Sketching Cezanne's landscapes

On Friday I met up with the group I go sketching London with at St Martins in the Fields. As it was very cold I decided that I needed to do a spot of landscape sketching - in the warmth and comfort of the National Gallery!

Part of my Art of the Landscape Project is about learning more about how past masters constructed their landscape paintings. I've found that a good way of doing that is to actually sketch them - because in looking at them intently to sketch you learn about the composition, their predisposition to work with mass or line and how they worked with colour - and anything else which mattered to each individual as an artist.

It's not about reproducing their work exactly so much as getting a better sense and understanding of it.

On Friday I sketched two works by Cezanne and started on Het Steen by Rubens - but the latter is a BIG painting and I need to go back to that one.

After Cezanne - Avenue at Chantilly
(L’Allee a Chantilly), 1888
National Gallery, London
8" x 6", coloured pencils in Winsor & Newton Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

One of the things I've learned about Cezanne in constructing this post is that once he found a motif he liked he had no hesitation about painting it repeatedly. I knew about Mont St Victoire but wasn't aware that the Alley at Chantilly was another favoured motif. Here's another couple of paintings of the same subject - each treated slightly differently

• The Alley at Chantilly (1888) (private collection)
• The Alley at Chantilly (1888) Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, United States of America

It's interesting that we can think sometimes that somehow if we've painted a subject once we've said all we have to say about it and we now ought to move on to aother subject. However, I'm more and more convinced that artists that keep painting the same subject learn more and more about their subject, themselves and their art.

I sat on the bench in the middle of the room to sketch this and didn't take a close look at how he had put down the paint until I'd finished. One of the things I've found is that I very much identify with the way Cezanne lays paint down in hatching strokes of the brush - while I hatch with the pencil.

I found an interesting quotation from Lawrence Gowing on the Tate website

Cézanne’s method, as he once said, was ‘hatred of the imaginative’, and we can feel that the hatred extended to all that was implied in the derived, fictitious contour of the early works.

His task was to hold in equilibrium the two conceptions which were vital to him, the conception of reality and of the picture.

This second sketch is of a painting which isn't in the National Gallery's listings which I assume means it comes from whoever has currently got Les Grands Baigneuses as that's out on loan.

? (not sure and forgot to note it down!)
National Gallery, London
8" x 6", coloured pencils in Winsor & Newton Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I've also discovered that there is a book which reviews how he constructed his paintings - Cézannes Composition: Analysis of His Form with Diagrams and Photographs of His Motifs - which I might try and get hold of.

More about Cezanne

• Paul Cézanne - Resources for Art Lovers is a website I've developed (and continue to develop) a website about Cézanne
• There's a very good overview (with images) of oil and watercolour paintings by Cezanne - in every genre - on The Atheneaum website and another on the Artilim website List of Paul Cézanne Paintings
• This is a link to a pdf file about the Cezanne in Provence exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington - which gives a good overview of his Provencal landscapes
  

Art Instruction: Drawing and Painting Landscapes in Watercolour

The Practice of Drawing and Painting Landscape from Nature in Water Colours was written by Francis Nicholson in the early nineteenth century.

Its title page is very precise as to its aim and the potential benefits for the reader:

• exemplified in a series of instructions
• calculated to faciliate the progress of the learner
• including the elements of perspective, their application in drawing from nature and the explanation of the various processes of colouring, for producing from the sketch the finished picture
• with observations on the study of nature
• and various other matters relative from the arts

The first edition sold out.

This second edition was published by Thomas Davison, Whitefriars in London in 1823 - and subsequently found its way into the New York Public Library system

The language is obviously somewhat stilted to that which we are used to today. However for those who are prepared to put in the effort to reading this book you'll find it long on explanation and that it includes images to help explain the instruction. All in all quite a contrast to the art instruction book of today. This is one for those who prefer their art instruction books to not be dumbed down!

Read this book for FREE

This book has been digitized by Google and is now available to download as PDF or EPUB files - for FREE! Alternatively you can read it online.

The contents page is displayed on the right. I like the titles of some of his chapters such as "Accidents in Painting" and "Licences in Drawing". I've only dipped into it so far but it looks very interesting. It includes for example a detailed explanation of how of how to use a Claude mirror ('the blackened convex mirror') on page 21 and 22.

The contents page in Google Books includes hyperlinks to the different sections.

I also found it interesting how many references are included to landscape painters from the past. It gives you an insight into the thinking behind landscape drawing and painting at the time as well as useful tips on 'how to'. His language (starting on page 33) when he doubts the advice of Sir Joshua Reynolds on drawing vs painting and quotes Michael Angelo (sic) in support of his view had me grinning from ear to ear!

Reviews: If you write a review of this book on your blog do let me know and I'll highlight your review on this blog.

