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.

American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School

Cover of the exhibition catalogue re. American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School

American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School

You can download this catalogue of the exhibition American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition was held between 4th October 1987 and 3rd January 1999.

The reproduction qualities of the pdf copy available for download on the Metropolitan Museum of Art website is very good.

You won't find it by including the title in the websites' search facilty. Instead you need to know to go to their MetPublications website

The title is out of print hence why the Met is making it available online.  You can also:

• Read online
• Print on Demand (although you might want to think twice about this given that the book is 348 pages!)

About the exhibition

Prior to 1987, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has focused on individual artists when mounting major retrospectives and had highlighted prominent American artists in doing so.

This exhibition was the first time a major retrospective had been undertaken of an important school of art unique to the USA. The book and the exhibition represented a summary of the (then) current scholarship relating to the Hudson River School.

The exhibition - and the catalogue - brought together some of the finest and most historically important of the paintings associated with the School.  It also provided a survey of the work of the various artists involved with the School.

Prior to this exhibition, there had been three initiatives by museums in the USA to highlight the art, scope and role of the Hudson River School

• 1917 - the Museum had held a much smaller exhibition - Paintings of the Hudson River School;
• 1945 - the Art Institute of Chicago mounted the The Hudson River School and the Early American Landscape Tradition exhibition
• 1949 - The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston published a book about M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Paintings, 1815–1865 

The Hudson River School

The Hudson River School was America's first true artistic fraternity. Its name was coined to identify a group of New York City-based landscape painters that emerged about 1850 under the influence of the English émigré Thomas Cole (1801–1848) and flourished until about the time of the Centennial.

This is the webpage for the Hudson River School in the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History on the Met's website

The Art of Snow and Ice

I missed Tales of Winter: The Art of Snow and Ice yesterday and will be catching up on iPlayer Click the link in the title to access it - for all those who can access iPlayer - I ask no questions as to how!;)

Winter was not always beautiful. Until Pieter Bruegel painted Hunters in the Snow, the long bitter months had never been transformed into a thing of beauty. This documentary charts how mankind's ever-changing struggle with winter has been reflected in western art throughout the ages, resulting in images that are now amongst the greatest paintings of all time. With contributions from Grayson Perry, Will Self, Don McCullin and many others, the film takes an eclectic group of people from all walks of life out into the cold to reflect on the paintings that have come to define the art of snow and ice.
BBC - Tales of Winter: The Art of Snow and Ice

[UPDATE: I've now watched it and it's excellent!  It's available on iPlayer until 1:29AM Fri, 1 Feb 2013]

Hunters in the Snow / Jagers in de sneeuw (1565) by Pieter Bruegel (Brueghel) the Elder
oil on oak panel | 117 × 162 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

Bruegel's painting is part of a series of six paintings to reflect different seasons of the year - of which only five survive.

This painting represents the bleak and yet beautiful winter countryside in January.  Both hunters and dogs enliven the scene despite being obvious weary and downcast by a hunt which has obviously produced little.  In the background is a scene of snow and ice and that peculiar green grey sky which only appears in the depths of winter.  The trees are skeletal and any leaves are shrivelled and dried out in the cold.  The people and animals are all dark colours and are not much more than shapes against the cold background.

It's odd how a smidgen of orange draws our eye to the side of the painting and the roaring fire outside the inn - and I always wonder why it's outside and what they are doing.  On the one hand they might be preparing food - on the other do they really need a fire burning like that to prepare food?

When we used to have this a reproduction of this painting at school I was always preoccupied with working out what all the tiny people were up to - such as the woman towing another on a sled in the bottom right hand corner.

For me Breugel's paintings always demonstrate how much more we look at countryside when it includes people who are doing things - and not just there to give a sense of scale.

Frost Fair on the Thames 1683 #1

There are a number of paintings and etchings of Frost Fairs on the River Thames and elsewhere.  This painting is of the celebrated frost fair which occurred in the winter of 1683–84.   Titled Frost Fair on the Thames, with Old London Bridge in the distance, it was painted by an unknown artist in 1685 and is owned by the Yale Centre for British Art.

I've also found an etching of the same scene - also of unknown origin - but it does identify a number of the subjects in the scene.  You can find more versions at The 1683-4 frost fair

Looking at both the painting and engraving makes me wonder why more people don't paint accounts of contemporaneous events today - they're such wonderful records of both time and place!

Frost fair 1683-4

The temperature dropped severely at the beginning of December 1683.  The River Thames froze and remained frozen for nine weeks until early February 1684.   A road developed - called "Temple Street" between Temple Steps on the north bank of the Thames and Southwark on the south bank.  This road is what is portrayed in both painting and etching.  Booths and stalls developed along Temple Street to serve the people passing to and fro across the frozen river - and doubtless sight-seeing too!

