Look at artists in series with the landscape such as Monet, Pissarro or Cezanne. Make notes in your learning log about the challenges they faced and how they tackled them.
I have briefly touched on the development of a 'new vocabulary' of landscape painting and I think that artists working in series with the landscape comes as part of this movement. I will confine the main part of these notes to the series work of Monet and Cezanne. But first a bit of interesting background.
One of the major developments of the 19th Century was the advent of oil paint in tubes. The invention of the oil paint tube is ascribed to John G Rand in 1841. This was a major advance allowing enormous growth in the practice or 'plein air' painting. Before this oil paint was transported in pigs bladders which were pierced to get at the paint. It was difficult to reseal them and they were inconvenient as they often burst (1). It was therefore much more common practice for painters to make sketches outdoors and then work them up in the studio in oils.
This advance meant that artists were able to spend more time outdoors immersed in the natural world and exposed to the changing light and weather conditions. They experienced their environment. In 'Landscape and Western Art', Malcolm Andrews makes a distinction between 'Landscape' and 'Environment' as follows:
" Landscape is the scope of nature , modified by culture, from some locus, and in that sense Landscape is local, located ..... Humans have both natural and cultural environments ; landscapes are typically hybrid.
An environment does not exist without some organism environed by the world in which it copes.....An environment is the current field of significance for a living being. "
He goes on to say, " The experience of nature as process rather than picture depends on shifting the emphasis from 'landscape' to 'environment'. Landscape is an exercise of control from a relatively detached viewpoint. Environment implies a mutually affective relationship between the 'organism' and its environing 'current field of significance'"(2) This makes perfect sense when we look at Monet's Grainstack series or Cezanne's multiple iterations on Mont Sainte-Victoire. Working in series in their own environment these artists were not concerned with making a single picture (treating landscape like a vast still life) but with transmitting their subjective experiences of the changeability of nature.
There were, however some fore-runners that paved the way for these advances. First of all Turner's " Snow Storm- Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water and Going by the Lead. The Author was in this Storm on the Night the Ariel left Harwich" of 1842. Turner claimed to have been tied to the mast of a ship for four hours in this storm (although this may not be true). He, therefore tries to give the impression that the viewer is within the storm rather than viewing it from a detached position. He does this by means of a swirling vortex of a composition (3) He is quoted as saying , "I did not paint it to be understood, but I wished to show what such a scene was like ......I did not expect to escape, but I felt bound to record it if I did. But no-one had any business to like the picture." Indeed he received critical derision - the critics saying the painting was a mass of 'soapsuds and whitewash' to which he is quoted as having retorted " I wonder what they think the sea's like?" thus emphasising that he valued the authenticity of the scene even if the critics found it incomprehensible.
This was followed by John Ruskin's defence of Turner's approach. In the preface of the second edition of 'Modern Painters' he attacked the traditional idealisation of landscapes (in particular Claude's 'landscape with the Marriage of Isaac and Rebekah' (See figure 9 of research point 'Different Artists' depiction of Landscape : Part 1') I will not quote this at length but the gist of it was that he was encouraging 'an earnest, faithful and loving study of nature as she is' (2).
As well as developing along the lines of truth to nature in the sense of accurate (rather than idealised) depiction. The other 'truth' which developed was a subjective truth - that is the artists true response to his environment. In part this is what Monet and Cezanne were trying to achieve with their series paintings" Cezanne had a lot to say on this subject:
'Today our sight is a little weary, burdened by the memory of a thousand images......We no longer see nature; we see pictures over and over again"
'If only we could see with the eyes of a new born child'
'Painting from nature is not copying the object, it is realising one's sensations'
I will come back to Cezanne shortly but first let's look at Monet.
