Overview and links to each of the articles in this series looking at shade and shadow in figurative and landscape paintings.
shadow
Among the greatest challenges in painting, cast shadows aren’t always correct. Examples from Masolino, Canaletto, Prendergast, Ravilious, CĂ©zanne and Seurat.
Before about 1870, no one questioned that cast shadows should appear grey, without any change in colour. The Impressionists disagreed.
From trompe l’oeil for sculpture to children making rabbits on the wall, shadows have long been popular, and most recently have featured in Surrealist paintings too.
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.
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.
Chiaroscuro paintings by Lavinia Fontana, Adam Elsheimer, Jusepe de Ribera, Artemisia Gentileschi, Gerard can Honthorst, and Georges de La Tour.
The Eclectic Light Company 