John Evelyn, the diarist wrote, 

Coaches plied from Westminster to the Temple, and from several other stairs too and fro, as in the streets; sleds, sliding with skeetes, a bull-baiting, horse and coach races, puppet plays and interludes, cooks, tipling and other lewd places, so that it seemed to be a bacchanalian triumph, or carnival on the water.London: Portrait of a City. Hudson, Roger (1998). The Folio Society. 

Frost Fair on the Thames, with Old London Bridge in the distance (1685)
unknown artist, 17th century, British;
Formerly attributed to Jan Wyck, ca. 1645-1700, Dutch, active in Britain (from about 1664)
Oil on canvas | 25 1/4 x 30 1/4 inches (64.1 x 76.8 cm)
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

I've taken the liberty of lightening the painting slightly - on the basis I don't believe any artist paints a scene of this sort do that it's dark - even if it has darkened with age.  On the Yale website, there is a fascinating set of images of the painting as it used to be and following treatment.

I also found an engraving of the exact same scene on Wikipedia.  I've cropped a large version of it to show more details included by the artist in the foreground.  Below this is the text at the bottom of the picture which tells you about all the things you can see in the engraving - and the painting! It seems very likely that the painting is based on this engraving.

The National Portrait Gallery identifies William Faithorne (1616 – 1691), English painter and engraver as the probably source of the engraving - he had a shop near Temple Bar.

The Thames Frost Fair, 1683
probably by William Faithorne, published by William Warter
line engraving, circa 1684
15 in. x 18 7/8 in. (380 mm x 480 mm) paper size

Crop of foreground of the Engraving of the Frost Fair 1683

The text at the top states

AN

Exact and lively Mapp

or

REPRESENTATION

Of Booths and all the varieties of showes and

Humours upon the ICE on the River of

THAMES by LONDON

During that memorable Frost in the 35th yeare

of the Reigne of his Sacred Maty

King CHARLES the 2d

ANNO Dni MDCLXXXIII.

With an Alphabetical Explanation of the

most remarkeable Figures

The text at the bottom provides an explanation of the alphabetical annotations

The Temple Staires with People goeing upon the Ice to Temple Street A.
The Duke of Yorke's Coffee house B.
The Tory Booth C.
The Booth with a Phoenix on it and Insured as long as the Foundation Stand D.
The Roast Beefe Booth E.
The halfe way house F.
The Beare garden Shire Booth G.
The Musick Booth H.
The Printing Booth I.
The Lottery Booth K.
The Horne Tavern Booth L.
The Temple garden with Crowds of People looking over the wall M.
The Boat drawne with a Hors N.
The Drum Boat O.
the Boat drawne upon wheeles P.
the Bull baiting Q.
The Chair sliding in the Ring R.
The Boyes Sliding S.
The Nine Pinn Playing T.
The sliding on Scates V.
The sledge drawing Coales from the other side of the Thames W.
The Boyes climbing upon the Tree in the Temple garden to see ye Bull Baiting X.
The Toy Shopps Y.
London Bridge Z.
Source for text: visual inspection, and verified from Bentley's Miscellany, Volume 9 by Charles Dickens, William Harrison Ainsworth, Albert Smith; publisher: Richard Bentley; year: 1841; page 133, footnote 1.

In the background is the Old London Bridge which was started in 1176 and completed in 1212.  Over the years properties were built on top of it (see below an etching of it just three years earlier).  The bridge and its buildings survived the great fire of 1666 due to a fire break at the northern end caused by a previous fire.

Drawing of London Bridge from a 1682 London MapSurveyed by: Morgan, William, d. 1690. Published: London, London Topographical Society, 1904

To the south of the Bridge was a gate where the heads of those executed for treason used to be put on spikes - with the head of William Wallace being the first to appear on the gate, in 1305.  This practice stopped in 1660 - just 25 years before this painting.

The church in the background of the frost fair painting is Southwark Cathedral which lies just to the west of London Bridge.  

The Limbourg Brothers - and "September"

Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry
Folio 8, verso: September
by the Limbourg Brothers

I always think it's a pity that we don't see more present day painters painting the months of the year.  Recording the changes in the landscape - particularly where farming is involved - generates a real understanding of the land and a much better sense of place.

You can find out more about the Limbourg Brothers in this fascinating video - which is some 53 minutes in length.  [NOW DISAPPEARED - SEE SUBSTITUTE AT END] So grab a hot drink and find a compfy chair.....

• It shows how the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry came to public attention.
  
  In 1948 the American photo journal Life published the twelve calender miniatures from the manuscript, which roused an enormous public interest.

• It displays the actual book which contains these incredibly important miniature paintings of the medieval times
• Authoritative experts explain the importance of the paintings and the way in which the Limbourg Brothers worked and created innovation in painting

Watch and enjoy!

