No matter how old and jaded you get, you can always appreciate the breath-taking view from the top of a hill, as the earth sweeps out in myriad details, as far as the distant horizon.
landscape
From the early years of landscape painting as a genre in its own right, artists have used it to depict the awe-inspiring but fascinating horrors of the sublime.
Because these landscape elements are constrained within the overall work, the artist has complete control over them, something reflected in their reading too. Such cameo landscapes are never awe-inspiring, but subjugate to the whole.
I am going to try getting inside the artistic imagination of important landscape painters, and discovering the vision that each had of the landscape. Here are some hors d’oeuvres.
This book looks at the type of painting which was central to Impressionism – the plein air landscape – and traces its development from inception by Desportes in the latter years of the seventeenth century, through the Barbizon School, to its peak in the late nineteenth century.
This article summarises the information that I have now obtained from working through that catalogue raisoné, and includes new information on Pissarro’s series paintings.
Perhaps they are the landscape equivalent of serial self-portraiture after all.
This article considers Claude Monet’s series paintings: how they developed, which major series he produced, and what he intended by painting them.
This article considers Alfred Sisley’s series paintings: how they developed, which major series he produced, and what he intended by painting them.
This article considers Camille Pissarro’s series paintings: how they developed, which major series he produced, and what he intended by painting them.
The Eclectic Light Company 