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It’s Warm In There! – Lessons on Color Temperature

One sunny, breezy day over twenty five years ago, I was painting boats at a picturesque harbor on the Maine coast with my teacher and mentor Ned Jacob. There is some sort of special hell reserved for artists painting boats, especially boats that are moving. bobbing up and down and generally not staying still! But, on this day, it wasn’t drawing that had me totally flummoxed. I was painting a white fishing boat moored nearby and felt I had a pretty good drawing of the structure. But, as I tried to paint the interior of the cabin, which was in shadow, I could not make it look right. It looked like a flat piece of paint rather than an area receding away from the outside of the boat. I had a nice pile of grey paint that looked like the right value for the shadow. Ned looked over my shoulder and said “It’s warm in there.” Then he picked up a speck of cad orange with his brush, dropped it in my grey and applied it to the canvas in one deft stroke. It went back, it had “air”, it was warm in there! It was my first lesson in color temperature and I never forgot it.

Color temperature seems like it ought to be a really easy concept, but in my experience it is both hard to understand and, for the inexperienced, even harder to see and therefore to paint. One thing I learned from Ned was where to look for it- where and how to identify places that might hold a color temperature change. Once I knew where to look, then I saw it everywhere!

It was several years later when I read that well known adage “break temperature not value” in Birge Harrison’s book Landscape Painting. It took a while to understand how color temperature and value can be used together to create not only solidity of forms with an economy of values, but will also be the most effective combination to produce the illusion of light and atmosphere in the landscape. Although you can depict it with well organized values only (convert master paintings to greyscale if you doubt that!), the combination of an economical value structure with strategic color temperature shifts will positively make a painting sing!

Here is a painting by American artist Clark Hulings (1922-2011) that illustrates this point. Notice the color of the wall in shadow. The cooler color above is influenced by the sky while the warmer color in the lower part of the wall partakes of the reflected color from the ground. Both the warm and cool notes within the shadow are different temperatures, but the same value!

In the next post, we’ll explore other examples of where to look for color temperature changes. Stay tuned!

P.S. Our online class Practical Color Mixing for Landscape Painters I starts January 31, 2020. Learn how to unlock the secrets of hue, value, chroma and color temperature. Join us!

The Three Uses of Value

As we know, when we refer to value we are speaking about how light or dark a shape or form, or part of a shape or form are. Generally when we refer to value we are speaking comparatively, that is, how light or dark something is compared to something else. However, by using a value scale we can begin to assign specific values to things and to talk about value in a more precise way.

Values serve three functions in the art of landscape painting. First, using the correct value or range of values can help us create the illusion of outdoor space, air, atmosphere, and forms receding into the picture plane and to generally create a convincing depiction of outdoor Nature. This is Carlson’s Theory of Angles and aerial perspective.

Secondly, values can be used to create the illusion of three dimensions in specific forms like tree trunks or rocks or any other objects we might find in the landscape. This is called modeling, shading or “turning form”.

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Third, values are used to create the overall structure of the painting, organizing them in such a way as to create a pleasing design. This is composition.

Of course, all these functions are interrelated. When we choose a certain value scheme to depict a sunny day for example, we are also making choices about how the values we use will help us show the solidity of forms and create a pleasing design. But, for purposes of study, it is useful to separate these functions and study them independently until they are all fully understood and can be applied together.

P.S. Want to build a solid foundation for your landscape paintings? In our online class Understanding Values in the Landscape we study in depth Carlson’s Theory of Angles, atmospheric perspective and how each affects the values in every part of the landscape. Then we take a deep dive into the all important skill of how to “key” a landscape , using a particular value range to depict different times of day and lighting conditions. Class starts January 3 2020. Join us!

Let it Snow!

Many of us are facing bitter winter weather just now. So, it seemed an appropriate time to talk about…painting snow!

Two of the main concepts to keep in mind when painting snow are value and color temperature. When painting a light, highly reflective surface like snow we are hampered by the value limitations of our materials. Our white paint is the lightest light we can muster. In order to effectively represent snow and its surroundings, we must darken its value just a little, as well as the other planes in the landscape likes trees, hills and sky.