Monet's Series Paintings
Monet may have initially started his series paintings in response to getting married and settling in his in Giverny. He probably didn't want to spend so much time travelling as he had in the past as this would mean being away from his family. He therefore started to document the changing effects of the light, weather and the seasons on his locality. Rendering his response to light effects presented some major practical problems given his rigorous way of working ( intense and rapid painting and overpainting resulting in a thick impasto application) and the scale of the canvases he used (often 60 x 100cm in size and painted almost entirely outdoors)
Haystacks/ Grainstacks
Click here for numerous images courtesy of Wikipedia. This series of paintings was produced between 1888 and 1891. The subject was very close to his home in the fields around Monet's house at Giverny. Necessarily so because Monet painted in front of the motif in plein air and on large canvases. Sometimes he would work for only a few minutes on a large canvas before the light changed and he would turn to working on another. He enlisted his family to fetch and carry for him bringing more and more canvases out for him to work on. He said that when he started he would just need two canvases - one for a sunny day and one for grey and cloudy. This rapidly escalated. He had many canvases and worked on each only when a particular light effect occurred (although he did sometimes continue in the studio at night because he couldn't keep up and finish all that he wanted to do before sunset). He is quoted as saying, " For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right; since its appearance changes at every moment; the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the air and the light vary continually"(4)
In the grainstack series the rest of the landscape is not painted in detail. The light effects on the stacks are the most important things. (click here for an example) . The colours are vivid and beautiful but sometimes verging on the unbelievable. Here we have a clear example of truth to nature being 'subjectively experiential' (2)
Working in the way that he did, Monet took months to capture the effect (and affect) of a fleeting moment. He started with broad strokes and overpainted with smaller and smaller and smaller dashes of colour until he was satisfied.(4)
Unfortunately, the series was not kept together as Monet would have wished but individual paintings went to individual buyers. Monet's intention was that the painting should be seen as facets of a whole rather than individual landscapes but this only really occurs if the paintings are viewed together.
Poplars on the Banks of The Epte.
Click here for examples courtesy of Wikipedia. One of the attractions of this subject for Monet was the tallness of the poplars making for a strong vertical composition especially as they were reflected in the river. In addition to the practical considerations mentioned above with the grainstacks, Monet encountered an additional difficulty (and financial expense) to complete this series. Monet had to start work on this series before he had planned to. He learned that the trees along the bank were to be sold and Monet could not persuade the local mayor to postpone the sale. They would have been felled for their timber, but the artist found the likely highest bidder and paid this person to keep the trees standing until he had completed his series.
In this series he uses dabs of colour verging on pointillism except that he does not use adjacent dabs of primary colours. The grids of verticals, reflections and diffusing effects of foliage on the light are quite enchanting.
Rouen Cathedral Series
This was a major challenge for Monet. He chose the essentially colourless stone façade of the cathedral in order that he could document the changing effects of the light. For his work he stayed away from home for days to weeks on end. He worked indoors in a second floor apartment opposite the cathedral and worked in a strict routine 6am to 6.30 pm to make the most of the light. The apartment must have been very cramped as he would have at up to 12 large canvases in progress at any one time.
One problem which Monet encountered in this series which was not a problem with those painted at home was the fact the artist was becoming a celebrity. This meant that he faced interruptions from people coming to invite him to dinner. Although he liked the invitations there was a certain anxiety about wanting to leave early to be up and start painting with the early morning light.
Monet got frustrated and depressed at some points during this series and he reworked some of these works back home in the studio. He wasn't aided particularly in his endeavour by his landlord in Rouen who asked him to stop painting in the afternoons, complaining that he was putting off customers to his shop. The artist eventually ended up paying the landlord an additional 2000 francs to allow him to stay on.
Examples of the Rouen Cathedral Series. In these examples the thick application of paint almost has the appearance of bricklayer's mortar.
Monet painted numerous other series, including Water lillies (of which he painted over 250 paintings over many years) and London's Houses of Parliament as well as London's bridges. While painting in London he suffered from pleurisy which was blamed on spending too much time outside in damp, cold weather.(3)
Monet was diagnosed with cataracts in 1912 which made painting more of a struggle but he continued well beyond this. He had surgery for this and after this he saw colours very vividly. This made for some very lively paintings which I particularly like. I saw some of these later works at the exhibition of Turner,Twombly,Monet at Tate Liverpool last year. I liked the energy and freedom with the application of colour which is seen in these late works.For example this image of the Japanese Footbridge at Giverny seen here on the Guardian website.
Reference Material:
(1)http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Never-Underestimate-the-Power-of-a-Paint-Tube-204116801.html
(2) Landscape and Western Art. Malcolm Andrews. Oxford History of Western Art. Oxford University Press 1999
(3)'Monet'. Janice Anderson. Grange Books. Regency House Publishing 2007.
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