English landscape painters PDF

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English landscape painters...

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English landscape painters The concept of landscape institutionalizes the conventional objectification of the environment. The various dictionaries reflect this attitude, giving, as a rule, a definition of landscape such that it is consistent with the etymology of the English word: "natural extent that can be perceived at a glance". Such a simplistic definition encompasses all kinds of possible assumptions, including that the landscape is something visible, has limits and is far from us. One would expect that landscape representations, one of the established genres of the visual arts, reflect precisely these notions of objectification and distance. Although this is sometimes true of photographic landscapes, the same is not true of painting. Although they often follow the convention that wants the landscape placed in a frame, as if looking at it through a window, the paintings actually bring to life scenes of unbridled immediacy and intimacy. The way the artist saw nature changed with romanticism. The serene vision of the humanist landscape gave way to the threat of the natural elements. Landscape painting in the Romantic period depicted nature that remained unaffected by the effects of civilization, the idealized nature. Theories of idealized nature had already been formulated by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in the 18th century and were summarized in the term already mentioned, "picturesque". With his work, "Critique of critical power", he defined the concepts of the Beautiful and the High, as well as the differences between them. In particular, Kant argued that the concept of the Beautiful contains a universality and is a process that arises from emotion, while, on the contrary, the concept of the High is transcendental and includes every unprecedented experience that man experiences in nature. Then, in the 19th century, there were several theories, such as those of John Ruskin (1819-1900), which mainly dealt with the subject of the naturalistic landscape. In particular, Ruskin was the inspirer of the concept of "personification of nature", according to which nature can express human emotions, and people can instill their personal feelings in its forms. Romantics embraced similar views, which sometimes led them to new discoveries and sometimes to the study of the real. Ruskin came in contact with Turner's work, whose landscapes led him to grasp the theory of realism in art. According to her, realism meant a passionate belief in the truth of what one perceives with the senses. "Nature," he claimed, "paints for us, every day, images of unsurpassed beauty, it is enough to have the eyes to see them.” The contribution of English artists to the development of European painting was significant in the field of landscape painting. English landscape art was born out of their indifference to anything

that is not pristine nature, flexible muscles and helpfulness. As the 18th century progressed, Britain's territory expanded and cities transformed, forcing the country to rediscover itself in the lure of its rural landscapes. Driven by this new trend, many artists began visiting the most diverse places in England, Scotland and Wales to faithfully depict nature. In the last decades of the 18th century, indifference to the objective reproduction of landscapes began to be cultivated, as artists sought to express individual feeling towards nature. The institution that played the most decisive role in the development of European painting was the school of landscape painting. The Norwish School and the Watercolour Society, founded in 1803 and 1804 respectively, brought together the most creative forces. Girtin (1775-1802) completed the release of the watercolour from the design and sought rich and varied colour tones. Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828), in order to improve his landscape technique, carried out meteorological studies of clouds. William Turner (1775-1851) is for many the most important landscape painter. There have been many phases in his long career, which could be divided into three main periods. Initially, he was mainly interested in the solid form, with the solid design, which was inspired by the mountains of Switzerland and Wales. In the following period he adopted the romantic majestic style of the classic landscape. During the last thirty years of his life, after his trip to Venice, he devoted himself exclusively to light and colour. Gradually his forms became less specific, more and more airy, until finally the form sank into space and dissolved in light and colour. He envisioned a world full of light and beauty, imaginary, a world of motion that was not characterized by simple harmonies. He accumulated in his work every trick that would make it more dramatic and impressive. An important point in his writings is that he stated that his wish was the direct correlation of the painting with the viewer's experience, as well as the effort to unify the painting surface. Gradually, the diligent and precise topographer tried to shape the various combinations of the four primary elements (earth, air, water, fire). One of the main topics he dealt with was seascape painting, which was then considered a branch of landscape painting. In his watercolours, as well as in his oil paintings, he painted fishmongers, sailboats, warships and even steamships, which are often depicted fighting the waves, in order to become a testimony of human activity, defenseless against the unruly. of nature. His skill in shaping the multiple shades of water, the changing moods of natural phenomena, the reflection of the sun's rays or the moon, as well as the contours of the most different coasts was an element that differentiated him from other landscape painters.

