Paintings of Australian land and landscape at the RA

You can read my review of the new exhibition 'Australia' at the Royal Academy of Arts here - Making A Mark: 'Australia' Exhibition at the Royal Academy - review.

It includes paintings from 1800 through to this year's winner of the Wynne Prize.

Left - Australian Impressionists
Right - Federation Landscapes - in watercolour
'Australia' at the Royal Academy - 21 September 2013 to 8 December 2013
Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London in partnership with the National Gallery of Australia

Given the narrative covering the last 200+ years, I'm aiming to revisit specific aspects of the exhibition on this blog.

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

'July' by Pol Limbourg (Summer Landscape #1)

I'm returning to the representation of the seasons and months of the year in paintings of landscapes.  In part, I do this because I very much enjoy records of the land at different times of the year but also as encouragement to landscape painters to create more paintings recording the land in specific seasons and months.

This is Juillet (July) in the body of work known as Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry created by the flemish painters, the Limbourg Brothers working for John, Duc de Berry (1340-1416) the third son of King John II of France. It's been identified as the work of Paul (or Pol) Limbourg.

Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry Folio 7, verso: July
illumination on vellum
Height: 22.5 cm (8.9 in). Width: 13.6 cm (5.4 in)
Musée Condé, Chantilly, France

This particular painting is painted as a miniature illumination on vellum (note the size) and was created sometime between between 1412 and 1416.

 It shows sheep being sheered - using big sheep shears - and grain being harvested using a sickle.  The sky is of course blue and the clouds are high and sparse as one often gets in mid summer.  A translation of a description in French (now updated as per Alyson's comment) reads as follows

"The labours of the month of July show the harvest and shearing of sheep. Two characters mow the wheat, each using a volant and a stick. A volant is a long, open sickle with the handle at the corner of the flat of the blade. With the help of the stick, they separate a bunch of wheat stems which they then cut with a pass of the blade. The harvesters advance by going around the outside of the parcel of land, working towards the centre. One of the harvesters has a whetstone on his belt. Two other characters, one of whom is a woman, use shears to cut the wool of sheep. With the exception of the imaginary mountains, the landscape shows, in the foreground, the Boivre River where it flows into the Clain, near the palace of the Count of Poitiers."

In the background is the Palace of Poitiers - which was rebuilt by Jean I, duc de Berry between 1384-86.

Links:

• The Limbourg Brothers - and "September" 18 Sep 2012
• "October" - Limbourg Brothers (Autumn Landscape #11) 24 Oct 2012
• March: Peasants at Work on a Feudal Estate by Limbourg brothers 27 Mar 2012

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.)