Because of its reflective surface, the color of snow is affected by the colors around it, most particularly the sky. That is why on a bright sunny day when the ground is covered with snow, you will see those intense blue shadows. That’s the zenith of the sky reflecting into the shadows. Recognizing the source of that color and maximizing it helps to describe the snow. In this painting you can see contemporary American landscape painter Stapleton Kearns doing just that. He has used a warm white for the sunlit portion of the snow and cooler whites to depict the planes turning from the light and the shadows. This is a great example of how one might model the snow on a sunny day. Notice too how the value of the sky has been lowered just a bit and the rest of the scene brought into that range as well. The warm notes in the foreground logs provide a temperature counterpoint to the overall cool cast of the painting. Finding opportunities to include a warm note in a snow painting adds variety and richness to the snow filled world.

But, often when we paint snow, it’s not a sunny day. Here is a lovely tonal homage to snow by American painter John Carlson American ,1875-1947), author of Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting. The color of the snow reflects the muted sky color, and the close values of grey, brown and violet in the near and distant trees evoke a quiet winter day in the woods. Subtle warm notes in the trees and plants sticking out of the snow provide the needed variety in temperature.

Here’s one of my favorite snow paintings by Frederick Mulhaupt (American, 1871-1938 ). Mulhaupt has used value masterfully here. The counterchange between the light tree trunks and darker confers behind is echoed by the small triangle of dark water on the left. The violet sky is darker than the snow which helps to set it off and appear luminous. Subtle temperature and value changes within the snow describe the ground plane underneath, and the dark bits of earth peaking through lead the eye to the central arrangement of trees. The remaining foliage on the trees provides a warm counterpoint against the violet sky. Quite an orchestration!

In this painting, I wanted to evoke the memory of a day in snow filled woods. The quiet muffled quality of sound, the intimacy of the deep woods, and my part in it were all on my mind. I used subtle value and temperature changes to depict the foreground snow and describe how it began to pile up on top of grasses, plants and tree trunks. Warm notes in the foreground provided a counterpoint to the violets, greys and browns.

Winter Woods Deborah Paris — Winter Woods
Deborah Paris

Finally, here is a painting by Marc Dalessio (American, contemporary) which he posted on his blog. He helpfully included a photo of the scene he was painting. This provides a great example of how he has manipulated value and temperature to create an effective design. Note how the snow value has been lowered and its temperature cast shifted to a very light blue green. Notice also the warm note of pink on the edge of the shadow underneath the main tree on the right and a similar note on the other side of the road. He has also darkened the value of the trees in the distance just slightly and the main tree as well, providing needed darker notes (along with the tire tracks).

Orchestration of value and color temperature is the key to success in snow paintings. So, go out and paint some snow!

P.S. Our two day online workshop Painting Snow is a great place to learn how to make the most of the winter landscape. Join us January 18-19, 2020

Learn to Key Your Landscape

Landscape painters need to have a good understanding of the importance of value in successfully depicting the landscape on a two dimensional surface. In order to have our painting ‘read’, that is to show the planes of the landscape as well as its depth, atmosphere and scale, proper values are essential. As we’ve previously written, Carlson’s Theory of Angles is a great place to start as an overarching concept for understanding values in the landscape. But, it is only a starting point!

Another layer of complexity is added when we think about how to depict the varying atmospheric conditions, times of day and effects of light that we observe in Nature. Again, values are the key to success here. And, we often refer to this process as ‘keying’ the landscape.

For example, in order to key your landscape painting to depict a sunny day as opposed to an overcast day, you must learn to shift the value range up or down the value scale as well as understand the proper value steps between the light and shadowed parts of each plane in the landscape. It sounds complicated, but with careful observation and application of some basic concepts, this knowledge will allow you to paint what you see more accurately and also change the key of your landscape when painting from memory or imagination. This combination of observation + knowledge, gives you the ability to paint any light effect or time of day. It also gives you the ability to convincingly change the time of day or light effect from what you see in nature or from what is depicted in your reference material. This is a key skill in landscape painting (pun intended).

Here are a couple of examples. In this painting by Willard Metcalf (American, 1858-1925) we see a beautiful effect of bright sunlight.

When we convert the painting to greyscale, we can see that there is a wide range of values from light to dark. Also, the lights and darks within each plane are several steps apart. Look at the grass (ground plane) for example and notice that there is a 2-3 step difference in value from light to shadow.

In this painting by Claude Monet we are treated to a beautiful effect of low light and an overcast sky. The colors are more muted and the values in all planes of the landscape (sky, groundplane, uprights, slanted) are closer together.

The greyscale of this painting shows a close value range and a shift toward the darker end of the value scale. The shifts between light and dark in the foreground are less than than a step apart, and the white sails of the boat are a step or more darker than the lightest value on the scale.