Sir Francis Nicholson

I tried to find out a little bit about the author Francis Nicholson and concluded that he was in all probability Sir Francis Nicholson (14 November 1753 – 6 March 1844) who was a Yorkshire born landscape painter who worked in both watercolours and oils but grew to focus on landscapes in watercolour.

He was also a founding member of the Society of Painters in Water Colours now known as the Royal Watercolour Society. It's not every day that you get to read a book by a leading member of such an august body!

Art Instruction: Landscape Painting in Pastels

Pastel Landscapes by Deborah Christensen Secor

Deborah Secor is publishing a book online via a blog called Landscape Painting in Pastels.

Deborah is well known to many in the pastel world. Besides being a practising pastel artist, she's also a pastel art tutor, writes for the Pastel Journal and was for some time a very popular Moderator of the Pastels Forum on Wet Canvas.

Her art instruction book is not available in traditional print format and Deborah has, very generously, decided to make it available for free. Part of it is based on articles she has written for and published in the Pastel Journal.

I contemplated selling this book, but in the final analysis I decided that it was better to give. Jesus tells us, "Freely you have received, freely give." So I will. I hope you enjoy and benefit from it.

Note that information contained in the blog may be downloaded for personal use only. Readers are forbidden to reproduce, republish, redistribute, or resell any materials from this weblog in either machine-readable form or any other form without specific written permission of the author. For permissions and other copyright-related questions, please email your question to: deb@deborahsecor.com

So if you want to read her book you need to follow her blog - and I recommend a subscription. Needless to say this blog has been instantly added to my Google Reader and the tutor section of the blogroll in the ruight hand column of this blog! :)

Book content

Deborah's book will cover the following topics. One chapter per week will be posted. Those chapters shown in blue are already live.

Landscapes in Pastels

Section 1 Materials

Chapter 1 Pastels and Other Materials
Chapter 2 Surfaces and Effects
Chapter 3 Getting Started
Chapter 4 Letting Value Lead

Section 2 Landscape Subjects

Chapter 5 Aerial Perspective
Chapter 6 Mountains
Chapter 7 Sky
Chapter 8 Clouds
Chapter 9 Night
Chapter 10 Sunrise, Sunset
Chapter 11 Trees
Chapter 12 Foliage
Chapter 13 Foregrounds
Chapter 14 Rocks
Chapter 15 Shadows
Chapter 16 Water and Reflections
Chapter 17 Gardens
Chapter 18 Snow

Section 3 Color

Chapter 19 Color Theory
Chapter 20 Color Experiments
Chapter 21 The Green Problem
Chapter 22 White Done Right
Chapter 23 The Photograph Problem

Section 4 Experiments

Chapter 24 Free Yourself of the Photo
Chapter 25 Value and Color
Chapter 26 Make a Puzzle Painting
Chapter 27 Value/Color Chart
Chapter 28 Imagine a Painting
Chapter 29 Colored Grounds
Chapter 30 Limit your Palette
Chapter 31 Limit Time and Palette
Chapter 32 20-Stroke Painting
Chapter 33 Temperature

Section 5 Moving On

Chapter 34 From Studio to Plein Air
Chapter 35 Criticize Your Work

If you appreciate what Deborah is doing with this blog can I suggest you leave a comment on her blog and let her know.

Note: Deborah Secor's paintings have been selected for inclusion in several books devoted to the pastel medium: The Pastel Painter’s Solution Book; Pure Color: The Best of Pastel; Painting With Pastels, by Maggie Price. She aso has two video workshops available on DVD or streaming at Artists Network TV: Get Started in Pastels: Deborah Secor Paints the Landscape and Painting Outdoor Shadows in Pastel with Deborah Secor.

Spanish Landscapes - and Picasso

Casey Klahn (The Colorist) sent me the link to a blog post by Mary Adam (Drawing Etc) which highlights landscapes painted by Pablo Picasso. I never really thought of Picasso as a painter of landscapes but evidently he did very early in his career late in his career as artist. See Picasso's landscapes.

Mediterranean Landscape Pablo Picasso Buy From Art.com

I dug around a bit and also found the Guggenheim website suggesting that landscape painting is rare in Spanish art.

Landscape painting is rare in Spanish art. This scarcity can be tied to Spanish history. The Spanish Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth century was staunchly against both classicism and humanism. Strictly interpreted Catholic doctrine viewed the subject of human nature and nature in general as corrupt and indulgent. To contemplate the beauty of nature was to indulge in a hedonistic, pagan, and heretical act.

As a result, a variation on landscape painting emerged. During the second half of the sixteenth century, when El Greco came to live in Spain, a mystical and poetic current swept the nation. Instead of picturing the land as lush and inviting, artists used landscape as the setting for sacred events. In El Greco’s landscapes, we can see this “fire” or passion. His nervous, tormented, mystical, and visionary approach to painting not only expressed the intellectual climate of his age, but centuries later it would also become a model for the next generation of Spanish painters, including Francisco de Goya, Ignacio Zuloaga, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and Joan Miró.

