Philip Wolfhagen

Third Exaltation


The study of clouds was my first interest within the genre of landscape painting and every few years I return to the subject with renewed enthusiasm. Often I am driven by dissatisfaction with my earlier efforts, always striving for a more refined palette and a lighter touch.

Third exaltation is one of a series of five large cloud paintings from 2011. In this painting I have worked over a pale citrus yellow ground, concentrating on paring back tonality to its bare minimum and allowing colour temperature to define pictorial depth.

- Philip Wolfhagen, 2012

This large scale work (I think it's about 3 x 3 m) was a finalist in the Wynne Prize this year, perhaps the most prestigious landscape prize in Australia.

Using a warm orange or yellow ground lends vibrancy to the blues and greys in skies.

Trees

Alexander Helwig Wyant, American, 1836-1892, oil on canvas laid on board, Willows by a Lake, 10 x 11 inches.
Pal Szinyei-Merse, Hilly Landscape, 60.5 x 70 cm.


These compositions crop out most of the sky and background, to focus on trees and the pattern of their foliage.
It's a common mistake to try to capture too much of the scene. Zooming in to a few trees, or even a single tree, can often give you a more interesting and intimate painting.

Edwin Lord Weeks, Street Scene, Bombay

American Modernism

Grant Wood, Spring in the Country, 1941.
James Everett Stuart, Mount Hood, 1916.
Rockwell Kent, Mt Assiniboine, 1952.

Muscular in design, and daring in color. These works of American modernism, can teach a lot about the value of simplifying what you see before you in the landscape, to paint the timeless spirit of a place rather than merely its specific physical appearance.

Norwegian scenes

Some Norwegian painters:

1. Fritz Thaulow
2. Johan Eckersberg
3. Hans Gude
The last image is by Peter Vilhelm Ilsted, who was Danish, but Norway and Denmark were a single kingdom at one stage.

Frederic Edwin Church - Ruins

Fields

Charles Courtney Curran, American, A Breezy Day, 1887
Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, Spanish, Prado de Asturias (Field in Asturias) 1903.


The simplicity of these two works is very attractive: just green and white with a hint of pink to complement.

A few years ago I bought a tube of cinnabar green light by Rembrandt. It's the best colour I have found for sunlit grass. The grass in the lower painting must have been painted with cinnabar or something close to it.

Rembrandt Cinnabar Green Light

AJ Munnings

AJ Munnings (8 October 1878–17 July 1959) is considered one of England's finest equine painters. 

He was an opponent of Modernism, and  the top landscape is probably too bucolic for contemporary tastes, but this is a beautifully composed and executed landscape. By painting the subject with the light coming from behind him, he is able to use the shadows of the animals to bring out their forms.