As a primary colour, blue is essential in painting. The quest for the right blues has spanned the world and resulted in a succession of synthetic pigments which have influenced art.
Canaletto
Staffage – people, animals, birds, carts and ships – make a big difference to many landscape paintings. Have you met the Wanderer too?
A tough compositional challenge: a square that isn’t even rectangular, with unequal sides and a high tower. Solutions by Canaletto and other masters.
A British trader and merchant banker, and an Italian scientist who wrote an account of Newtonian physics for women – their influence on Canaletto, Tiepolo, and others.
Canals from Sisley at the end of the 19th century, and paintings of Venice by Canaletto, Rico, and of course John Singer Sargent.
Why do Canaletto’s gondolas not have shadows? Where did Cézanne get his shadows wrong, and why, and what colour are shadows really?
For once the name is accurate: it originated in the Prussian Empire around 1704, and by 1730 had established itself as a standard if not entirely reliable pigment. Watteau, Canaletto, Hogarth, Blake, Monet, and van Gogh all used it.
An illustrated timeline and overview of how the human visual environment, and perception of it, has changed from ancient times to virtual reality.
The mental images which we perceive are created in the brain, which has some fixed ideas about how to do that. They’re not the same as optical laws used in cameras and related devices.
Are they part of a narrative, or staffage? Do they provide scale, or enhance the effect? Are the figures part of the landscape, or even the landscape itself?
The Eclectic Light Company 