other fine art) or an investment.

I liked in particular the paintings by LeConte Stewart (1891 - 1990) and Percy Gray (1869-1952) - who are names new to me. One of Gray's paintings is on the cover of the catalogue.

It was also wonderful to see paintings of some of the places I've seen in person on my travels in the USA in 2006.

Stanley Spencer: Visionary Painter of the Natural World

Stanley Spencer was a rather good landscape artist.

'Cliveden Woods' by Spencer, familiar #Cookham scene in our current exhibition. @VisitThamesCoUk @AlongTheThames pic.twitter.com/aTX4R0vEoH

— The Spencer Gallery (@SpencerCookham) 8 May 2016

I must get to the Stanley Spencer Gallery at Cookham. Here's the description of the current exhibition

Stanley Spencer: Visionary Painter of the Natural World
24th March to 31st October 2016

Glorious depictions of the natural world, exploring Spencer's consummate skill in a series of exquisitely executed flower paintings, garden vistas and landscapes. Figurative and spiritual scenes amongst these wonderful paintings movingly remind us of the visionary element pervading all of Spencer's work.

Forest, Field & Sky: Art out of Nature

Tomorrow the BBC will broadcast a programme about Forest, Field & Sky: Art out of Nature on BBC4 at 9pm.

It's about artists interact with the landscape to create and make artworks.

Dr James Fox takes a journey through six different landscapes across Britain, meeting artists whose work explores our relationship to the natural world.

From Andy Goldsworthy's beautiful stone sculptures to James Turrell's extraordinary sky spaces, this is a film about art made out of nature itself.

Featuring spectacular images of landscape and art, James travels from the furthest reaches of the Scottish coast and the farmlands of Cumbria to woods of north Wales.

In each location he marvels at how artists' interactions with the landscape have created a very different kind of modern art - and make us look again at the world around us.

There are two clips which you can view to see if this is the type of art which appeals to you. It certainly appeals to me!

They are James Turrell's Skyspace at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Excerpt - Sky Space by James Turrell at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

and David Nash's Ash Dome - which exists at a secret location! This 'living sculpture' of a perfect circle and dome made from 22 ash trees was planted as saplings in 1977. Over the last 40 years it has matured to create a dome centred on an otherwise empty plot in woodland "somewhere" in Snowdonia in North Wales. (David Nash lives in Blaenau Ffestiniog)

Cornell University have come up with instructions for how you can sculpt trees to make your own living dome

This is a link to an interview Real Living Art: A Conversation with David Nash by John Grande

Where can I see art in the countryside?

In addition, an interactive map has been created showing you places where you can see art.

Wildcard entries - Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year 2015

You too can be a Wild Card entry to the new Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year competition! Each of the heats are going to have places for 50 Wild Card entries.

All you have to do is:

• enter a heat as a Wild Card
• bring your own easel, canvas and materials
• come to one of the heats at National Trust properties around the country
• paint one of the landscapes in front of the judges

It's first come, first served - click on one of the below links to enter as a Wild Card for your preferred Heat:

• Heat 1: Waddesdon Manor, Bucks: Saturday 25th April
• Heat 2: ​Waddesdon Manor, Bucks: Sunday 26th April
• Heat 3: Trelissick Garden, Cornwall: Sunday 3rd May
• Heat 4: ​Trelissick Garden, Cornwall: Monday 4th May
• Heat 5: ​Lyme Park, Cheshire: Wednesday 27th May
• Heat 6: Lyme Park, Cheshire: Thursday 28th May

You never know - you might impress the judges and win the opportunity to go through to the semi-final!

If you did you could win the prize of a £10,000 commission for the National Trust's permanent collection and become Sky Art Landscape Artist of the Year 2015.

The Wild Card is open to artists who previously applied and were unsuccessful as well as artists who didn't apply.

For full terms and conditions and to apply to become a Wild Card, pick your heat and enter via www.sky.com/tv/show/landscape/article/wild-card

Art Competition: £10,000 prize for Landscape Artists

Read my blog post about the Call for Entries for the Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year 2015 If you're interested in:

• winning a £10,000 landscape art commission from the National Trust
• participating in an art competition which has a number of knockout rounds prior to the final; and
• creating landscape art on television - while Sky Arts film you for a television programme about their brand new competition to find the Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year 2015!

Image for the Landscape Artist of the Year 2015 competition on Sky Arts

In summary you need to:

• be aged 16+
• resident in the UK, Republic of Ireland, Isle of Man or Channel Islands for one year or longer on 2nd February 2015
• be a competent landscape artist in any of the following media Watercolour, Oil Paints, Pencil, Charcoal, Pastel, Acrylic, Alkyds, Mixed Media (including collage) and "Other". Note sculpture or any form of digital media is NOT allowed
• complete and submit and online application form by 12pm (midday) on Friday 20th March 2015 together with images of landscape art completed in the last five years
• not mind being filmed for television while you paint!

