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.

Fine Canadian Landscape Art - Auction and Previews

There's an auction of "Fine Canadian Art" being held in Toronto, Canada by Heffel Fine Art Auction House on 27th November 2014. The majority of the works in the catalogue are landscapes.

Heffel Fine Canadian Art Catalogue Cover
The Trapper's Return by Clarence Gagnon

oil on canvas, circa 1909 ~ 1913

signed and on verso signed and titled and titled

21 x 28 3/4 in, 53.3 x 73 cm

$500,000 ~ $700,000 CAD

View the catalogue

You can the works in the auction as follows:

• view the Live Auction Catalogue on the Heffel website - this includes the details of the works and what each is expected to fetch
• by downloading the catalogue from the Heffel website. This includes detailed notes about artists and paintings
• on Issuu - which has the complete catalogue (free) - and provides this widget which allows you to click to read

The Artists

Artists who are new to me who impressed 

These included:

David Brown Milne in 1909

• David Brown Milne (1882-1953) - I liked his watercolours. You can see more of his work on Wikimedia - these include some very fine paintings of the First World War eg Montreal Crater, Vimy Ridge and there is more information on the National Gallery of Canada website
• Clarence Alphonse Gagnon (1881 - 1942) - whose painting is on the cover of the catalogue. A woodcut of the same scene is also included in the sale together with a number of other paintings. He was apparently renowned as a painter of the Canadian winter - with snow being pink in the morning and blue at the end of the day. His landscapes were more 'dreamed about' than painted on the spot - with some being completed in his studio in Paris.  Paysage de Charlvoix is simply stunning!

He invented a new type of landscape - a winter world composed of valleys and mountains, of sharp contrasts of light and shadow, of vivid colours, and of sinuous lines. He ground his own paints, and from 1916 his palette consisted of pure white, reds, blues and yellows.   

National Gallery of Canada profile

• Alfred Joseph (AJ) Casson (1989 - 1992) was a m,ember of the Group of Seven and has a delightful watercolour of birch trees in the auction.

Artists familiar to me

• Lawren Stewart Harris - I was surprised to find out that Harris is Canada's top artist in terms of auction sales. I'd never before seen any of Harris's urban landscapes - his painting of Houses on Gerrard Street is very fine and is on the back cover of the catalogue

Back cover of catalogue: Gerrard Street Houses by Lawren Harris(Estimate $350,000-400,000)

Harris’s depictions of Toronto streets are like portraits. Sometimes poignant, sometimes regal, sometimes sad, each of his buildings can be seen as a sitter whose character, carriage and personality are depicted with exacting skill under Harris’s brush Catalogue

• One of my favourite painters Franklin Carmichael (1890 - 1945) - who has one work in the show. Carmichael's paintings included in the show at the Dulwich Picture Gallery really impressed me - see my blog post about Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven - Review

Information about the auction

The evening auction is being held at the Park Hyatt Hotel, Queen’s Park Ballroom, 4 Avenue Road, Toronto. 

Works can be seen in previews as follows

• Preview At Heffel Gallery, Vancouver: 2247 Granville Street Saturday, November 1 Through Tuesday, November 4, 11 Am To 6 pm
• Preview At Galerie Heffel, Montreal: 1840 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest Thursday, November 13 Through Saturday, November 15, 11 Am To 6 pm
• Preview At University Of Toronto Art Centre 15 King’s College Circle Entrance Off Hart House Circle Saturday, November 22 Through Wednesday, November 26, 10 Am To pm Thursday, November 27, 10 Am To 12 pm
• Heffel Gallery, Toronto 13 Hazelton Avenue, Toronto Ontario, Canada M5r 2e1 Telephone 416 961~6505, www.Heffel.Com

Susan Abbott - sketching and painting plein air

I caught up with this post The Travel Bug by Susan Abbott on her Painting Notes blog.

You can see her recent watercolour sketches of Paris on her blog A Painting Year and on her website (see below) - plus her plein air oil paintings. What I really like about her watercolour sketches and paintings is how she has a very consistent and recognisable colour palette and the way in which she keeps all her colours fresh and never muddy!