You can find out more about Picasson on my information site - Pablo Picasso - Resources for Art Lovers

There is also a major new exhibition opening soon in New York, I wonder if it will include Picasso's landscapes - the website suggests it's going to have an heavy emphasis on the figure. Reports please from anybody who gets to see it.

Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Upcoming Exhibitions | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

April 27, 2010-August 1, 2010
Special Exhibition Galleries, 2nd floor

This landmark exhibition is the first to focus exclusively on works by Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) in the Museum's collection. It features 150 works, including the Museum's complete holdings of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and ceramics by Picasso-never before seen in their entirety-as well as a selection of the artist's prints. The Museum's collection reflects the full breadth of the artist's multifaceted genius as it asserted itself over the course of his long and influential career.

Turner's Sketchbooks: 1790s

JMW Turner seems to have been a bit of a hoarder and kept an awful lot of his artwork and preparatory work. Fortunately for us, the Turner Bequest gave all this work to the country and this bequest included all his surviving sketchbooks which were mainly used for plein air landscape sketching on his travels.

They have been digitized and very systematically put online in a very detailed way (eg each page with a drawing has a web page) and you can find all the Turner Sketchbooks online on the Tate Britain website.

The sketchbooks are accessible in a considered structure and academic way. They are not small and many run to over a hundred pages. If you want to study I recommend setting aside some time to have a realy good look.

If you click one of these links below it presents you with the sketchbook. You can then navigate through the sketchbook using the arrow keys. If you click on an image it will appear larger and you can then see details of what it is thought to be and its size and what media were used to produce it. If you then click the image again it will appear at an even larger size. You also have the option to view a digitally enhanced image.

You will then see how 'sketchy' his landscape sketches are. Given there were no cameras at the time, bear in mind that these sketches and any watercolours done on the spot were the only reference material he had for producing much larger landscape paintings

These are links to his Turner's Sketchbooks from the 1790s. They include:

• sketchbooks devoted to specific places - almost all in the UK in this decade
• sketchbooks dedicated to specific animals (eg cows, swans)
• deliberate studies for paintings
• work done for Dr Munro's Academy which is where Turner worked with other young watercolour artists of his day.

The sketchbooks in order of age are:

• Academical Sketchbook [Finberg XLIII]
• Bristol and Malmesbury Sketchbook [Finberg VI]
• Calais Pier Sketchbook [Finberg LXXXI]
• Cows Sketchbook [Finberg LXII] - just cows! Sketches which aid the creation of paintings in the future
  
• Dolbadarn Sketchbook [Finberg XLVI]
• Dr Monro's Album of Italian Views [Finberg CCCLXXIII] the sketchbooks relating to Dr Munro's Academy include ones which Turner and Girtin worked on together. Girtin tended to do the drawings which Turner then coloured.
  
• Dr Monro's Album of Swiss and Italian Views [Finberg CCCLXXIV]
• Dynevor Castle Sketchbook [Finberg XL]
• Egyptian Details Sketchbook [Finberg LXVI]
• Hereford Court Sketchbook [Finberg XXXVIII]
• Isle of Wight Sketchbook [Finberg XXIV]
• Lancashire and North Wales Sketchbook [Finberg XLV]
• Marford Mill Sketchbook [Finberg XX]
• Matlock Sketchbook [Finberg XIX]
• North Wales Sketchbook [Finberg XXXIX]
• North of England Sketchbook [Finberg XXXIV]
• On the Cliffs Sketchbook [Finberg LXIV]
• Salisbury Sketchbook [Finberg XLIX]
• Smaller South Wales Sketchbook [Finberg XXV]
• South Wales Sketchbook [Finberg XXVI]
• Studies for Pictures Sketchbook [Finberg LXIX]
• Studies near Brighton Sketchbook [Finberg XXX]
• Swans Sketchbook [Finberg XLII]
• Tweed and Lakes Sketchbook [Finberg XXXV]
• Wilson Sketchbook [Finberg XXXVII]

Note the extent of his travels in this decade - mainly around the UK including a number of trips to the north of Britain and Wales.

Sometimes the descriptions are very specific, often they just state things like 'Part of a Castle with Sea and Hills Beyond'

Inscriptions at the beginning of
the Matlock Sketchbook 1794

How do the archivists know what he's sketched? In some of the sketchbooks he makes a list at the beginning of what's included in the sketchbook. Those of who work from sketches will know how useful it is to be able to pick up a sketchbook and look at a label or list of contents which saves so much time when you are looking for a particular sketch! For archivists this and Turner's very clear handwriting must have been a huge asset to the classification of his sketchbooks.

