LANDSCAPE PAINTING (Romanticism) Figure 30-23 JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER, The Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840. Oil on canvas, Used landscapes as an allegory. Nature as symbolic, spiritual, moral and historical. Hudson River School Manifest Destiny -19th century view that westward expansion across the continent was a logical destiny of the United States.

Albert BierstadtAmong the Sierra Nevada Mountains1868 THOMAS COLE, The Oxbow (View from Mount Holyoke, How do these two paintings represent Manifest Destiny?

ID these 2 artists. Contrast these two English paintings.

Frederic ChurchTwilight in the Wilderness1860’s JOHN CONSTABLE, The Haywain, 1821. Oil on canvas How do these two paintings ignore contemporary societal issues? Why?

Thomas Cole The Oxbow 1836

Figure 30-24 THOMAS COLE, The Oxbow (View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm), 1836. Oil on canvas, 4’ 3 1/2” x 6’ 4”. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (gift of Mrs. Russell Sage, 1908). THE HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL: a specialty group of American landscape artists who painted scenes from the undeveloped regions of the Hudson River Valley-New York State; their focus was on the uncultivated regions of the area and identifying those qualities that made America unique . Cole addresses this question in this composition dividing it into 2-dark and stormy wilderness on the left and more developed civilization on the right. There’s a tiny representation of an artist in the bottom center, turns to viewer to ask the country’s fate. THE HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL: a specialty group of American landscape artists who painted scenes from the undeveloped regions of the Hudson River Valley-New York State; their focus was on the uncultivated regions of the area and identifying those qualities that made America unique and the moral question of its direction as a civilization. Cole addresses this question in this composition dividing it into 2-dark and stormy wilderness on the left and more developed civilization on the right. There’s a tiny representation of an artist in the bottom center, turns to viewer to ask the country’s fate.

Painting is divided into two sections Photo taken at the Met

uses emotion power of pure color ENGLISH Figure 30-23 JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER, The Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840. Oil on canvas, 2’ 11 11/16” x 4’ 5/16”. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Henry Lillie Pierce Fund). The Slave Ship is his most notable work based on a popular book titled, The History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade (Thomas Clarkson). The captured moment tell the story of the ship’s captain upon learning that his insurance company will only reimburse him for dead slaves, has the sick and dying ones thrown overboard. uses emotion power of pure color ENGLISH Joseph Mallord William Turner is all about the emotive power of color. He released color from any defining outlines to express both the forces of nature and the painter’s emotional response to them. Turner and Constable were contemporaries from the same English school of landscape painting and both created work that responded to the approaching industrialization. However Constable’s paintings are serene and precisely painted and Turner’s are full of wild swirls of densely applied pigment. The energy and passion in Turner’s work is very Romantic in tone and also illustrates the concept of the sublime – awe mixed with terror (as Edmund Burke illustrated). The Slave Ship is his most notable work based on a popular book titled, The History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade (Thomas Clarkson). The captured moment tell the story of the ship’s captain upon learning that his insurance company will only reimburse him for dead slaves, has the sick and dying ones thrown overboard. Turner’s discovery of the aesthetic and emotive power of pure color and his push to where color almost becomes the subject were important steps toward 20th c abstract art (which dispensed with shape and form altogether).

Figure 30-22 JOHN CONSTABLE, The Haywain, 1821 Figure 30-22 JOHN CONSTABLE, The Haywain, 1821. Oil on canvas, 4’ 3” x 6’ 2”. National Gallery, London. “Painting is but another word for feeling” wrote Constable; this painting reflects his memories of a disappearing rural pastoralism. The Haywain is significant for what it does not show-the civil unrest of the agrarian working class and the outbreaks of violence and arson that resulted. ENGLISH John Constable addressed the agrarian situation of the Industrial Revolution in his landscape paintings. The detrimental economic impact that industrialization had on the priced for agrarian products produced significant unrest in the English countryside. Increasingly displaced farmers could no longer afford to farm their small plots of land. “Painting is but another word for feeling” wrote Constable; this painting reflects his memories of a disappearing rural pastoralism. The Haywain is significant for what it does not show-the civil unrest of the agrarian working class and the outbreaks of violence and arson that resulted.

Figure 30-21 CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH, Abbey in the Oak Forest, 1810 Figure 30-21 CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH, Abbey in the Oak Forest, 1810. Oil on canvas, 3' 7 1/2" X 5' 7 1/4". Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin. Caspar Friedrich was a master of the Romantic transcendental landscape; Symbols of death are everywhere from the funerary procession to the season’s desolation, leaning crosses and tombstones, skeletal trees, black clothing and destruction of the church. GERMAN Landscape painting became an independent and respected genre in the 19th c. Increased tourism (due to expanded railway systems in America and Europe) contributed to this popularity. Instead of describing nature, Romantic artists (and poets) used it as allegory. Artists were then free to comment on moral, spiritual, historical or philosophical issues through nature. Landscape painting was a very effective vehicle for such commentary. Caspar Friedrich was a master of the Romantic transcendental landscape; this winter scene creates a reverential mood with the ruins of a Gothic church and cemetery calling for silence in such a sacred place. Symbols of death are everywhere from the funerary procession to the season’s desolation, leaning crosses and tombstones, skeletal trees, black clothing and destruction of the church.

Figure 30-26 FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH, Twilight In the Wilderness, 1860s Figure 30-26 FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH, Twilight In the Wilderness, 1860s. Oil on canvas, 3’ 4” x 5’ 4”. Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland (Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund, 1965.233). Painted during the Civil War this painting shows not a single sign of humanity let along conflict. Church eloquently expresses the Romantic notion of the sublime presenting an idealistic view of America free of conflict. Landscape painting was extremely popular during both the late 18th and early 19th c and was the perfect vehicle for both artists and viewers to “naturalize” conditions, making any contentious issues silent and eliminating any hint of unrest. USA Painted during the Civil War this painting shows not a single sign of humanity let along conflict. Church eloquently expresses the Romantic notion of the sublime presenting an idealistic view of America free of conflict. Landscape painting was extremely popular during both the late 18th and early 19th c and was the perfect vehicle for both artists and viewers to “naturalize” conditions, making any contentious issues silent and eliminating any hint of unrest.

Figure 30-25 ALBERT BIERSTADT, Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, 1868. Oil on canvas, 6’ x 10’. National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Bierstadt’s 10 ft. panoramic landscape presents amazing natural beauty of the American West; His paintings reinforce the 19th c doctrine of Manifest Destiny which justified western expansion. Bierstadt was also one of the Hudson River artists who used landscape genre as an allegorical vehicle to address moral and spiritual concerns. This popular 19th c doctrine held that westward expansion across the continent was the logical destiny of the US. USA Bierstadt’s 10 ft. panoramic landscape presents amazing natural beauty of the American West; His paintings reinforce the 19th c doctrine of Manifest Destiny which justified western expansion. Bierstadt was also one of the Hudson River artists who used landscape genre as an allegorical vehicle to address moral and spiritual concerns. This popular 19th c doctrine held that westward expansion across the continent was the logical destiny of the US. Bucolic scenic paintings of the American West helped quell growing concerns about exploitation of the environment and to the Native Americans. Purchasers of these works were ironically mail-service and railroad builders – those involved in westward expansion.