From 1643 (Claude Lorrain), through Claude-Joseph Vernet and Turner to JC Dahl two centuries later.
Dahl
From Constable and Turner’s views of London’s parliament ablaze, to Edvard Munch’s painting of a local manor house in flames.
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.
JMW Turner and John Martin painted apocalyptic visions, but others like JC Dahl and O Achenbach opted for the less spectacular.
Although often the preserve of specialists who concentrated on nocturnes, coasts are ideal locations for moonlit views. Caspar David Friedrich, JC Dahl, and more.
His romantic views of the North Cape of Norway and the Northern Lights were for many their first glimpse of the uttermost north.