BBC4 Tales of Winter: The Art of Snow and Ice

Tonight, BBC4 is repeating an excellent programme Tales of Winter: The Art of Snow and Ice which explores how the onset of winter has been depicted by Western painters across the centuries. The programme will be available on BBC iPlayer shortly after it is broadcast at 7.30-9.00pm.

If  you don't live in the UK and would still like to see it, I suggest you take a peek at YouTube and view the same programme in six films of 10 minutes.

The programme comprises several commentators, many of whom are wrapped up warmly and clutching reproductions of the paintings as they revisit places the artist knew and review how similar the painting is to what's there today. I'm a complete sucker for programmes like this and I'll definitely be watching!

Tales of Winter - The Art of Snow and Ice

• Part 1 of 6 covering the very cold winters in the 16th century - including Brueghel's painting of Hunters in the Snow - the first ever painting of a landscape under snow - with comments by Grayson Perry and Jonathan Jones and a cartoon based on it by Peter Brookes

A Frost Fair on the Thames at Temple Stairs (c. 1684) by Abraham Danielsz Hondius (Abraham de Hondt)

• Part 2 of 6 - this features paintings of London and the Thames during the Little Ice Age
• Part 3 of 6 - covers Jacques-Louis David's paintings of Napoleon's campaign in the Alps and The Abbey in the Oakwood by Caspar David Friedrich and the impact of winter in the Alps on John Ruskin - and his paintings of the glaciers 

The Abbey in the Oakwood by Caspar David Friedrich

• Part 4 of 6 - continues with 
• Ruskin's painting of waterfalls including "Le Cascade de la Folie, Chamonix" 
• before moving on to the Impressionists' absorption with the colour of the snow effect "the illusive colour of the shadows in snow". The programme visits Vetheuil where Claude Monet lives when impoverished and where his wife became severely ill. It shows you the house he lived in when he had to choose between paint or medicine for his wife. 
• It also include paintings of winter by the American Impressionist  painter Childe Hassam.  
• Next it considers what is probably the first ever photograph of falling snow - "Winter, 5th Avenue" (1893) by Alfred Steiglitz and other photographs of "The Terminal", "The Flat Iron Building" and "The City of Ambitions"
• Part 5 of 6 - focuses the contrast between rural and urban winters. Giovanni Segantini painted the Swiss mountains in all seasons including winter.  George Bellows, one of the Ashcan painters, paints the raw, bitter, cruel New York winter in The Lone Tenement and John Nash, a  Royal Academician and serving solider fighting in the Artist Rifles Batallion, paints the bitter winters of the First World War

Death (1898-99) by Giovanni Segantini (1858 – 1899)

The Lone Tenement (1909) by George Bellows (1882 - 1925)

Over the Top - 1st Artists' Rifles at Marcoing, 30th December 1917 by John Nash

• Part 6 of 6 looks at the work of Nevinson and highlights the pla ing of a football game in winter and a wonderful photograph of Stonehenge under snow by Bill Brandt while Don McCullin comments on what's involved in photography in winter.

I guess my only criticism of it is it presents a curiously Western European/American view of landscape painting in winter - and misses out the very significant contributions made by the Scandinavians, Eastern Europeans, Russians and Canadians.

The view from Richmond Hill

One of the most famous views in the history of landscape painting is "The View from Richmond Hill". In the last it was liked so much that it's now the only view in the UK which is specifically protected by an Act of Parliament.

I've created a small website about it - The View from Richmond Hill - for those who want to know exactly where it is and what the view looks like - and some more about the artists associated with painting the view from the hill e.g.

• Sir Joshua Reynolds whose home (Wick House on Richmond Hill) has this view, or 
• JMW Turner who painted it several time or 
• Jasper Francis Cropsey, the American landscape painter (Hudson River School) whose painting of the View of Richmond Hill recently sold at Bonhams in New York. Cropsey later produced a massive painting of the same view - some eight feet wide - based on this study (and presumably others he made at the same time).  This study is principally focused on the features of the landscape and doesn't have the figures seen in the later painting.

View of Richmond Hill - Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900)
previously exhibited as Study for Richmond Hill in the Summer of 1862
oil on canvas 12 1/2 x 20 1/2in
sold 21st May 2014 for $50,000 at Bonhams

Back in 2010 I visited to see what all the fuss was about. Like many such views I've visited in the past - the trees have grown!

I found it very tricky to get a place where you got a decent view of the bend in the river without running into other problems - like trees obscuring the view.

This is my "failed" photographic view. It's a classic one - with the horizon bisecting the image! You can at least see the river and the fact it has a curve and an island and some boats on it - plus some water meadows next to it!

The view from Richmond Hill - in 2010

This local photographer has had a go at showing us what is the magic of this place in this video

I'm thinking maybe a visit in winter when there are no leaves might prove more fruitful - although it would appear this brings different challenges