Plein Air Watercolours by Susan Abbott

For those planning plein air painting this summer check out her blog posts about painting plein air which she wrote last summer:

• Plein Air 101 - provides a number of tips for effective working plein air
• Plein Air 102 - covers her kit for watercolour and oil painting plein air

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

Angela J Simpson's plein air painting kit

Angela J Simpson's Plein Air Painting Kit

Angela J Simpson is an artist, illustrator and landscape architect who works from her home in in the Scottish Highlands. Recently she has been challenging herself to produce a daily pochade which she then posts on her "diary without words".

Last month she wrote a post on her blog about My kit for painting outside in which she explains what she takes and why.

I love her additional photo of her thumb box and explanation - very funny!

The Corn Harvest by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Corn is harvested in August - however what's in the landscape painting of a corn harvest varies according to where the artist painted (see explanation at the end).  In Europe corn means grain.

 Die Kornernte  (1564) by Pieter Breugel the Elder (1526 - 1569)
(a.k.a. The Harvesters / The corn harvest / The grain harvest)
Oil on wood,
Overall, including added strips at top, bottom, and right, 46 7/8 x 63 3/4 in. (119 x 162 cm);
original painted surface 45 7/8 x 62 7/8 in. (116.5 x 159.5 cm)
Location: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Paintings of the Corn Harvest in August

The most famous  painting of a corn harvest is that shown at the top of this post.

What do we know about 'The Corn Harvest'?

• This painting was painting by  Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1564, when he was nearly 40 years old - some 4 years before he died in 1569.
• It's one panel in a famous series of six paintings by Bruegel called "The Months". These paintings each different times of the year. This is the fourth panel in the series and represents late summer (July/August).  See also other paintings in the series which have featured on this blog.:
• Winter Landscape: Hunters in the snow by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
• Breugal "The Return of the Herd" (Autumn Landscape #12)
• The "Months" series were commissioned by Niclaes Jongelinck and were used as a frieze for a room in his home.  Jongelinck was a merchant, tax collector and art collector who lived in Antwerp
• The painting is a view of "what is" in terms of real life.  There's no sense of a need for a religious story or pretext for painting the landscape.  The emphasis is on realism rather than the religious. This is the case with all the paintings in the series - which is why Bruegel's landscape paintings are said to represent a watershed in the history of Western Art.   
• The landscape is a dominant theme within the painting - but it's animated by the people who populate the picture plane.  The painting focuses on the harvest - the harvesters are in the foreground, their community, their church and nature in general are in the background.  The workers in the field are depicted in a naturalistic way - they are shown working, exhausted, lying or sitting, eating or sleeping.  As with all other paintings in this series there is a dominant colour - in this instance it's the yellow of the grain crop being harvested.  
• This painting now resides in the Metorpolitan Museum of Art in New York (Other paintings in the Months series are located in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and Lobkowicz Collection, Prague)

The meaning of corn

"Corn" means different things in different countries.

• In the USA the term refers to maize (i.e. sweet corn)
• however in Europe, the older use of the word "corn" relates to grain and cereal crops - such wheat, oats and barley (ie maize is called maize and corn on the cob is called corn on the cob!).  That's because Europeans didn't have a name for the maize crop when they first encountered it in the New World.  So it acquired the generic name for all grain crops!

Here's the definition of corn from Cambridge Dictionaries online

B1 [U] UK (the seeds of) plants, such as wheat, maize, oats, and barley, that can be used to produce flour:a sheaf of corngrains of corn› [U] US the seeds of the maize plant, or the plant itself

Bill Guffey's plein air painting kit

Following on from the last post about an artist's plein air equipment. here's Bill Guffey's kit which he explains in this post - My Plein Air Equipment on his blog Bill Guffey.

See a larger version in Bill's post

You can see larger images of the kit on his post - just click an image in his post to see the larger version.

I hope this gives you an idea of what, how and why I pack what I do to go paint in the great outdoors. If you have any questions, please let me know and I'll see if I can answer them for you.

Bill is a Kentucky artist who paints in oils.  He's a member of the American Impressionist Society and an associate member of the Oil Painters of America. You can see Bill's paintings on his website http://bnguffey.com/

He founded the Virtual Paintout blog for those painting from views seen via Google Paintout.