Besides inscriptions Tuner also used either end of his sketchbook to practice colour weashes. How many of us do the same?

Find out more about Turner by consulting my Turner resource site which provides links to further information about the man, his work and where you can see it and read about it - see JMW Turner - Resources for Art Lovers.

Find out more about Dr Munro and how important he was to the development of watercolour landscape painting in the UK on the handprint website.

Find out more about where Turner sketched in the British Isles by consulting the map on the website. Click a county or area to find an annotated list of sketches plus the images.

Defining Landscape #1: Landschaft and landschap

When considering landscape art, it's useful to identify the definition and concept of the word landscape. This post looks at the origins of the word and includes woodcuts of fifteenth century landscapes .

The word landscape originally had its roots the Old Higher German used in the twelfth century. Landschaft related to a term used for country estates in an area.

The term then acquired its geographical meaning in the late Middle Ages and was subsequently incorporated into a term used for the feudal assembly of a country or area (see Landschaftsverband). 

Essentially this was a civic classification of territory - a geographical area defined by political boundaries. It is still employed in modern times in the terms used for municipal associations in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia.

In Landscape and Western Art (Oxford History of Art), Professor Malcolm Andrews indicates that the land around a town was referred to as a landscape in the late fifteenth century. The woodcuts below provide an illustration of this.

Nuremberga (Nuremburg)
Schedelsche Weltchronik (1493) by Hartmann Schedel
source: Wikipedia

The Nuremberg Chronicles is an illustrated world history from creation to its publication in 1493. Written in Latin by Hartman Schedel, it includes the histories of a number of important Western cities and contains woodcuts of these cities shown in the context of the land round about. They were the first ever illustrations of many cities and countries.

The notion is that adjacent rural territory (ie not of the town) could be designated the city's Landschaft or landscape. You can see more of the pages from the book - and much larger images - on this Wikimedia page.

I'm absolutely amazed at the way somebody has already worked out a technique for defining a high level perspective looking down on the towns. The drawings are not to scale but the bits I know appear very accurate as to visual appearance.

Roma (Rome)
Schedelsche Weltchronik (1493) by Hartmann Schedel
source: Wikipedia

Venice
Schedelsche Weltchronik (1493) by Hartmann Schedel
source: Wikipedia

Landschap is the Dutch term from which it is believed that the English word 'landscape' was derived. Henry Peacham (1546-1634), author of Graphice (1612) provides a definition.

Landskip is a Dutch word and it as much as should say in English landship, or expressing of the land by hilles, woods, Castles, seas, vallies, ruines, hanging rocks, Cities, Townes &c. As farre as may be shwed within out Horizon. If it be not drawne by itselfe, or for its own sake, but in respect and for the sake of something else: it falleth out among those things we we call perarga, which are additions or adjuncts rather or ornament then otherwise necessarie
Graphice, or, The most avncient and excellent art of drawing and limming (1612) By Henry Peacham

The next post will consider the notion of landscape in relation to the concept of parergon or parerga.

Links:

• Wikipedia - Nuremberg Chronicle and associated wikimedia pages
• Schedelsche Weltchronik (Schedel's Chronicle) (in the Geman Wikimedia Commons)
  
• Landscape and Western Art (Oxford History of Art) (OUP 1999) Professor Malcolm Andrews

Framing the West

Framing the West: The Survey Photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan is an exhibition which opened yesterday at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC.

Timothy H. O'Sullivan (1840–1882) was a photographer for two of the most ambitious geographical surveys of the nineteenth century. He traversed the mountain and desert regions of the western United States under the command of Clarence King and Lt. George M. Wheeler for six seasons between 1867 and 1874. O'Sullivan developed a forthright and rigorous style in response to the landscapes of the American West, and returned to Washington, D.C. with hundreds of photographs that revealed an artist whose reach far surpassed the demands of practical documentation. He created a body of work that was without precedent in its visual and emotional complexity, while simultaneously meeting the needs of scientific investigation and western expansion.

This is O'Sullivan's biography on the Smithsonian website. He became an official civil war photographer at the age of 21. Subsequently he joined Clarence King's geological survey of the fortieth parallel—the first federal expedition in the West after the Civil War.

Interestingly King was very interested in the arts and I speculate that it well be this influence which helped O'Sullivan create photographs which were artistic as well as scientifically useful.

Ancient Ruins in the Cañon de Chelle, N.M.
(No. 11, Geographical Explorations and Surveys West of the 100th Meridian) 1873
Timothy H. O'Sullivan(1840- 1882 )
albumen print on paper mounted on paperboardimage and sheet: 10 3/4 x 7 7/8 in. (27.3 x 20.0 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum

I'm very much minded to let this blog cover landscape photography as well as drawing and painting - in part to highlight what photography does well - as well as what drawing and painting do well.