UPDATE: This is a video which features the months within the book

This video is about the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2010 (which is 11 minutes long)

Winslow Homer's Studio at Prout Neck

This is a slideshow of photos of Winslow Homer's Studio at Prout Neck in Maine - plus a Vanity fair article on the studio and his painting habits  It would seem Winslow Homer was pretty smart as to the timing of paintings to satisfy the seasonality of people's interests

West Point, Prout's Neck (1910) by Winslow Homer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

It looks as if tours of the studio where he settled in 1883 are about to start.  This is an extract from the Portland Museum of Art's website relating to The Year of Winslow Homer

Walk in Winslow Homer's footsteps.
The Portland Museum of Art is pleased to offer tours to this National Historic Landmark beginning on September 25.
Reservation details »

In addition, the Museum is having an exhibition Homer's Prouts Neck Home (22 September - 30 December 2012)

To celebrate the opening of the newly renovated Winslow Homer Studio at Prouts Neck, the Portland Museum of Art presents Weatherbeaten: Winslow Homer and Maine. This extraordinary exhibition showcases 38 masterpieces that the great American artist Winslow Homer (1836-1910) created during the final decades of his life, when he lived and worked in Maine.

For more about Winslow Homer see my website - About Winslow Homer - American Artist

Painting the Thames: Jan Siberechts

This week, in honour of the River Pageant which took place on Sunday, I'm doing posts about artists who have painted views of the River Thames.

Landscape with Rainbow, Henley-on-Thames c.1690 by Jan Siberechts
Oil on canvas, 82,5 x 103 cm
Tate Gallery, London

The first artist is Jan Siberechts and I chose him because he painted the Thames near Henley on Thames - which is an area less well know to those who only think of Thames in relation to London.  It's also a town which is associated with the Henley Royal Regatta which is held each year in July.

Siberechts was a Flemish landscape painter who was born in Antwerp in 1627.  In 1672, in his 40s, he emigrated to England and died in London in 1703.

His earlier landscape paintings tend to depict a small detailed aspect of a landscape.  His later paintings are typically more topographical in nature with sweeping views.

This particular riverscape painting of the Thames has been done from an elevated slope above the flood plain of the River Thames.  It purports to be a realistic painting of the scene and is one of the most important landscape paintings in the collection on Tate Britain.

• the painting appears to present a realistic portrayal of the profile of the natural landscape of this place.  However the true reality is that the view has been embellished and the perspective has been distorted.  (I did my usual Streetview search for the view - and it's not one which is at all easy to spot.  That might because of the growth of vegetation and development of buildings)
• on the right is the village of Henley on Thames (the church and bridge are still there, although the bridge has been replaced - the current five arched Henley Bridge across the river was built in 1786 -and the steep slopes in the background of the painting have disappeared!)
• the background portrays a steep slope up from the river - which exists - but not quite so close as indicated in the painting
• the foreground has cows and sheep eating the pasture of the lush grass meadows next to the river
• on the left there is a cargo boat.  There is another on the main river next to Henley.  These both  reflect the importance of the river's role in carrying goods between different centres of population and the countryside.  The boat on the left looks like it's on another river but judging by the map it seems very likely it's parked up.
• the shadow of storm clouds cover parts of the landscape while bright sunlight bathes Henley in a golden glow
• One of the unique aspects of this painting is that it's one of the few ever painted which appears to depict a convincing rainbow - although I'm not sure it's in the right place relative to the sunlight and rain.  I think it should be further to the left.  What do you think?

It's possible that the painting was commissioned by a landowner of one of the large houses built between Remenham Wood and the River, situated off White Hill above the town.  It's unlikely that any of the current houses were the one in question but it appears it may have become established as a a vantage point for the wealthy in the seventeenth century.

In contrast to the Flemish landscape painting of his homeland, England offers hills and slopes to a much greater degree and consequently, more components within a landscape to illustrate depth.  It possible explains why Flemish landscapes tend to focus on one aspect of the landscape while Flemish painters who move away to other countries start to depict larger views of the landscape.

This is a link to another painting by Siberechts - Henley-on-Thames from the Wargrave Road, Oxfordshire which you can see at the River & Rowing Museum on the banks of the Thames at Henley.

Links:

• Tate Museum - Landscape with Rainbow, Henley-on-Thames
• Web Museum - Landscape with Rainbow, Henley-on-Thames
• Wikipaintings - Landscape with Rainbow, Henley-on-Thames 
• Wikimedia - Landscape with Rainbow, Henley-on-Thames

Painting a River Pageant

Today, on the River Thames in the centre of London, crowds will see the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant.  It's part of the official celebrations on this festive weekend which marks the 60th anniversary of the Queen's accession to the throne of England.  There are some who are saying we've seen nothing like this in 350 years - in terms of the nature of the event and the number of vessels on the Thames.

Westminster Bridge from the north on Lord Mayor's Day (1746)
Oil on canvas, 96 x 137.5 cm
Location: Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A history of river pageants

Previous monarchs and the City of London have used the River Thames for spectacular royal celebrations and pageants including:

• Anne Boleyn's coronation:  The coronation procession from Greenwich to the Tower of London on 29 May 1533 was a grand spectacle

Fifty barges of the London livery companies, decorated with banners and draped in gold cloth, accompanied the lavishly apparelled barges of the Lord Mayor and Crown, with a further 250 vessels forming an impressive armada.