Links to more posts on this blog about Bill Guffey:

• Bill Guffey and Virtual Paintout on Canadian TV 27 Aug 2010
• 'Virtual Paintout' wins The Best Art Blog Project Virtual Challenge Cup 07 Jan 2011
• Bill Guffey paints a winter landscape plein air (video) 30 Jan 2011
• Plein air painting demo by Bill Guffey 27 Oct 2011

Rick Delanty's plein air kit

I love looking at the kit people take out with them - and am even more impressed when they do an annotated drawing for us all of what it entails. Below is the kit of one artist and at the end is an invitation for you to show me what your kit looks like.

Below is the annotated drawing of a photo of the plein air kit of Rick Delanty. Rick says

taking only what you need into the field is a challenge!

Annotated drawing of Rick Delanty's plein air kit

and this is the photo of the kit proper

Rick Delanty's plein air kit

You can see Rick's paintings at Rick J. Delanty Fine Art.  For 32 years. Rick taught high school drawing and painting at San Clemente High in San Clemente CA.  He retired in 2006 and became a full time landscape painter.  Artists who have influenced him include Monet, Winslow Homer, Van Gogh, James Whistler, and contemporary landscape painters April Gornik and Neil Welliver. Rick is a member of the California Art Club, the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association, and Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA). His blog is called The Color of God.

Below you can see Rick Delanty painting in California.

Rick Delanty plein air painting

Show me your plein air kit

If you've got a well organised kit and would like to share your choices and approach to plein air kit assembly with other artists on this blog, send me a URL link to a blog post or website page which include an annotated drawing (or photo) of what you take with you when you go painting landscapes plein air!  Any explanation for your choices is also welcome.

This is how to contact me.

Your favourite place to paint plein air

Artists and Illustrators Magazine have issued an invite on their Facebook Page

We're working on a plein air painting special for our Summer issue, taking four leading artists out on location for the day to find out how they do it...

So we wanted to share the fun with you all. Tell us your favourite place to paint and why in particular you like it - the best responses will be published in the next issue!

As regular readers will be aware, "places to paint" is one of the perennial themes of this blog.

You can find recommendations on the Places to Paint Page at the top of this blog.

• This lists all the past blog posts about places to paint chosen by contemporary artists and past masters
• The intention is to try and an inventory or gazeteer of good places to paint and it currently includes "places to paint" in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia.

Feel free to write and let me know if you have a blog post recommending a place to paint.

HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED: You are invited to contribute to the project and write a blog post and tell us about where is your favourite place to paint - and why. If you'd like to share, feel free to say what's your favourite place to paint (and you don't have to stop at just one!) You need to:

• EITHER send me a link to a blog post in which you have written about your favourite place to paint. This should say why you find it stimulating.
• OR contact me (see column on right) about doing a guest post for this blog about the place which inspires you to paint. The post should be between 350 and 1,000 words and should include a couple of good quality web ready images.

I've not got one favourite place to paint.  I'd be cogitating for a long time if I had to make it just one! 

Here's one of my favourite places to draw - sat next to the Prime Meridian Line at the top of the hill in Greenwich Park (see Greenwich Park Panorama).  It's a fabulous view and it always looks different - plus it's just across the river from where I live!  This one was to record the Olympic Equestrian Arena in Greenwich Park last summer.  I'm thinking next time I need to take a big roll of paper!

The panoramic view from the top of the hill in Greenwich Park
- complete with Equestrian Arena for the Olympics 2012
pen and ink and coloured pencils,
11" x 48"
(3 double page spreads 11" x 16" in Large Moleskine Sketchboook)
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

(Apologies for the long gap in posting to this blog.  I've been having eye surgery. Proper normal blogging will resume in July when I get my new glasses for reading and computer work.)

George Rowlett painting the River Thames and Uist

Today I saw a work by George Rowlett which had won a £1,500 Runner Up Prize in the art competition for the Lynn Painter Stainer Prize.

Advancing blue, yellow barges, Thames Barrier, early afternoon
by George Rowlett
Rinner Up, Lynn Painter Stainer Prize 2013

George's work is not so much impasto as huge slabs of paint which are trowelled onto and moved around the support - with a trowel. This is Mark Glazebrook writing about George Rowlett and the Art of Landscape
It was therefore fascinating to find out that there are a couple of videos on YouTube about how he paints plein air.  You will be amazed at the way he transports huge paintings covered in massive amounts of paint....

Here are two films:

George Rowlett painting the River Thames (and I know some of those locations!)



and

George Rowlett painting on Uist March 2011



and this is how he gets them back to his studio

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.  

