Joseph Wright of Derby combined contemporary science in the Age of Enlightenment with impressive lighting and chiaroscuro effects, across a series of paintings from 1765.
shade
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.
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.
His early paintings of roadside cafes used shadow with great effect, but most was removed from court portraits. Those in Las Meninas are controlled and elaborate.
With great interest in optics, depicting shade and shadows advanced in the 17th century, in paintings by van Honthorst, Judith Leyster, and above all Rembrandt, whose promoter was the father of Christiaan Huygens.
He changed the emphasis of painting to use darkness, shade and shadows. Examples include Calling of St Matthew, Conversion of St Paul, and Supper at Emmaus.
Explaining shade, attached and cast shadows seen in paintings. While the first two have been generally painted faithfully, cast shadows are more complicated.
Why do Canaletto’s gondolas not have shadows? Where did Cézanne get his shadows wrong, and why, and what colour are shadows really?
Was painting ‘invented’ by the maid of Corinth? What is ‘shadow play’, and how have painters extended it to religious works? A short history of shadows in painting.
Considers the role of texture and detail gradient, shading and shadow in the depiction of depth in paintings.
The Eclectic Light Company 