• On 23 August 1662, King Charles II and Queen Catherine of Braganza were greeted by an extravagant pageant involving the twelve livery companies on their arrival at Whitehall from Hampton Court
• on 17 July 1717 a musical concert was held on the River Thames for King George I and his court.  Handel was commissioned to write 'Water Music', for wind and strings.

On Wednesday Evening… the King took Water at Whitehall in an open Barge… and went up River towards Chelsea. Many other Barges with Persons of Quality attended, and so great a Number of Boats, that the whole River in a manner was cover’d; a City Company’s Barge was employ’d for the Musick, wherein were 50 instruments of all sorts, who play’d all the Way from Lambeth… the finest Symphonies compos’d express for this Occasion by Mr. Hendel; which his Majesty liked so well that he caus’d it to be plaid over three times in the going and returning.
The Daily Courant

Painting river pageants

In terms of paintings of pageants on the River Thames, Canaletto is the probably most well known artist.

I've tried working out how Canaletto would have created his paintings of river pageants.  This one in particular perplexes me.  While his perspective may be fine, he's not renowned for getting his proportions right or even painting things where they are actually are!

For example, the river looks too wide.  However, at the time it was painted the River Thames was a lot wider than it is today - it's been channelled and an Embankment built since then

But how do you tackle an aerial perspective of a view of the Thames before there was any means of being up in the air?  I haven't got a clue - any ideas?

If it was painted from a bridge - which bridge?  The location of the painter seems to be the vicinity of the Hungerford Rail Bridge and the current Golden Jubilee Footbridges - but so far as I'm aware they weren't there at the time.

So where was he painting from?  Or is it completely from his imagination?

The Web Gallery of Art provides an explanation of the painting London: Westminster Bridge from the North on Lord Mayor's Day

In this picture he combines a view of its whole span with a depiction of festivities, which, although tamer than the Venetian spectacles he generally painted, partially recall them. The celebrations accompanied the appointment of the new Lord Mayor of London. The largest City Barge is shown taking him to Westminster Hall, by the Abbey at the right, where he will be sworn in. The prominent building on the horizon to the left of it is St John's Church, Smith Square, and over on the other side of the river is Lambeth Palace, the London home of the Archbishop of Canterbury. All the other spectacular barges are those of the different city guilds (Skinners, Goldsmiths, Fishmongers, Clothworkers, Vinters, Merchant Taylors, Mercers and Dyers); a number of them are firing salutes to honour the Mayor. In order to encapsulate all of this activity within such a broad panorama Canaletto has adopted an imaginary vantage point high above the Thames.

Westminster Bridge

One of the things which I didn't know is that the Westminster Bridge in the painting was relatively new at the time - and is not the one which is there today.  The first bridge opened in 1750 - some 3 years before this painting was painted.  However it was troubled by subsidence and had to be replaced in the nineteenth century and a new cast iron bridge was opened in 1862.

Below you can see the very famous painting by Canaletto - painted while the first Westminster Bridge was being constructed

London: Seen Through an Arch of Westminster Bridge (1747) by Canaletto
oil on canvas, 57 x 95 cm
Location: Syon House, Middlesex

Painting a River Pageant today

I wonder who's going to be out there today collecting material and generating sketches and studies for painting the pageant?  Who's the modern day Canaletto of figurative paintings of the River Thames?  Do we have one?

It did occur to me that various painters might have a go at painting the River Pageant today.  I expect there might be members of the Wapping Group out on the banks of the Thames somewhere attempting to paint today.

I know I had planned to go down to the River today - but that was before the rain!

It rained on the Coronation Day in 1953 - and it's raining again today (as in I couldn't see Canary Wharf at all this morning - which means very low rain clouds along the Thames!).  Which means my planned vantage point is going to be overrun with people trying to stay dry!

Which is partly why we went down to the Thames yesterday - while it was still dry and sunny - to see the Avenue of Sail - which comprises the sailing ships gathered  in the Pool of London either side of the Tower of London.

Billingsgate Fish Market in 1876
By Illustrated London News [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I tried sketching a couple of Thames Barges outside Old Billingsgate Market yesterday.  It was very weird to be seeing the type of vessels which might have visited the market in the past, moored right next to it.

Thames Sailing Barges at Billingsgate 2nd June 2012

It's the first time I've ever tried to sketch anything which moved constantly while sketching - from side to side and down (ther tide was going out) - and also while the owners were putting up the bunting for today's Pageant!  I'll come and leave a link here when I've posted it online.

If you had a go at painting the Pageant why not enter The Big Diamond Jubilee Art Challenge

Links:

• About Canaletto - Italian Painter
• previous posts on The Art of the Landscape:
• Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant and Canaletto's Thames Pageants #1
• Canaletto - Painting Britain

Paintings of water in March by Willard Metcalf

I've not come across Willard Metcalf (1858-1925) before.  He's an American artist who became renowned as a landscape painter.  Here are two landscapes by Metcalf for the Spring Landscape series.  They both include water and neatly demonstrate the contrasts in landscape scenes which occur in March in the USA.