Mapping landscape paintings on Google Maps

I'm in two minds about a website I came across today.  MyReadingMapped maps places to historic events - or in the case of artists - landscape paintings to places on maps

The thing is that they're mapping the place in the picture - not the place from where the picture was seen and/or painted - and it's often the latter which artists are interested to see.  Not least because some of us are rather fond of trying to see what we make of the same view! (see my "Places to Paint" series)

The Google Map view of the world as seen in landscape paintings

Here's the link - The Works of Artists, Architects and Photographers in Google Map - and you can see for yourself.

Click on the map title below to go to the blog page with an embedded map, photos and background and source information about each subject.

• The Life and Art of Vincent van Gogh / Google Map / Google Earth

• The Life and Art of Paul Cézanne / Google Map / Google Earth

• The World as seen in Famous Landscape Paintings

• The Works of Michelangelo / Google Map / Google Earth

• Works of Frank Lloyd Wright / Google Map / Google Earth

• Works of I.M. Pei / Google Map / Google Earth

• Scenes Photographed by Ansel Adams

• Le Train: The Rescuing of the German-Looted French Art Train (1944) Fact vs. Fiction. / Google Map / Google Earth

• The World as seen in Landscape Paintings / Google Map 

I think the problem for me is that this has the potential for being a good idea - however it needs more content and the pins in the map need to be rather more accurate - preferably being placed "where the easel stood" literally or metaphorically!

Breugal "The Return of the Herd" (Autumn Landscape #12)

Pieter Breughal the Elder (1525-1569) is one of the great painters of landscapes in different seasons that are also located within the timeline of annual tasks of the ordinary man.  This is his painting of an autumn landscape - and the return of the herd.

The Return of the Herd (Autumn) / De Terugkeer van de kudde (najaar) (1565) 
by Pieter Bruegel the Elder 
oil on panel, 117 x 159 cm
Gallery: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

What's fascinating about this landscape scene is that it involve mountains. Those who know the Low Countries will appreciate that mountains are not the normal subject matter of a Flemish painter working at home!  The museum where now owns this painting has an explanation.

Bruegel introduced to the art of painting the autumn motif of the returning herd, a subject untypical for the Netherlands. To achieve this, he would have been able to draw on impressions gained during his travels through Switzerland. Driving the cattle down from the Alpine pastures, a key event in every peasant's year, is made into the title scene. Yet the main subject is the landscape which the artist has raised to the sublime in its tonal colouring and mood.
The Return of the Herd (Autumn) / De Terugkeer van de kudde (najaar)
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

The name for the return of the cattle from upland pastures to the valleys is the transhumance. (see Transhumance and Transhumance in the Alps).  The same word is used for the migration in the other direction in the springtime.

This painting is also a very good example of why you should NOT always believe everything you read on Wikipedia (note the comment about the direction of the cattle which is complete twaddle!)

About one third of Bruegel's surviving paintings are located in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria.

The painting is classified as being part of the Northern Renaissance.

Links: Winter Landscape - Adoration of the Magi by Pieter Bruegel

£25,000 First Prize for Scottish Landscape Painting

Prizewinning landscapes in 2011

On Making A Mark later today, I'll be announcing the details of a major biennial art competition dedicated to painting the Scottish landscape.

The Jolomo Bank of Scotland Awards 2013 for Scottish Landscape Painting are due to be launched at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh later this morning.

Total prize money of £35,000 is available - with £25,000 going to the winner of the First Prize.  A further £10,000 is available to the runners up - so it's a prize which is definitely worth entering by anybody who qualifies.

Before you get to excited, you need to know that the competition is only open to artists who currently living AND working in Scotland

The images on the right are of the paintings which won prizes in 2011

For some background about the prize - see my 2011 post on this blog Scottish Landscape Painting and a £25,000 prize which highlights 24 year old Edinburgh artist Calum McClure who was the 2011 competition winner.  He'd only just graduated from Edinburgh College of Art when he won the prize.

Calum said the impact had been life-changing.

“Winning the Jolomo Award has changed so much about my practice. I have been able to focus entirely on my work, whereas before I was doing 45 hours a week as a chef. It’s a huge opportunity and I feel very privileged to have won.