By understanding both the value range and the steps between light and shadow found in each light effect or time of day, we can learn to key our landscapes effectively.

P.S. Our first online class of the year Understanding Values in the Landscape starts January 3rd! Master the use of values in landscape painting and learn how to key your landscapes successfully. Also, our 2020 schedule of online classes is now posted and open for registration. There are Class Bundles available to help you save. Join us!

Painting the Night

Birge Harrison nocturne — Birge Harrison

Painting the moonlit landscape has challenged artists for centuries. Depictions of night time motifs tend to be as much about the ideas we have about the night as they are about what we actually see. As Thoreau said, “the night is a different country” and the shifts in perception that occur in a dimly lit landscape are inevitably influenced by the cultural ideas that surround the concept of night.

The motif of the moonlit landscape has been a popular one since the late 18th century. This was the Age of Enlightenment and moonlit landscapes were generally restorative and calm. The moonlight was often augmented by another light source by a reflection of the moon on water. This moon and water combination has become a common nocturne device and is still used in the 21st century. This example by Claude Joesph Vernet, Night a Port in Moonlight (1772) is typical of 18th century moonlit landscapes using both the moon, reflection and another light source (the fire) to illuminate the scene.

But it was in the late 18th and early 19th century that the nocturne motif came into real popularity. The Romantic impulse in the art, literature and music of that time employed the nocturne as an emblem of the cultural shift from the 18th century Age of Enlightenment to the Romantic Age. The nocturne motifs were used to convey mystery, drama and even a touch of the Sublime. The restorative, calm works of the 18th century were replaced by paintings depicting mystery and the transformative quality of the moonlight to illuminate the metaphysical attributes of the landscapes, and to set up a correspondence between the moonlit landscape and the human mind. This Romantic impulse is still very much a part of the ethos of the contemporary nocturne.

The term nocturne was first used to describe a series of musical compositions by Frederick Chopin in the 1820s. Within the next few decades literary circles in Paris embraced the nocturne, especially the Symbolist poets Rimbaud, Verlaine and Gautier. By the 1860s the motif of the nocturne as a lyrical form of expression that conjured altered states of perception was widely embraced across all the arts. Perhaps one of its best known proponents was James Abbott McNeil Whistler (1834-1903), an expatriate American artist living in London. Whistler, more than any other nineteenth century artist, reinvigorated the depiction of moonlit nights into a modern idiom. He appropriated the musical term “nocturne’ to describe his spare, murky depictions of nighttime along the Thames and in Venice. Whistler employed memory as a major component of his artistic practice, often observing a nighttime motif repeatedly before retreating to his studio to paint it.

American artists in the 19th century were not immune to the charms of the nocturne motif. Several Hudson River School artists of the mid 19th century employed this romantic trope in service of the first truly American school of landscape painting. Hudson River School nocturnes tend to have more in common with the 18th century ‘moonlights’ than the Parisien ‘nocturne’.

Screen Shot 2019-09-09 at 1.49.13 PM — Twilight in the Tropics–Frederic Church

Screen Shot 2019-09-09 at 1.49.23 PM.png — Cloud Study, Moonlight Albert Bierstadt

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the industrialization and electrical illumination of the urban landscape made contemplative moonlight scenes a rarity in real life and perhaps more sought after in art because of that. Tonalist artists such as George Inness, William Dwight Tryon, Ralph Albert Blakelock, Albert Pinkham Ryder and Charles Warren Eaton were influenced by Whistler and explored the nocturnal realm extensively in their work. The veils of transparent and translucent color and softened forms of the Tonalist style were perfectly suited to a depiction of a moonlit landscape. But the attraction went far beyond technical compatibility. The expression of the mystery and altered states produced by the human experience of night and moonlight were central to the Tonalist aesthetic and to an artistic practice based upon memory.

Screen Shot 2019-09-09 at 1.49.33 PM — George Inness

Screen Shot 2019-09-09 at 1.49.54 PM — Charles Warren Eaton

Screen Shot 2019-09-09 at 1.50.03 PM — Birge Harrison

Perhaps one of the best known examples of nocturnes at the turn of the 20th century in America was a remarkable series of paintings produced by Frederic Remington. Remington, a well known illustrator, wanted to reinvent himself and seized on the nocturne motif as a way to demonstrate his chops as a fine artist. Remington’s nocturnes are powerful evocations of night painted with a robust facture and implied narrative that leaves no doubt that the night is dangerous territory.

