This document provides an overview of the history and techniques of landscape painting from the 1400s to modern times. It discusses how landscape painting evolved from depicting nature as a setting for religious subjects during the Renaissance to becoming the main focus by the Dutch in the 1600s. Impressionism in the 1860s emphasized direct observation and greater variety of color. Modern movements like Cubism and Surrealism abstracted nature for new color combinations. The document also covers techniques for depicting landscape elements like aerial perspective, light, trees, and composition through cropping and abstraction. Student examples are included to demonstrate these techniques.

1. Glenn Hirsch, Instructor
Landscape Color
Aerial Perspective
The Energy of Trees

2. landscape painting
the depiction of natural scenery in a wide
view – with elements arranged into a
coherent composition. Landscape views may
be entirely imaginary or observed from
reality.

3. 1400s-1500s European Renaissance
Landscape painting was established as a setting for human activity,
often expressed in a religious or mythical subject.
New techniques: Perspective and effects of light to create the feeling
of “space” and “distance.”
The idea that a painting is not a flat piece of paper but a “window” to
see the world beyond.

4. Rome, c. 60 BC Rogier van der Weyden 1450
Before the Renaissance After the Renaissance

5. Rogier van der Weyden 1450 Leonardo da Vinci 1503

6. 1500s-1600s Dutch landscape painting
With the disappearance of religious painting in a Protestant
society, Dutch artists painted a style of panoramic landscape with
small figures using a high aerial viewpoint.
Then in the 1600s, painters like Rembrandt and Vermeer further
developed subtle realist techniques for depicting light and
weather.
The word "landscape" comes from the Dutch landschap @ 1600.

7. Pieter Bruegel
1565

8. Rembrandt
1630

9. Aert van
der Neer
1647

10. 1700s
With the rise of capitalism in Europe, artists like Thomas
Gainsborough painted landscapes depicting the estates
of landowners – with an emphasis on the landscape as a
park or “utopia.”

11. Thomas Gainsborough 1750

12. 1800s-1860s
Spirituality re-entered European landscape in the early 1800s with Romanticism
in which Nature is a wild, untamed and mysterious force – providing a direct
personal connection with the spirit (similar in many ways to the way people
today find spiritual connection in backpacking).
A secular faith in the spiritual benefits to be gained from the contemplation of
natural beauty.

13. Caspar David Friedrich 1820

14. Albert Bierstadt 1868

15. 1860-1900 Impressionism
These artists made landscape the main source of
stylistic innovation in color and composition:
•direct observation
•greater variety of color
•simplification of shapes to create movement for the
eye

16. Camille Corot 1847
Oil sketch en plein air

17. Jules Bastien-Lepage
1872

18. Berthe Morisot

19. Childe Hassam

20. Monet

21. Van Gogh

22. 1900-1980 – Modernism: Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism and Abstract
Expressionism
These artists abandoned realism and used Nature as an inspiration for an
endless variety of shape as catalyst for the invention of new color
combinations from the imagination.
Surrealists like Dali saw landscapes as ‘dreamscape.’

23. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

24. Salvador Dali

25. Wayne Thiebaud

26. Richard Diebenkorn

27. Eddie
Fitzgerald

28. Landscape
Color

29. Emily Luthra

30. Emily Luthra

31. Jessica Riano

32. Maeve Crogan

33. Selden
Gile

34. Gerhard Richter Tom Bullard

35. Landscape
Composition

36. Cropping –
Shapes go off the
edge of the page

37. Winslow Homer
Staging –
Arranging the
shapes to tell a
story

38. A low horizon
emphasizes the
freedom of the
sky
Van Gogh

39. “Big Sky”
(Emil Nolde,
watercolor)

40. Paul Cezanne, 1901
Abstracting –
Simplifying shape to create movement

41. Landscape
Light

42. the ‘true color’ of the
house doesn’t exist
independently of the
light

43. Claude Monet

44. spiritual
Joseph Turner

45. Alphonse Mucha
Night, myth and
dream

46. Twilight
the boundary
between
consciousness and
dreams
Caspar David Friedrich

47. atmospheric
aerial
perspective
as objects recede in a landscape space, they appear
lighter, duller, cooler

48. aerial
perspective
– things far
away look
duller
and lighter
compared
to the
foreground
Watercolor by Winslow Homerphotograph

49. Joseph Turner

50. Gustave Guillaumet

51. Aerial perspective is not a ‘rule’ it’s a ‘recipe’
to use or not to use

52. Student work

53. TREES

54. To see trees you look up
Kevin Dame

55. To see trees
you look
down

56. Trees
thrust
out of
the
ground

57. Maeve Crogan
Trees have
energy and
gesture

58. Josep Masriera

59. Watercolor by
Winslow Homer

60. tree technique

61. trees have figurative gesture

62. Trees cast a
shadow on the
ground beneath
them

63. Leaves cluster
in branches
Each branch has
a top
and a
bottom

64. Sunlight
also comes
through
the
branches
(lit from
behind)

65. you can illustrate
the leaves with
precise drawing
carefully colored-in

66. John Singer Sargent
Or you can
suggest the
leaves with
improvised
wet-in-wet
blobs of
color

67. John Singer Sargent

68. John Singer Sargent

69. Impasto painting
using a palette knife

70. Smearing, like butter on toast
Flat, minimal and smooth

71. Double-Loading and SMEARING 2 COLORS TOGETHER

72. hard edged PATTERNS
Thin LINES

73. Press and lift, use the TENSION of the blade
SCRATCHING and scraping

74. Change the PRESSURE of your hand, create thick and thin in flowing motion

75. Eddie Fitzgerald

78. detail

84. detail

86. detail

88. detail

89. Next week: Architectural Space

90. Daniel Rabier

91. Daniel Rabier

92. Andy Slaton