Golden Skies

Constant Troyon, A Clump of Trees, c.1860
George Inness, The Brook.

These works by Constant Troyon (top) and George Inness, make use of the golden light of dusk to suffuse the scenes with a sense of mystery. Warm golden hues - yellows sometimes with a touch of orange and red - are the perfect foil for dark grey-green foliage, creating a mood of soothing harmony.

The American landscape painter George Inness was so influential that he is often called "the father of American landscape painting". 

In his mature period, Inness discovered the spiritual writings of the Swedish mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg. The late paintings are poetic and mystical, with landscape views that are more intimate and personal, and a handling of shapes that is more abstract and nebulous than the earlier, more descriptive paintings.

In a published interview, Inness maintained that "The true use of art is, first, to cultivate the artist's own spiritual nature." His abiding interest in spiritual and emotional considerations did not preclude Inness from undertaking a scientific study of color, nor a mathematical, structural approach to composition: "The poetic quality is not obtained by eschewing any truths of fact or of Nature...Poetry is the vision of reality."

-Wikipedia

The glowing golden skies in these works would probably have been created by applying transparent glazes of a warm yellow over a white underpainting.

Geroge inness, The Monk, 1873.

Maple Screen, Hasegawa Tohaku.

It's possible that Inness was influenced by seeing the gold leaf backgrounds of Japanese folding screens (Byōbu), or it may have just been the symbolic association gold has with the Eternal.

John Nash

John Nash:
1. A Path Through Trees, ca. 1915.
2. Gloucester Landscape.
3. The Cornfield, 1918.









The English painter John Nash is perhaps best known for his work as a war artist. His depictions of the horrors of WW1 had a great impact.
These landscapes show a deep love and understanding of nature, and even though he was largely untrained, and the works have a naive quality, they are also often executed with a fine sense of craftsmanship. He was also a print-maker.
He was a lover of Dora Carrington (bottom painting), and a major influence on her work.

Dora Carrington, Farm at Watendlath, 1921


Here's a link to a post about this period of British landscape painting, on the blog Art and Architecture mainly: two exhibitions of British landscapes

Edward Steichen

Best known for his iconic photographs, Edward Steichen also experimented with landscape painting. He destroyed many of his canvases, and these tonalist nocturnes are are some of the surviving works.
Steichen used delicate washes of thinned oil colour, one over another, to create an opalescent effect and a mood of poetic reverie reminiscent of Whistler and George Innes.
This effect does not come across well in reproductions.
Steichen was born in Luxembourg and immigrated to the US as an infant in 1881. He died in 1973 at the ripe old age of 93.

Rivers

Corot, Le Ruisseau au Cheval Blanc, 46.9 x 72.3 cm.
Henri Biva, By the River.
Levitan.
Munnings.
Jorge Cerda Girones.

Caspar David Friedrich, Quotes

After a long period during which his work was neglected and misunderstood (it was even associated with Nazism at one stage) Caspar Friedrich is now appreciated as a major figure in landscape painting, and perhaps the most important German painter of the Romantic period. His landscapes are unique, not only because they draw from a deep contemplation of Nature but because they reflect an inner world of eternal values.

Friedrich wrote a collection of aphorisms communicating his insights into painting. Here are some of them:

"Close your bodily eye, that you may see your picture first with the eye of the spirit. Then bring to light what you have seen in the darkness, that its effect may work back, from without to within."

"If he sees nothing within, then he should stop painting what is in front of him."

The painter should paint not only what he has in front of him, but also what he sees inside himself.

"What the newer landscape artists see in a circle of a hundred degrees in Nature they press together unmercifully into an angle of vision of only forty-five degrees. And furthermore, what is in Nature separated by large spaces, is compressed into a cramped space and overfills and oversatiates the eye, creating an unfavorable and disquieting effect on the viewer."

"The pure, frank sentiments we hold in our hearts are the only truthful sources of art. A painting which does not take its inspiration from the heart is nothing more than futile juggling. All authentic art is conceived at a sacred moment and nourished in a blessed hour; an inner impulse creates it, often without the artist being aware of it."

The Russian writer Aleksandr Turgenev wrote of Friedrich in his diary:

We visited Friedrich's atelier today. Listening to him and seeing his paintings was wonderful. He has some bonhomie which pleases people and his paintings reveal his romantic imagination. As a rule, he expresses in them one thought or feeling, though vaguely. You may meditate over his paintings but not have a clear understanding of them, for they are vague even in his soul. They are dreams or daydreams. He often employs very simple natural things, such as an ice block floating on sea waves, a few trees in a dale, window of his room (facing the beautiful Elbe), knight meditating over ruins or tombstones, monk staring into the distance or below his feet: all this captivates your soul, plunges you into dreams, all invokes your imagination, powerfully though vaguely.(6 August 1825)

Steps

Frederic Leighton, The Staircase of a House at Capri, 1859.
Henri Le Sidaner, Steps of the Palace at Versailles (Les Marches du Palais)

John Singer Sargent:
Santa Maria della Salute, 1906
The Steps of the Church of S. S. Domenico-e-Siste in Rome
Staircase in Capri, 1878

The Cloud Study

Cloud study, Anonymous.

The cloud study is a great plein air exercise. It's something you can do anywhere, even in the city, or in a landscape where the scenery at ground level is totally uninspiring. 

And because clouds are a moving target, it forces you to paint rapidly. Having a palette prepared with tonal strings of blues and greys would be a good idea, so that you don't waste time mixing. Adding a speck of yellow to the whites and violet to the grey shadows produces a nice complementary colour harmony.

Johan Dahl, Cloud study (Wolkenstudie)

Views of clouds reflected in water are an interesting variation, popularised of course by Monet.

Here's one by the Western Australian artist George Haynes.