John Constable and the Theory of Landscape Painting


Book Description

Ray Lambert provides a close study of Constable's landscapes and his writings about them. Displaying a high level of engagement with ideas on art and aesthetics that had decisive consequences for his style of painting, Constable's texts clearly reveal and adumbrate his views. They also give an indication of the artist's knowledge of scientific, poetic, and aesthetic ideas that were relevant to the creation of a serious landscape art as well as a theory of landscape. Linking these theories with those of Joshua Reynolds, Lambert demonstrates that Constable was an intellectual painter whose works are not a revolutionary break with the past. Moreover, his theory and practice place him within the great tradition of landscape painting in the West.




Landscape Painting


Book Description

Because nature is so expansive and complex, so varied in its range of light, landscape painters often have to look further and more deeply to find form and structure, value patterns, and an organized arrangement of shapes. In Landscape Painting, Mitchell Albala shares his concepts and practices for translating nature's grandeur, complexity, and color dynamics into convincing representations of space and light. Concise, practical, and inspirational, Landscape Painting focuses on the greatest challenges for the landscape artist, such as: • Simplification and Massing: Learn to reduce nature's complexity by looking beneath the surface of a subject to discover the form's basic masses and shapes.• Color and Light: Explore color theory as it specifically applies to the landscape, and learn the various strategies painters use to capture the illusion of natural light.• Selection and Composition: Learn to select wisely from nature's vast panorama. Albala shows you the essential cues to look for and how to find the most promising subject from a world of possibilities. The lessons in Landscape Painting—based on observation rather than imitation and applicable to both plein air and studio practice—are accompanied by painting examples, demonstrations, photographs, and diagrams. Illustrations draw from the work of more than 40 contemporary artists and such masters of landscape painting as John Constable, Sanford Gifford, and Claude Monet. Based on Albala's 25 years of experience and the proven methods taught at his successful plein air workshops, this in-depth guide to all aspects of landscape painting is a must-have for anyone getting started in the genre, as well as more experienced practitioners who want to hone their skills or learn new perspectives.




John Constable's Skies


Book Description

John Constable is arguably the most accomplished painter of English skies and weather of all time. For Constable, the sky was the keynote, the standard of scale and the chief organ of sentiment in a landscape painting. But how far did he understand the workings of the forces of nature which created his favourite cumulus clouds, portrayed in so many of his skies over the landscapes of Hampstead Heath, Salisbury and Suffolk? And were the skies he painted scientifically accurate? In this lucid and accessible study, John Thornes provides a meteorological framework for reading the skies of landscape art, compares Constable's skies to those produced by other artists from the middle ages to the nineteenth century, analyses Constable's own meteorological understanding, and examines the development of his painted skies. In so doing he provides fresh evidence to identify the year of painting of some of Constable's previously undated cloud studies.




Landscape and Ideology


Book Description

In this interdisciplinary study, Ann Bermingham explores the complex, ambiguous, and often contradictory relationship between English landscape painting and the socio-economic changes that accompanied enclosure and the Industrial Revolution.




Constable's Skies


Book Description

A beautiful, gift-sized volume celebrating Constable’s enduring fascination and engagement with the sky John Constable was one of the supreme painters of the weather, and his depictions of the sky are essential components of all his landscape paintings, from famous works such as The Hay Wain and Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows to his numerous cloud studies painted on Hampstead Heath, culminating in paintings that are all sky; the landscape beneath is completely absent. In a letter to friend John Fisher, written in 1821, Constable commented, “That landscape painter who does not make his skies a very material part of his composition, neglects to avail himself of one of his greatest aids . . . It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment.” Written by Mark Evans, a leading authority on the work of John Constable, and brimming with beautiful images, Constable’s Skies captures the artist’s fascination with the sky and brings together his depictions of the English weather from throughout his career. The unprecedented fidelity of Constable’s painted skies is proven by reference to contemporary weather diaries. The book also includes a guide to where to find Constable’s work around the world.