Remington Night Herder — Night Herder– Frederic Remington

Remington nocturne Scouts — The Scout–Frederic Remington

Today the nocturne is alive and well in contemporary landscape painting. Depictions of the night include the urban landscapes lit by artificial lightening as well as the moonlit terrain of nature.

P.S. Learn how to paint the mystery and beauty of the moonlit landscape. Our online class Painting the Night starts soon! Join us!

When to Paint the Sky

Screen Shot 2019-07-29 at 4.52.04 PM — The Golden Valley–Sir Alfred East

“It is much easier to paint a sky to suit a landscape than a landscape to suit a sky.”

Sir Alfred East, The Art of Landscape Painting in Oil Colour (1915).

When should you paint the sky? Should it be the first thing you paint when you begin a landscape painting? The last? All at once? Incrementally?

Some of you may have heard the oft repeated advice to paint the sky first. The argument for this approach goes: The sky sets the key for the landscape , the value range for the landscape, the mood of your picture, and the light condition you wish to depict. And, painting back to front, helps with edges too. All of these things are true. But, there are also good reasons not to!

Here is why. Most beginners and many intermediate painters will start out by keying their sky too dark. The sky is generally the lightest plane in the landscape and on a typical sunny day its value might range from 9 to 7.5 or 8. Very often, without any other value to compare it to on the canvas, students will mix a value range which is one or even two to three value steps darker than what it should be! As a result, every other value in the landscape gets pushed toward the darker side of the value scale. The result is usually a dark painting, or one where the values are all in the middle of the range as the student struggles to keep things from getting too dark.

It is much easier to judge the value of your sky once you have something to compare it to. Ideally, you will use a value scale to mix your color and make sure it is in the correct range. But, you also want to compare it to other values. So, laying in a range of values, including your lightest light and your darks will help you judge the correct value for your sky.

Secondly, As Sir Alfred East notes, one of the challenges in landscape painting is to make the sky and the landscape work together harmoniously. There are many more “moving parts” – value changes, temperature shifts, drawing issues, color harmony to solve in the landscape and they need to be worked out to some degree before you can effectively “marry” the sky and the landscape.

However, painting back to front does have real advantages and being aware of and careful about your sky values can solve some of the problems I have outlined above.

This is why that I recommend students lay in an initial thin layer of opaque pigment at a value of about 9, after completing the initial underpainting or lay in of their composition. Think of this as a “placeholder” value and color which will help you keep your painting in the correct key. Then, as you develop your painting, and have established the darkest and lightest tones of the value range you intend to use, you can go back and finish your sky.

You can read more about Sir Alfred East and his book in this post.

P. S. Our annual online class The Painted Sky starts Friday, August 2nd! Learn to paint big atmospheric skies and clouds that float! Registration and information is here. Join us!

What is Tonalism? Part I

In the decade following the Civil War, America came to terms with its great loss–both of a generation of young men, and the feeling of high spirited nationalistic pride and belief in itself as the chosen land and the chosen people of God’s creation. The societal underpinnings of religious faith were likewise shaken. The operatic creations of Hudson River School artists like Church, Cole, Bierstadt and Moran seemed completely out of touch with a more subdued and melancholy national zeitgeist. A quiet more reflective art was more appropriate to the public mood.

As a result, by the 1880’s nothing short of a revolution had occurred in American landscape painting. The large panoramic views and detailed foregrounds of the Hudson River School were replaced by the suggestive, atmospheric and intimate landscapes of the Tonalist artists. The first generation of Tonalist artists like George Inness had begun painting in the prevalent Hudson River School style at the beginning of their careers, but pioneered a new poetic, spiritual, and personal style of landscape painting. These evocative landscapes struck an elegiac chord, often depicting transitional times of day and autumnal seasons.

Onness Georgia Sunset — Georgia Sunset- George Inness

Screen Shot 2014-09-22 at 10.52.35 AM — Autumn Montclair George Inness

The first generation of Tonalist artists, born between 1840 and 1865, were shaped by American experience and culture. In the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Americans found a different way of responding to nature and a more mystical spirituality. No two authors were more widely read and had a greater influence on late 19th century American thought and culture–an influence that lasts to this day.

