How an architect, two great masters of painting, and the author of an early textbook on painting applied geometric optics to change painting.
Sisley
From Dürer and Poussin to Cézanne and Hodler, reflections have been important in many landscape paintings.
Alfred Hunt’s dazzling November Rainbow, Eric Ravilious walking alone in the rain, and the last and greatest paintings of Alfred Sisley.
The more of less regular repetition of form to generate rhythms has long been used in figurative painting, but in the 19th century became prominent in landscapes.
Who’d want to paint much of their canvas dull, pale grey? If these paintings are anything to go by, many of the Impressionists
Frosts herald the winter, a time when few landscape painters work out of doors, but retreat to the studio. These paintings of frost come from the hardiest of artist.
From conventional composition in the early days of Impressionism, landscapes have been reduced, eventually ending up as areas of colour and texture.
How trees came to invade Impressionist landscape paintings, in direct contravention to established principles.
Come leaf-peeping with painters from Samuel Palmer in the Weald of Kent, to Julian Alden Weir’s autumn rain.
Still life paintings by Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley and Pierre-August Renoir show how Impressionism retained some traditional techniques.
The Eclectic Light Company 