Overview and links to each of the articles in this series looking at shade and shadow in figurative and landscape paintings.
Cézanne
Among the greatest challenges in painting, cast shadows aren’t always correct. Examples from Masolino, Canaletto, Prendergast, Ravilious, Cézanne and Seurat.
As Paul Cézanne reached the end of his Impressionist phase, he started painting foliage using patterned brushstrokes, his ‘constructive stroke’.
Walnuts providing food, fine wood, and a drying oil used as an alternative to linseed; almonds that may have a high cyanide content, but are still eaten. Paintings from Piero to Bonnard.
How to distinguish sweet from horse chestnuts in paintings from Sisley, Pissarro, Cézanne, Carl Larsson, Vincent van Gogh, Egon Schiele and others. And all about conkers.
Humans have lived with trees since our origins, and trees feature in many paintings. This explains the importance of sketching them from life, and shows examples of different species and contrasting artists from Rubens and van Ruisdael to van Gogh and Cézanne.
Although he painted many reflections, Paul Cézanne’s are the most enigmatic, as they almost all have substantial anomalies according to optical principles.
Changes made to the finished version of a painting after its painting has started may be evident from careful examination. Examples from Leonardo da Vinci to Paul Cézanne.
Paintings by David Teniers the Younger, Domenicus van Wijnen, Tiepolo, Fantin-Latour, Cézanne, Félicien Rops and Lovis Corinth.
Matching views painted by Pissarro and Cézanne of the Côte des Boeufs, a rainbow, the village in winter snow, and Pissarro’s gradual change to Pointillism.
The Eclectic Light Company 