The Frozen Pool, March (1909) by Willard Metcalf
66.04 x 73.66 cm

Brook in March (1923) by Willard Metcalf

Facts about Willard Metcalf

• Willard Metcalf studied art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Académie Julian, Paris.
• Metcalf was the first American painter to visit and paint at Giverny
• He's regarded as a painter within the American Impressionism movement
• He was one of the Ten American Painters who in 1897 seceded from the Society of American Artists - known as "The Ten"
• In 1893 he became a member of the American Watercolor Society, New York.
• He taught at the Art Students League, New York.
• He was involved with the artists' colony at Old Lyme, Connecticut.

The Spring Landscape series will continue next week with paintings of April.  Do send your recommendations to me by leaving a comment on this blog.

Film of Claude Monet painting waterlilies at Giverny

Below you can see a short film of the Impressionist painter Claude Monet at work on one of the paintings in his series of paintings of the nympheas (waterlilies) in the water garden at his home in Giverny in Normandy.



All plein air painters will wish to note:

• the white suit he is wearing - which has no marks from paint!  Monet is always wearing a suit when photographed while working.  We can only assume this is summer!
• the very large palette he is using
• the fact that the canvas is absolutely rock steady despite what is obviously a very blustery day.

Claude Monet (on right) in his garden in Giverny 
with an unidentified visitor in 1922
Source: Wikipedia

It's preceded by a very short film of him talking with a man in the Clos Normand (the flower garden) at Giverny.  If you study the background we can see that Monet was a cat person!

The general consensus is that Monet was probably filmed in the early twentieth century.  The colour of his beard suggests he's older than he was in the famous photograph of Monet by Nadar in 1899.  He looks more like the figure photographed in the water garden in 1922 (see photo on right).

Monet was an inveterate painter of gardens and always painted the gardens of the houses he lived in (see Making A Mark - Gardens in Art by Claude Monet for previous posts I've written on this topic).

The garden at Giverny is an example of Monet creating his very own place to paint - with a separate flower garden and water garden.

I came across the film (which was uploaded to YouTube by nickwallacesmith) on the Painting Perceptions blog.  This has a post with some useful observations about Monet's habits as a plein air painter.

Autumn Landscape: Paul Gauguin - By the Stream

By the Stream, Autumn (1885) - Paul Gauguin (1848 - 1903)

This is one of those paintings of which there are innumerable images on the Internet - but nothing which tells you much about it as a painting.  It's as if the hand-painted reproductions have taken over - and there's nothing left of the artist.

If the date of the painting is correct then it seems likely that this painting was painted by Paul Gauguin:

• three years after the stock market crash, in January 1882, which led to Gauguin deciding to take "the bull by the horns" and become a full-time artist
• three years after he participated in the seventh Impressionist Exhibition in March 1882
• after he left his Danish wife and family in Copenhagen (she had returned to her home) following the difficulties the marriage experienced after he decided to become an artist despite having a growing family.
• during a period (1883-1886) when he is struggling for financial survival and painted very little despite becoming an artist.  In fact, he probably painted as much when he was a stockbroker and Sunday painter.

It seems likely it was painted in France - possibly somewhere close to Dieppe where he spent the summer of 1885

"Forests, Rocks, Torrents" at the National Gallery, London

Forests, Rocks, Torrents at the National Gallery, London is currently displaying Norwegian and Swiss Landscapes from the Lunde Collection.

It includes 51 paintings from the private collection of Asbjørn Lunde, an American who has formed the world’s leading private collection of Norwegian and Swiss landscape paintings, primarily of the 19th century.  Most of the paintings have never been seen in the UK before, and are rarely on public view.

The idea behind the exhibition is to introduce a British audience - and, presumbaly, international visitors who visit the National Gallery - to landscapes by artists with whom they are less familiar. 

The 45 works displayed demonstrate the similarities of the Norwegian and Swiss traditions, but also the differences that climate, character, national temperament and political regimes impose on art.

Norway was engaged in a long struggle for freedom from Sweden and was poor, isolated and dependent for survival on its natural resources. Switzerland had been proudly independent for centuries and was prosperous, cosmopolitan and an early centre of industry.

How, the exhibition asks, are these realities implicated in their respective painting traditions?

The paintings are of two principal kinds:

• small-scale landscape oil sketches and 
• ‘finished’ paintings, some very large.

Landscape artists whose work is included in the exhibition include:

• Knud Andreassen Baade 1808-1879 Norwegian
• Peder Balke 1804-1887 Norwegian

One of the most extraordinary innovators of the 19th century was Peder Balke – but only now is he re-emerging as a master of Norwegian landscape. His 'Moonlit View of Stockholm', with the spires of the city silhouetted against a stormy night sky, shows the direct influence of Dahl’s views of Dresden. Balke’s scenes of storms at sea and shipwrecks on rocky coasts are for the most part small black and white improvisations, thinly painted on board covered in smooth white ground ('Seascape').