Eaton Sunset Pines — Sunset Pines-Charles Warren Eaton

Screen Shot 2019-06-03 at 10.37.15 AM — Autumn Twilight- Charles Warren Eaton

Screen Shot 2019-06-03 at 10.37.33 AM — Poplars-Charles Warren Eaton

Emerson (1803-1882) first set forth his philosophy of Transcendentalism in the 1836 essay Nature. Emerson espoused that nature was an emblem or symbol, and its relevance lay in the insights it provided into the human mind and spirit. As a mentor and friend to Thoreau, Emerson asked the young Thoreau “do you keep a journal?”, an inquiry which spurred the perhaps most prolific journal writer in American literature.

- Murphy with boat 2 — J. Francis Murphy

Thoreau (1817-1862) although a fellow Transcendentalist, was cut from a very different cloth. Emerson was full of Romantic subjectivity, using brilliantly insightful generalizations and intuitive leaps about the realm of the spirit. Thoreau was a wanderer, a nature writer, and a keen almost obsessive observer of the natural world. As a result, his more empirical approach was the platform from which he drew insights into the human soul. For Thoreau, nature was reality, important for its own sake as well as for symbolic purposes. But for both Emerson and Thoreau, the meeting of the material and the spiritual world in a transcendent experience was the goal and a possibility for every human being.

Nature was no longer simply the Hudson River School’s symbol or evidence of God’s presence in the world, but instead was itself the conduit through which this transcendent state might occur. For Thoreau particularly, the act of perception of Nature was the first step toward a “mystical unity of the observer and the observed”.

Screen Shot 2019-06-03 at 10.53.52 AM — Birge Harrison

Emerson lectured widely in his later years and his ideas began to catch the public imagination especially after the Civil War. Although Thoreau died in 1862, his work was not widely read in America until the 1880s. His combination of transcendental philosophy, non-sectarian spiritualism, and dedication to the idea of correspondence between man and nature, made him a perfect prophet for the Tonalist revolution. His nature descriptions were praised by the subsequent Tonalist generation of artists. Dwight Tryon called Thoreau “the best landscape word painter”.

Today, the Tonalist style of landscape painting has reemerged as a contemporary movement. The philosophical and spiritual underpinnings of the original Tonalist movement, and its emphasis on a personal relationship with nature, makes this style particularly appealing to the contemporary landscape painter and an apt reflection of our times. The landmark publication of David Cleveland’s History of American Tonalism in 2010 introduced a whole new generation of artists and collectors to the Tonalist aesthetic. The growing interest in this style of painting is reflected in the recent formation of the American Tonalist Society and its inaugural exhibition at the historic Salmagundi Club in New York, an institution with deep ties to the original Tonalist movement.

Pineywoods Evening 1212 72 dpi — Pineywoods Evening-Deborah Paris

In Part II of this post, we’ll take a look at the contemporary landscape painters who have adopted the Tonalist aesthetic and how their works both reflect the historic roots of Tonalism and represent a leading edge of contemporary landscape painting.

P.S. Our six week online class Painting the Luminous Landscape is an introduction to the Tonalist style and to indirect painting techniques. It starts June 21st. Join us!

The Art of the Garden

In the late 19th and early 20th century the “Garden Movement” in America was greatly influenced by French Impressionist paintings. The move to the suburbs by the middle classes also encouraged this new interest in gardening, and the “American garden”, not as formal as the English or Italian gardens of the Gilded Age, became popular. The idea was to imitate Nature’s wild garden, but of course, garden design still played an important role. Gardens and gardening were featured heavily in mass circulation magazines and books and landscape design was part of the aesthetic discourse of the day. The Arts and Crafts movement had an influence as well, encouraging the design and planting of an ‘old fashioned’ garden to reflect a reconnection with Nature that had been lost in the industrial age.

Up until the end of the 19th century paintings of gardens were an infrequent motif of American artists. However, now they began to appear as a consistent theme in American impressionist works. American artists who had traveled to Giverny and studied painting there were well aware of the use of the garden as motif in French landscape painting. Artists sometimes set up their own home and garden–Thomas and Maria Oakey Dewing and John Henry Twachtman for example) or gravitated to artists colonies in places like Lyme, Connecticut where they could enjoy gardens and orchards of local homes and boarding houses. Even artists whose work was not impressionist in style (like Oakey Dewing for example) adopted the impressionist method of working outdoors in front of the motif.

Childe Hassam (1859-1935)

John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902)

Charles Adams Platt (1861-1933)

Hugh Henry Breckenridge (1870-1937)

John La Farge (1835-1910)

Maria Oakey Dewing (1845-1927) attended Cooper Union School of Design in 1866. She exhibited at the National Academy of Design and was one of the founders of the Art Students League of New York. She was married to the painter Thomas Dewing.