Late Constable Hb


Book Description

On John Constable as a proto-abstractionist of pastoral landscape One of Britain's greatest landscape painters, John Constable was brought up in Dedham Vale, the valley of the River Stour in Suffolk. The eldest son of a wealthy mill owner, he entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1800 at the age of 24, and thereafter committed himself to painting nature out of doors. His "six-footers," such as The Hay Wainand The Leaping Horse, were designed to promote landscape as a subject and to stand out in the Academy's Annual Exhibition. Despite this, he sold few paintings in his lifetime and was elected a Royal Academician late in his career. With texts by leading authorities on the artist, this handsome book looks at the freedom of Constable's late works and records his enormous contribution to the English landscape tradition. John Constable(1776-1837) is one of Britain's best-known artists, and is often considered one of the greatest landscape painters of all time. He was born near the River Stour in Suffolk, an area the artist depicted so frequently that it is referred to as "Constable country." Pastoral scenes were unfashionable at the time and Constable struggled to establish himself as a painter. He was finally elected a Royal Academician in 1829, and in 1832, he exhibited The Opening of Waterloo Bridge--an effort 13 years in the making--at the Summer Exhibition.




Representing Place


Book Description

"You are here, a map declares, but of course you are not, any more than you truly occupy the vantage point into which a landscape painting puts you. How maps and paintings figure and reconfigure space--as well as our place in it--is the subject of Edward S. Casey's study, an exploration of how we portray the world and its many places. Casey's discussion ranges widely from Northern Sung landscape painting to nineteenth-century American and British landscape painting and photography, from prehistoric petroglyphs and medieval portolan charts to seventeenth-century Dutch cartography and land survey maps of the American frontier. From these culturally and historically diverse forays a theory of representation emerges. Casey proposes that the representation of place in visual works be judged in terms not of resemblance, but of reconnecting with an earth and world that are not the mere content of mind or language--a reconnection that calls for the embodiment and implacement of the human subject." -- Book jacket.




John Constable


Book Description

Each year between 1819 and 1825, John Constable (1776-1837) submitted a monumental canvas to the Royal Academy of Arts in London for display in the annual Exhibition. These so-called six-footers vividly captured the life of the River Stour in Suffolk, where Constable grew up and where he returned to paint each year. The Leaping Horse, the last of these, now a major work in the Academy's collection, is the subject of this fascinating new book. Humphreys explores Constable's often avant-garde working methods, as well as his struggle to gain full acceptance within the art establishment of the early nineteenth century. With reproductions of his full-scale preliminary sketches as well as brand new photography of the painting itself, this book is the ideal companion for art lovers who seek a deeper appreciation of Constable's iconic depictions of the English countryside. AUTHOR: Richard Humphreys is the author of Wyndham Lewis (2004), and editor of Tate's British Artists series. He was formerly Curator of Programme Research at Tate Britain, London. SELLING POINT: * An engaging examination of one of the Royal Academy's most important treasures, the painting described by Lucian Freud as 'the greatest painting in the world' 50 colour illustrations




Nature and Culture : American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875, With a New Preface


Book Description

In this richly illustrated volume, featuring more than fifty black-and-white illustrations and a beautiful eight-page color insert, Barbara Novak describes how for fifty extraordinary years, American society drew from the idea of Nature its most cherished ideals. Between 1825 and 1875, all kinds of Americans--artists, writers, scientists, as well as everyday citizens--believed that God in Nature could resolve human contradictions, and that nature itself confirmed the American destiny. Using diaries and letters of the artists as well as quotes from literary texts, journals, and periodicals, Novak illuminates the range of ideas projected onto the American landscape by painters such as Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, Asher B. Durand, Fitz H. Lane, and Martin J. Heade, and writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Frederich Wilhelm von Schelling. Now with a new preface, this spectacular volume captures a vast cultural panorama. It beautifully demonstrates how the idea of nature served, not only as a vehicle for artistic creation, but as its ideal form. "An impressive achievement." --Barbara Rose, The New York Times Book Review "An admirable blend of ambition, elan, and hard research. Not just an art book, it bears on some of the deepest fantasies of American culture as a whole." --Robert Hughes, Time Magazine




Nine Letters on Landscape Painting


Book Description

Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869)--court physician to the king of Saxony--was a naturalist, amateur painter, and theoretician of landscape painting whose Nine Letters on Landscape Painting is an important document of early German romanticism and an elegant appeal for the integration of art and science. Carus was inspired by and had contacts with the greatest German intellectuals of his day. Carus prefaced his work with a letter from his correspondence with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who was his primary mentor in both science and art. His writings also reflect, however, the influence of the German natural philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, especially Schelling's notion of a world soul, and the writings of the naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Carus played a role in the revolution in landscape painting taking place in Saxony around Caspar David Friedrich. The first edition appears here in English for the first time.