Along with the monetary side of the award, winning has also given me confidence in my work. The thought that the judging panel had seen something in the localised nature I try to bring to landscape depiction is fulfilling."

How to Enter

Landscape Painting: 2013 Jolomo Bank of Scotland Awards - Call for Entries is my detailed overview of the Call for Entries for the Jolomo Bank of Scotland Awards 2013 for Scottish Landscape Painting - posted on my main blog Making A Mark

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)

A review of Thomas Moran

An art blog - Poul Webb Art Blog - has recently posted a series of five posts about the great landscape painter Thomas Moran (1837-1926).  These highlight his watercolour sketches and oil paintings of the American West.

Born in Bolton in Lancashire, Moran became one of the renowned painters of the Hudson River School.  He's best known for his panoramic paintings of the American West and the Rocky Mountains.  He's also known as: "Father of the National Parks" and "the Dean of American Painters".

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1904) by Thomas Moran
30 x 60 1/2 in. (76.2 x 153.7 cm), oil on canvas painting
Collection: Honolulu Museum of Art
Thomas Moran [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

He's been on my list of painters to find out more about for some time.

So here's an introduction for me as well as any of you who haven't studied his work before.  I'm not quite sure where the images come from - but there's an excellent selection of images of Moran's paintings in the following posts.  If you click them and open in a new tab you can see larger versions.

I'm particularly impressed with his plein air watercolour sketches done on the spot.

Here are the links to

• Thomas Moran - part 1 - an introduction and overview of Moran's life and important works
• Thomas Moran - part 2 - Watercolour and gouache paintings on paper made during the Yellowstone Expedition and subsequently (early 1870s)
• Thomas Moran - part 3 - Oil paintings on canvas, board and paper plus watercolours of Yellowstone and Yosemite - plus Nevada, Florida and other parts of Wyoming -- and Lower Manhattan
• Thomas Moran - part 4 - Watercolour and oil paintings of landscapes in : USA: New Jersey, Florida, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Denver, Yellowstone Plus Scotland and Venice
• Thomas Moran - part 5 - Oil paintings of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Tetons.  Plus waterfalls and geysers everywhere

If you want to get a mental fix on Moran, note that his dates are virtually identifical to those of Claude Monet (1840-1926) - although their painting styles were very different over time.

I've set up a "resources for art lovers" website on Squidoo - About Thomas Moran - American Landscape Painter.  It's got the basics in it - but I'll be continuing to develop it over time.  If you know of any excellent online references re Moran I'd be glad to hear about them

You can see more of my "resources for art lovers" websites about individual artists in About Artists

John Constable - Somerset House Terrace from Waterloo Bridge

I've been looking at views of the Thames by different artists this week and came across one which was attributed to John Constable but which just looked wrong to me.  I first found it on wikipaintings - and then noticed that they'd sourced it from one of those "we can paint you any painting you want" sites.

Finally, it dawned on me why it was wrong - the image had been reversed!  Maybe you have to have walked along this terrace to know these things?

So here is a small Constable oil sketch of Somerset House Terrace from Waterloo Bridge - the proper way round!  The real thing forms part of the Paul Mellon Collection in the Yale Center for British Art At Yale University in downtown New Haven.

Somerset House Terrace from Waterloo Bridge (c 1819) by John Constable (1776-1837)
Oil on panel, 6 1/8 x 7 3/8 inches (15.6 x 18.7 cm)
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

What's also interesting about this painting is:

• it's definitely a sketch/study - given the size and the quality of the finish.  Constable simply did not paint like this for his studio paintings but he did when painting studies for studio paintings.  It would be interesting to know whether he did anything with it.
• the sketch dates from before the Embankment was built along the edge of the Thames.  In those days Somerset House was on the banks of the Thames and didn't have a couple of roads and pavements and a wall between the terrace and the river.

The other names for this painting are:

• Somerset House Terrace and the Thames: a View from the North end of Waterloo Bridge with St. Paul's and Blackfriar's Bridge
• Somerset House, A View from Waterloo Bridge looking towards St. Paul's and the City

Whatever it's called it suggests that a good place to paint the Thames and the City of London is the north end of Waterloo Bridge.

The end of the terrace at Somerset House is not such a good spot for painting - you can see how much trees now interfere with the view in my post Sunday Papers at Somerset House on my Travels with a Sketchbook blog