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.

Susan Downing White

Susan Downing White paints wonderfully poetic evocations of the Gulf Coast of the United States, in a style influenced by 17th century Dutch masters of landscape painting.

Architectural Elements

The abstract design possibilities of architectural elements in the landscape has been explored in previous posts, but here are some more examples.
Contrasting rectilinear and organic, natural and man-made elements, increases visual interest. Though there are no trees in the roofscape, the earthen tiles, with their variegated textures, are a kind of natural element.
Black is rare in nature, but architectural elements give a landscape painter a chance to add some punchy accents to their composition.
Klimt integrates architectural and vegetal elements through pattern and texture.

Top: Alexandra Tyng, Golden, Maine, 28 x 42 inches
Middle: Thomas W. Schaller, Roofs Sienna, watercolour.
Bottom: Klimt, Schloss Kammer

Travel Painting

Edwin Lord Weeks (American, 1849-1903), A Shepherd on a Hillside, Tetuan, 60.3 x 88.5 cm

Painting as a record of travel experiences was a popular genre of the 18th and 19th centuries. Colour photography has greatly reduced the desire for painted records; however, many artists find their work is reinvigorated by travel; and the sketchbooks they bring home may be a valuable resource for paintings.

Edwin Lord Weeks was an American, explorer and painter who specialised in Orientalist scenes encountered on his many travels.
A figure in local attire adds greatly to the evocation of place. 

Google Art Project

I found this work ('Rye') by the Russian painter Ivan Shishkin, on Google Art Project, a wonderful tool that allows you to zoom  in to incredibly high resolution images of art in Major Galleries around the world. It's possible to look at the brushstrokes as if you were peering at the painting only a few inches away from the paint surface. 

One thing that I noticed right away was how thinly the oil paint was applied in many of the 19th century works. Up close they appeared like watercolours in some areas. In comparison, 20th century paintings tend to have much thicker paint layers.

Close up, you can see finely spattered whitish paint in the sky near the horizon, giving the effect of hazy distance.

There's no substitute for seeing a real painting in a gallery, but this comes very close.

www.googleartproject.com