After the mid-1840s, Turner was fully committed to the explosion of light and colour. His paintings inevitably turned into almost complete abstractions, so much so that even Ruskin became estranged from the artist, interpreting the abandonment of any relationship with nature as a symptom of decline. Examining Turner's works, all the aforementioned features become perfectly clear from the very first glance. In his work "Snowstorm" the artist identifies the pattern of natural movement with a huge vortex. The work shows a ship in the middle of a storm, windstorm and clouds in yellowish white and bluish grey tones. The composition is formed rotationally, from the periphery to the centre, where the black mark of the ship is highlighted. It is as if a centrifugal force is represented by colours. The artist himself had claimed that he was tied to the mast of the ship Ariel for four hours in a blizzard, so that he could convey the immediacy of the experience. Ruskin argued that the project was "one of the most magnificent projects of sea, fog and light.” "The heroic T. M. Raire is towed to its last berth" is one of Turner's most sensitive poems of romance. It is a magnificent composition, both for its morphological balance and for its colour organization. The artist presented the ship in its last hours, where dusk has wrapped it in its cold colours. The viewer's eye first focuses on the central theme of the work and then follows the discreet overlap of the different colours. Ruskin considered T. Raire to be the last painting "in which Turner's execution is stable and perfect, as in his maturity" - as is well known, Ruskin considered his works to be more important for his majestic conception. than for their impeccable technique. In the work, "Rain, steam, speed" a railway locomotive is presented for the first time in painting. Turner here seems to have abandoned all restrictions on composition and descriptive "musts". Bridges, trains, land, have lost their solids, due to the effect of light and fog. His technique is fast, free, abstract. The image is a hint, an association, a memory. We have the impression that the artist had left behind any artistic perception of his time, as he knew how to permeate the canvas with force. In his case, it is true, in part, that he was trying to forget what he knew about the world and to concentrate only on what he saw. Undoubtedly Turner was one of the greatest landscape painters in Europe in the 19th century and he was the one who brought romantic landscape very close to the colour perception of the Impressionists. Another great contemporary painter of Turner was John Constable (1776-1837), who, admittedly, opened new avenues in landscape painting. This is because he interpreted the visible

world from the beginning as he really saw it when he first met it with a new virginal look. He was also a modernist in the perception of colour with an extremely large colour scale. Constable fully embraced the romantic view of the presence of the divine will in nature, which he himself affirms in his own words; Of Scriptures, I am the resurrection and the life “.He took the form of things for granted and modified it in order to reproduce the "here and now", as Gombrich argues, the appearance, that is, that they present at a certain point in time. He completed the great tradition of the School of the North and the Dutch landscape by revealing a poetic vision of the natural world, which, however, was based on correct and accurate observation. "There is nothing wrong with nature," he said. For him, the role of the artist, as a carrier of experience-based truth, is indicated both by the persistent autobiographical theme of his works, and by his habit of painting directly from nature and starting his works in the countryside (fact which was a bold step at the time). He aspired to offer a new and clear rendering of the visible world, or at least a completely personal description of it. When Delacroix saw Constable landscapes he discovered in them a principle; the principle of colour separation. A confused mix of colours placed next to each other, with no obvious connection to the distant colouring of nature, which they claimed imitated the clearly defined form they wanted to resemble. In the work of Wivenhoe Park, the creator's need to render nature as a pleasant backdrop for idyllic scenes is realized. In a letter he had supported his position, saying that "the big flaw today is the bravura, the attempt of the artist to do something beyond the truth”. Another masterpiece of his art is the work, "The cart of hay", which made him famous in Paris. It represents a rural scene, a cart of hay crossing a river. In the background the sunlight, which spreads in the meadows, the clouds, the running river, the mill, all elements really. The artist's intention to paint with simplicity and restraint is obvious, refusing to impress more than nature. It is a fact that for the romantics nature was the mystery they had to solve. They turned their gaze to her, in their attempt to understand the world. The contemplation of a leaf or a mountain top, with their evocative ability, could free the imagination of the romantics, awaken their feelings, cause the ecstasy they so desperately sought. In this climate the romantic landscape was strengthened, especially in England, which as an autonomous species, proposed a new direction in the rendering of reality and a new possibility in the subject matter. It is the expression of the landscape in the personal vision of the artist, who can find beauty where others do not find it....