Since the decline of egg tempera and fresco in the Renaissance, oil paints have predominated. They rely on drying oils as their binder, which give them longevity and versatility.
Turner
With a binder of gum arabic, watercolours came into use in the Renaissance, and have steadily increased in popularity.
Between 1774-79 he painted views of the mountains, glaciers and waterfalls of the Alps. And he even made oil sketches in front of the motif.
Paintings from 1750 on didn’t show ‘Christian’ sibyls, but returned to their classical meaning. Then came Turner’s marvellous narrative landscapes.
He became the most influential critic of painting in Britain, providing the Pre-Raphaelites with strong support. But that proved capricious, and eventually destructive to landscape painting.
Were Turner’s and Cézanne’s late paintings becoming more abstract? What distinguishes representational painting from abstract?
Used by Joseph Wright of Derby to symbolise knowledge coming from darkness, by Henry Fuseli for the mysterious even supernatural, and Millet and van Gogh for poverty.
Until about 1800, Western landscape painting sought to reveal rather than to hide. It was JMW Turner and Caspar David Friedrich who popularised the effect of fog.
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.
Invented by the alchemist Paracelsus, these water nymphs became popular in the 19th century with prose poems and a novella. Here they are in paint, by Turner, Waterhouse, Gauguin, Schiele, and others.
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