Tracing through his techniques and use of different types of study made in preparation for finished paintings of trees, such as those of Salisbury Cathedral.
landscape
You have a brief window of 30-60 minutes to capture the lighting, shade and shadows, when you’re lucky. How practice and skill overcame one of the great challenges.
Co-founder of the British school of landscape painting, he specialised in trees and woodland, and was greatly admired by John Constable. A selection of some of his finest paintings.
Constable’s painterly sketches were never intended to be seen by the public, but JMW Turner’s later works are rich in marks, scratches and radical in appearance.
More challenging than figurative paintings, landscapes painted in the studio could avoid shadows altogether, or adopt other solutions to look right even if not optically faithful.
The most characteristic tree of the north coast of the Mediterranean, it has long been associated with cemeteries and other places of grief.
From John Singer Sargent’s alligators near Miami, through Anna Althea Hills’ fall in Orange County, to Grant Wood’s Spring in the yard in Iowa.
From Frederic Edwin Church at the Niagara Falls, through Childe Hassam’s Rainy Day in Boston, to William Merritt Chase teaching outdoor painting on Long Island.
Coppice stools, cut to just above ground level, and pollards cut high enough to stop them from being damaged by cattle, were commonly used to produce supplies of timber.
Paintings of Jacob van Ruisdael, probably the first in which species can be distinguished reliably, and leaf forms are depicted accurately, plus delights from Paulus Potter and Jan van der Heyden.
The Eclectic Light Company 