• Johan Christian Dahl 1788-1857, a Norwegian landscape painter, who was connected to the Norwegian romantic nationalism. He is often considered have been "the father of Norwegian landscape painting".^[1]

Dahl loved Norway with the passion of a patriot. From the start of his career, he committed himself to depicting his nation, but in 1818 he moved to Dresden and began a long friendship with the German artist Caspar David Friedrich. Soon he became famous among Norwegians as their esteemed master in exile. A pilgrimage to Dresden to learn from Dahl became a necessity for any artist travelling from Norway to Italy.

• Alexandre Calame 1810-1864 Swiss and father of the Swiss tradition of landscape painting

the artist widely regarded as the best Swiss landscapist is Alexandre Calame. His paintings owe much to the work of 17th-century Dutch landscape artists such as Jacob van Ruisdael in their portrayal of mountains, dense fir forests and raging torrents. Calame’s paintings of Lake Lucerne, such as 'Cliffs of Seelisberg, Lake Lucerne', are pervaded with a sense of nature’s grandeur and portray a harsh, majestic environment untouched by man. However, it was the theme of torrents that was central to Calame’s work, including the largest (98 x 138 cm) in the show, 'Mountain Torrent before a Storm'. This painting depicts the longest river in Switzerland, the Aare, and was acquired by Prince Yusupov of Russia.

• Johann Gottfried Steffan 1815-1905, Swiss - one of the most important Siss landscape painters.
  
• Caspar Wolf 1735-1783 a Swiss painter, known mostly for his dramatic paintings of Alps
• Thomas Fearnley 1803-1842, Norwegian
  

Dahl's greatest student was Thomas Fearnley, and it is with this Norwegian master that the Norwegian and Swiss landscape traditions intersect. In 1835, on his return from Italy, Fearnley spent time in Switzerland painting. The show includes three works painted in consecutive months during this period: 'Near Meiringen', 10 June 1835; 'The Mountain Wetterhorn', 18 July 1835; and 'Valley of Lauterbrunnen', 26 August 1835. Two years later Fearnley was in England (his grandfather was a Yorkshireman) painting in London and the Lake District. His visit to the Lake District gave rise to nature studies which still surprise with their originality ('Fisherman at Derwentwater', 2 August 1837).

Labrofossen ved Kongsberg (1837) by Thomas Fearnley

• François Diday (1802–1877), a Swiss landscape painter

The links are to sites which provide images by the artist but these are not necessarily in the exhibition. The exhibition can be founbd in the Sunley Room until 18th September, Daily 10am–6pm, Friday until 9pm. Admission is free.

These are links to

• The Telegraph slideshow of images from the exhibition
• Reviews of the exhibition by:
• The Telegraph - Forests, Rocks, Torrents, National Gallery, review
• Evening Standard - Brian Sewell reviews Forests, Rocks, Torrents, National Gallery - review  Typical Brian - hits the nail on the head straightaway!

From the title of the National Gallery's current exhibition, Forests, Rocks, Torrents, the most important noun has been omitted - Mountains. 

•  The Art Fund - Forests, Rocks, Torrents: Norwegian and Swiss Landscapes
• a University of Tromso website about the artistic portrayal of the Northern Lights and the role played by Peder Balke

This Green and Pleasant Land

BBC iPlayer - This Green and Pleasant Land - The Story of British Landscape Painting

If anybody else, like me, forgot that tonight was the night that This Green and Pleasant Land - The Story of British Landscape Painting was on here's the iplayer link for the download

I caught the last half an hour and was gutted that I missed the beginning - until I remembered the joy of the BBC iPlayer!

Here's the blurb - which will surely make all those who can't get iPlayer as sick as parrots!

400 years of art history in 90 minutes? This film takes an eclectic group of people from all walks of life, including artists, critics and academics, out into the countryside to take a look at how we have depicted our landscape in art, discovering how the genre carried British painting to its highest eminence and won a place in the nation's heart. 

From Flemish beginnings in the court of Charles I to the digital thumbstrokes of David Hockney's iPad, the paintings reveal as much about the nation's past as they do the patrons and artists who created them. Famous names sit alongside lesser-known works, covering everything from the refined sensibilities of 18th-century Classicism to the abstract forms of the war-torn 20th century with a bit of love, loss, rivalry and rioting thrown in. 

Contributions come from a cast as diverse as the works themselves, including filmmaker Nic Roeg, historian Dan Snow and novelist Will Self, who offer a refreshingly wide range of perspectives on a genre of art which we have made very much our own.

I'm now off to bed with my iPad to watch it from the beginning!

[Update (the next morning!): A brilliant programme on all sorts of levels - the photography is absolutely stunning.  Plus it was an intelligent summary of how landscape developed as a genre at the same time as covering several important artists drawing and painting landscapes with really insightful comment.  I'm going to watch it all over again!]

Portraying the Bristol Channel Floods 1607

Art can create a record of catastropic events so that long after they have been forgotten there is still a record of what it was like.

