The story behind Poussin’s painting explained, and its narrative techniques revealed.
Poussin
Painting is one of the oldest and most widely-accessible media for narrative. But narrative painting is also one of the least studied.
Few landscape painters since have not been deeply influenced by his pioneering paintings. He also anticipated photographic effects on focus.
Over a thousand visitors have looked at Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night over the Rhône. Other popular articles cover relatively unknown artists.
A brief glance through the history of painting trees in the landscape, from Rubens and Poussin to van Gogh and Pissarro.
Some paintings have figures and action which goes beyond staffage, and provides narrative, meaning, or puzzles.
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.
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.
In the absence of any clearly articulated theoretical statements from the core French Impressionists, there are no obvious rules or clear criteria handed down.
Today, many consider him to be the father of American landscape painting.
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