P.S. Our Found Still Life/Flowers in the Landscape online class starts May 24th! Learn how to depict the beauty of the intimate landscape, wildflowers and garden flowers. Join us!

Why Should Landscape Painters Study Art History?

It’s surprising how many landscape painters don’t have a working knowledge of the art history of landscape painting. With the prevalence of social media today it’s easy to ‘follow’ contemporary artists whose work you admire, and many of us do. But, a far smaller number make the effort to connect with their artistic heritage as landscape painters.

Perhaps you remember that course in college—the dark room with an endless stream of images of gothic cathedrals or renaissance paintings flashing on a screen over the low hum of the slide projector, the droning voice of the professor, while you tried not to fall asleep? Maybe you vowed never to do that again! There is no doubt that art history. can seem like a very dense subject.

Most traditional art historians employ a formal analysis which derives from Heinrich Wolfflin’s Principles of Art History, published in 1915, which was an attempt to create a methodology of examination and analysis of stylistic changes that could be used to classify the art of any given period in art history. By applying the overarching principles the idea was that an art historian could not only utilize language that would have specific meaning to all scholars but which would cover the vast array of stylistic differences that might be encountered.

Entire college courses are devoted to Wolfflin (I’ve been there and done that) but suffice it to say that while these concepts can be very useful, they also can have led to thinking about art history as an episodic story with winners and losers, depending on the prevailing tastes of the time. Whole art movements can be relegated to the ash heap if they are deemed out of step with the “march of development” (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Neo-Classical, Rococo, Realism, Impressionism, post-Impressionism, Modern, Post-Modern, Conceptual…..) as decreed by the official version of Western art history. In fact, almost all of 19^th century American landscape painting was in exactly that position until just a few short decades ago!

So, we have to keep in mind that the official version of art history does not necessarily tell the whole story, and the desire to find influences and affinities in the art of earlier times or art that is concurrent with the period under study is sometimes strained beyond the point of usefulness.

Secondly, as artists, we approach this work from a different perspective. What we seek to know and understand is something beyond the recitation of facts, a cataloging of influences or affinities or even biographical facts (although those are all things we should know). We want to know what made this artist make this art at this time, and what if anything we can learn that will help our work. We want, most of all, to look at the work with an understanding of the person who made it and his or her time, and to see it with fresh eyes. We want not to only look on art with the cool eye of formal analysis, but to be riveted by it, to fall in love with it, and to acquire some of its power.

Willard Metcalf Giverny — Willard Metcalf

Art historians believe that paintings come from paintings. Here is Barbara Novak making that point in Nature and Culture (an excellent book on 19^th century landscape painting) and admitting the possibility that it isn’t always so:

“To be instructed by pictures on how to look at nature is a rarely considered art historical question. Though it is a simple and plausible idea, the concept that some American work resulted from a direct recourse to nature challenges some basic art historical theories. Most of us, as we prowl the corridors of artistic genealogies, subscribe to Gombrich’s notion of art coming from art, Yet there is a basic danger for the art historian who overlooks the potential power of the natural experience per se. No matter how much we may wish to speak of artistic histories, it is important to remember that quite apart from “art” nature offers its own rich resources to the artist’s eye and mind.”

As a landscape painter, I could hardly keep from laughing out loud when I read that. How could it be any other way? How as landscape painters could our work not be formed by the “power of the natural experience”? The fact that Novak felt compelled to concede that it just might be the case, tells us about the different perspective that we bring to the study of art history.

And yet, art does also come from art, and if you don’t know about that lineage, you are missing out on a big part of what it means to be an artist. It’s like deciding to take up classical piano without ever hearing the music of Beethoven or Mozart!

Screen Shot 2017-10-22 at 3.07.13 PM — William Langson Lathrop

So while we may bring a different perspective to our study of the art history of landscape painting, it is still important to understand and appreciate our artistic heritage. As my friend and mentor Hollis Williford advised, “educate yourself by studying and discovering all of the giants on whose shoulders you wish to stand.”

Our online class 19^th Century American Landscape Painting starts Friday, April 26. Join us and we’ll try not to put you to sleep!

Author: deborahmparis

It’s Warm In There! – Lessons on Color Temperature

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The Three Uses of Value

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Let it Snow!

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Learn to Key Your Landscape

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Painting the Night

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When to Paint the Sky

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What is Tonalism? Part I

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The Art of the Garden

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Why Should Landscape Painters Study Art History?

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