In recent days we've been reminded of the forces of natural events and how these can change the landscape.  I became interested in the extent to which art has been used in the past to

• either record the event itself
• or record how it has changed the landscape
• or possibly, through memory painting, to record what was there before a catastrophic natural event

Which is how I came to discover the Bristol Floods of 1607, which many now believe may have been a tsunami.  What follows is a summary of what I've discovered.

The Deluge of 1607 - in England

Woodcut image from
"A true report of certaine wonderfull ouerflowings of Waters, now lately in Summerset-shire, Norfolke and other places of England...",
printed in London 1607

On 20 January 1606 there was extensive flooding in southwest England and South Wales.  This is now referred to as the 1607 floods because of the changes to the calendar made later in 1606 to correct problems with how days had been counted up until that point.

There are a variety of views which seek to explain what caused it - from a storm surge to a tsunami.

The wave height was some 4 metres in the outer Bristol Channel to more than 6 metres in the inner Severn Estuary.  (That's very nearly 20 feet high).  A number of churches in the area bear plaques which record how high thee water reached.  It's also estimated to have reached a speed of some 25mph.

More than an estimated 200 square miles (518 km²) of land were flooded on either side of the Bristol Channel along some 570 km of coastline and associated land in North Devon, Gloucestershire, Somerset and along the South Wales coast from Monmouthshire to Carmarthenshire.  It's clear that flood defences were inadequate for holding the sea back in a number of places.  There was scope for the water to flow a considerable distance inland where the land was flat - such as on the Gwent and Somerset Levels with the water reaching as far inland as Glastonbury Tor.

It caused 2,000 deaths and considerable economic loss. 

At the time of the great flood there were no newspapers.  However it was custom and practice to poduce and print pamphlets to mak news about some great event.  In this instance it would appear from the research done that these pamplets had been tailored to each of the counties affected.

“Many there were which fled into the tops of high trees, and there were inforced to abide some three daies, some more, and some lesse, without any victuals at all, there suffring much colde besides many other calamities, and some of them in such sort, that through overmuch hunger and cold, some of them fell down againe out of the Trees, and so were like to perish for want of succour. Othersome, safe in the tops of high Trees as aforesaid, beholding their wives, children and servants, swimming (remediles of all succour) in the Waters.

Woodcut images were used to convey how much of the land was covered and what it was like for the people affected.  I've looked for indications of other forms of artwork but can find none online which survive apart from various references to the pamphlet which was printed by printers who operated in the courtyard of St Paul's Cathedral and also printed William Shakespeare's plays.

I'm somewhat surprised as I'd have expected to have found at least some paintings which attempted to recreate what happened on canvas.

The water changed the coastline in places.  For those interested in the history of the changing landscape and/or geology and/or geomorphology (like me!) can.....

• WATCH a clip from the BBC TimeWatch programme - Britain's Forgotten Flood
• READ  
• Gods Warning to His People (1607)  - an account of the flood which is in the British Library
• Wikipedia - Bristol Channel Floods 1607
• BBC - Bristol:  The Great Flood of 1607 
• Burnham on Sea website - Was it a Tsunami?
• an accessible account of the possible causes of the flood
• Flood 400 - an account of the 400th celebrations
• Professor Simon Hazlitt's blog - Great Flood of 1607: tsunami or storm?
• "Catastrophic Wave Erosion, Bristol Channel, United Kingdom: Impact of Tsunami?". Journal of Geology 115 (3): 253–270

John Constable documentary - view online

For those who like John Constable's work there is an excellent documentary by Andrew Graham Dixon about the painter currently available to download from BBC Two iPlayer Secret Lives of the Artists - 1. Constable in Love

John Constable's painting The Haywain embodies pretty and cosy England, adorning many a tea towel and postcard. But behind the image of rural calm lies a passionate artist whose pictures hide an erotic undercurrent - a story of forbidden love to rival even Shakespeare's ill-fated lovers. Andrew Graham-Dixon reveals the true story of Constable and an untold love story sublimated on canvas.

I've watched it through once and can highly recommend it.  I'll be watching it again before it expires in six days time.

"Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Garden," by John Constable.
oil on canvas, 13.63" X 17.32"

Ostensibly about the love story between Constable and his wife Maria Bricknell, it also tells us a lot about how Andrew Graham Dixon and other art historians see the role and impact of emotion and personal relationships on his landscape paintings and career.  It also tells us about his relationships with others in his Circle such as John Fisher, the Bishop of Salisbury, who commissioned the painting below and who is included with his wife behind the fence and under the shade of the trees.

You can also view clips via Andrew Graham Dixon's website where Andrew Graham-Dixon explores the life of Constable, his painting and love life.

• Constable in Love 1-7  (view clip)
• Constable in Love 2-7  (view clip)
• Constable in Love 3-7 (view clip)
• Constable in Love 4-7 (view clip)
• Constable in Love 5-7 (view clip)
• Constable in Love 6-7 (view clip)
• Constable in Love 7-7 (view clip)

Happy New Year! (plus a landscape art reading list)

Happy New Year to all subscribers to and readers of The Art of the Landscape.

