Innovation moved to the countryside around Rome, with Joseph Vernet, and Valenciennes, who prescribed skying in his textbook on landscape painting.
Girtin
From Dürer in about 1500, through van Ruisdael, Hobbema, Vernet, Girtin, to Constable watermills were popular in landscape art.
Paintings of windmills from Hieronymus Bosch, Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael, Thomas Girtin, and others.
Bridges have had huge impact on man, but aren’t normally considered aesthetically attractive. Paintings from van Eyck to Jongkind show increasing interest among artists.
With a binder of gum arabic, watercolours came into use in the Renaissance, and have steadily increased in popularity.
Gérôme’s ‘Ave Caesar’ was a visually stunning wide-angle spectacular, with its detailed reconstructions. Examined in the light of Claude, Girtin, Turner, and others.
This takes us from Samuel Palmer and Peter De Wint, through Girtin and Cotman, to JMW Turner and William Blake.
Where land, sea, and sky meet. Sought-after and hugely popular in fine weather, the forces of nature are most obvious in storms. The cradle of Impressionism and more modern painting.
What are accessories or ‘staffage’, what narrative, and what intrinsic to the reading and style of a landscape?
In the last couple of years of his brief life, his watercolours changed, and pushed the boundaries, for others to follow.
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