Tomorrow this blog - and this project - is one year old.  This was the very first post on Saturday 2nd January 2010 - Introducing the The Art of the Landscape Project

A View in the Alps

John Ruskin - 1835
Private collection
Painting - watercolor
Height: 21 cm (8.27 in.), Width: 27.5 cm (10.83 in.)

Very early this morning we had a powercut in the area where I live.  This morning when I woke up I discovered they hadn't even started to fix the problem - which made a very grey day even greyer.   I couldn't see to read - having discovered last night that my torch wasn't where it should be!

Study of Gneiss Rock, Glenfinlass
by John Ruskin
Pen, brown ink, ink wash (lamp-back) and bodycolour,
47.7 x 32.7 cm.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England

That's when I discovered that an ipad screen with a nice light background - such as can be found with a good downloaded book - doubles as a torch!  It certainly makes for very easy reading in the middle of a power cut.

Which is how this morning I came to be reading an ibooks version of John Ruskin's The Elements of Drawing and most particularly how to draw trees and landscapes while I ate breakfast.   

(In brief, Ruskin was the man who championed the landscape art of JMW Turner and fostered the development of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.  He also was an inspiration for the Arts and Crafts Movement, the founding of the National Trust, the National Art Collections Fund, and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.)

When the power came back on I decided to see which other books were available through ibooks and discovered I could access a number of works including

• The Stones of Venice
• Modern Painters
• Lectures on Landscape

Modern Painters (1843) is book on art by John Ruskin which argues that recent painters emerging from the tradition of the picturesque are superior in the art of landscape to the old masters. The book was primarily written as a defence of the later work of J.M.W. Turner. Ruskin used the book to argue that art should devote itself to the accurate documentation of nature. In Ruskin's view Turner had developed from early detailed documentation of nature to a later more profound insight into natural forces and atmospheric effects.

Ruskin added later volumes in subsequent years. Volume two (1846) placed emphasis on symbolism in art, expressed through nature. The second volume was influential on the early development of Pre-Raphaelitism. Ruskin also added third and fourth volumes in later years.

I then took at look at the Project Gutenburg site - and found that has a lot of his writing (and associated images) is available to download in various formats - see links at end for just some of them.

So one of my New Year's Resolutions will be to read Lectures on Landscapes!

The Field behind Ruskin's House at Denmark Hill by John Ruskin
1860. Watercolor.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about Ruskin's theories about art

Ruskin's views on art, wrote Kenneth Clark, "cannot be made to form a logical system, and perhaps owe to this fact a part of their value." Ruskin's accounts of art are descriptions of a superior type that conjure images vividly in the mind's eye.^[10] Certain principles, however, remain consistent throughout his work, which Clark summarised as:

1. Art is not a matter of taste, but involves the whole man. Whether in making or perceiving a work of art, we bring to bear on it feeling, intellect, morals, knowledge, memory, and every other human capacity, all focused in a flash on a single point. Aesthetic man is a concept as false and dehumanizing as economic man.
2. Even the most superior mind and the most powerful imagination must found itself on facts, which must be recognized for what they are. The imagination will often reshape them in a way which the prosaic mind cannot understand; but this recreation will be based on facts, not on formulas or illusions.
3. These facts must be perceived by the senses, or felt; not learnt.
4. The greatest artists and schools of art have believed it their duty to impart vital truths, not only about the facts of vision, but about religion and the conduct of life.
5. Beauty of form is revealed in organisms which have developed perfectly according to their laws of growth, and so give, in his own words, 'the appearance of felicitous fulfillment of function.'
6. This fulfillment of function depends on all parts of an organism cohering and cooperating. This was what he called the 'Law of Help,' one of Ruskin's fundamental beliefs, extending from nature and art to society.
7. Good art is done with enjoyment. The artist must feel that, within certain reasonable limits, he is free, that he is wanted by society, and that the ideas he is asked to express are true and important.
8. Great art is the expression of epochs where people are united by a common faith and a common purpose, accept their laws, believe in their leaders, and take a serious view of human destiny.^[11]

I'll finish with another winter landscape - this time by John Ruskin - painted from his home at Brantwood overlooking Coniston water in the Lake District. 

Study of Ice Clouds over Coniston by John Ruskin

You can visit Brantwood - said to be the most beautifully situated house anywhere in the Lake District - between March and November. 

It also has a regular schedule of art exhibitions - many of which relate to explorations of the wonderful Lake District landscape.

Links: Project Gutenburg - files to download

• Lectures on Landscape
  Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 (English) (as Author)
• Stones of Venice [introductions] (English) (as Author)
• The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) (English) (as Author)
• The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3), (English) (as Author)
• The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) (English) (as Author)
• Modern Painters Volume I (of V) (English) (as Author)
• Modern Painters Volume II (of V) (English) (as Author)
• Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) (English) (as Author)