Thomas Cole, The Notch of the White Mountains (Crawford
Notch) (detail), 1839. National Gallery of Art, Andrew W. Mellon Fund, 1967.8.1
With certain exceptions, ancient and classical cultures generally restricted
images of nature to individual elements such as fruit trees or birds of prey that were
sacred emblems or clan totems. Occasionally, schematic renderings of coastlines or
mountain ranges served as settings for narrative subjects or as ornamental diversions
in interior decoration.
During the whole millennium we now call the Early Christian era and the Middle
Ages, enjoyment of nature was widely considered to be a temptation to sinful excess.
Royal courtiers and cloistered monks were admonished against the sensual pleasures to
be found in a rose garden. Thus, for medieval artists, depicting the beauties of their
environment would contradict prevailing religious beliefs.
These attitudes changed during the Renaissance of the 1400s and 1500s. This
rebirth of a scientific interest in humanity's relationship to the world generated an
appreciation of nature and the beginnings of landscape as a subject for European
art.
At least two older traditions merged to foster the growth of landscape painting
during the Renaissance. A literary revival of classical authors such as Pliny and
Horace, who praised nature's wonders, inspired scenes with allegorical meanings and
poetic moods. And, a new religious interpretation that "God dwells in everything
and everything dwells in Him" led to detailed representations of nature, with the
minuteness of the depictions paying homage to the Creator.
This interest in the physical environment emerged so rapidly that, by 1533, the
Renaissance humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam could exclaim, "What spectacle
can be more splendid than the sight of this world!" In the late sixteenth
century, there finally came into being pure landscape: depictions of scenery for its
own sake, with human figures either absent altogether or present only to give a sense
of scale and activity.
Once the significance of nature had entered Western consciousness, however, a
theoretical but very real problem arose: Is nature benevolent or savage? From the mid
1500s to the mid 1800s, landscape was approached through certain generally accepted
aesthetic preconceptions, ranging from a tamed Utopia to a terrifying wilderness.
Philosophers and artists debated endlessly over precise definitions for the emotional
terms to describe these experiences, writing treatises and painting scenes of the
earth as "heroic," "sublime," "fantastic,"
"beautiful," "idyllic," "pastoral,"
"picturesque," or "rustic."
Along with these arguments concerning the poetic idealization of the land were
discussions about the relative merits of topographical accuracy in painting specific
locations, architectural landmarks, and cityscapes. Such depictions of real places
often acquired overtones of national pride, proclaiming the glories of one's own
country.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, modern philosophy and inventions had
significantly altered Western society. Steamboats and railroads, navigational
chronometers, and photography were rapidly increasing access to and use of the
environment. The camera in particular, developed in 1839, freed artists from the need
to document the land's appearance. So, late nineteenth- and twentieth-century painters
could redefine the landscape by exploring personal responses to the world.
The fundamental connection between humanity and nature is at the very core of the land's appeal as an artistic subject, a connection that has shaped and been shaped by the changing circumstances of civilization. Thus it might be argued that landscape painting reveals less about nature than it does about human nature.
Landscape painting entered Western art very slowly, first serving as a vehicle for
religious symbolism. The rugged, mountainous environment in this picture signifies the
spiritual drama of John the Baptist's decision to live alone in the wilderness. Its
crystalline rocks and scraggy bushes, rendered in the schematic fashion of medieval
art, may appear enchanting today. But to Domenico Veneziano and his contemporaries,
this desolate setting powerfully communicated the sense of dread and wonder inspired
by a deserted place.
Large altarpieces depicting holy personages often included small narrative scenes
such as this one arranged in a horizontal band-a predella, from the Italian word for
"apron"-below the main figures, illustrating episodes from their lives. The
principal images, meant to be seen at a distance above the whole congregation, were
rendered in dignified, iconic formats. The predella panels, however, being intended
for intimate viewing at close range, permitted both the patrons and the painters a
certain freedom in their choices of subject matter and the variety of actions
represented.
Saint John in the Desert, from an altarpiece commissioned in the 1440s for the
Church of Santa Lucia dei Magnoli in Florence, demonstrates the experimental,
expressive nature of predella panels. As John the Baptist discards his luxurious
earthly garments in order to don the camel's skin robe of a hermit, he stands in full
nudity. Only a golden halo denotes his sanctity.
The values of the fifteenth-century Renaissance, in reviving humanist ideals from classical antiquity, explain the nude anatomy that Domenico Veneziano derived from ancient Roman sculpture. The importance given to the barren setting also demonstrates the Renaissance's new interest in nature and the landscape.
Like John the Baptist, depicted in Domenico Veneziano's earlier predella panel, Saint
Jerome sought solitude in the desert. Giovanni Bellini's landscape setting, being
based upon actual observation, shows the result of one more generation of Renaissance
inquiry into nature. Rather than relying upon accepted stylistic conventions, Bellini
carefully studied the appearance of rocks, foliage, animals, architecture, and
atmosphere.
Significantly, too, the artist's center of interest has shifted to the landscape
itself. Serene and sunny coastal scenery, viewed beyond a shadowed grotto, dominates
the painting. The holy man himself sits contemplatively in a corner of the image.
Classical antiquity preoccupied the Renaissance, and Jerome, as a classical
scholar, was exceptionally popular in Renaissance art. The Roman ruins in the distance
serve to place the saint in time and to imply the destruction of the pagan world,
which his translation of the Bible into Latin helped accomplish.
Bellini's exquisite panel, meant for private devotion and aesthetic appreciation,
conveys covert religious messages. The nuzzling rabbits, for instance, recall lust, a
temptation Jerome resisted. The lion whom the saint befriended is shown resting beside
him like a pet, demonstrating Jerome's purity of spirit. Although Bellini's
representations of the creatures and plants contain specific religious symbolism, they
are portrayed with a Renaissance commitment to reality.
Around 1450 the artist and theorist Leone Battista Alberti wrote, "Our minds are cheered beyond measure by the sight of paintings depicting the delightful countryside, harbours, fishing, hunting, swimming, the games of shepherds-flowers and verdure." This statement, like Bellini's lush landscape, suggests the pleasures of the physical world and would have been unthinkable before the Renaissance. (Quote from E. H. Gombrich, Norm and Form [London, 1966], 111.)
With paintings such as this one, Annibale Carracci created for the first time the
subject of pure landscape in Italian art. Nature here is appreciated for itself and
not as the backdrop for a story. Previous landscapes usually acted as appropriate
settings for the actions of characters from religion, mythology, literature, or
history. Here, though, the figures seem to bear no obvious meaning other than as
inhabitants of a landscape.
Brightly clad in red and white, a boatman poles his craft through the shallow
water. His passengers take their pleasure in the countryside as if to convey that the
onlooker might do the same. The thatched cottage in the foreground and the luminous
white city across the lake both seem to offer a respite from life's pressures. The
scene is bathed in mellow sunlight that picks out ripples enlivening the surface of
the river. The gold in the treetops suggests a day in early autumn.
In the company of his brother Agostino and his cousin Lodovico Carracci, Annibale made excursions into the country in order to sketch the landscape. From these quick studies made on the spot, he worked up his paintings in the studio. The resulting composition here, although based upon direct observation of nature, is an artful balancing of selected forms. As the river wends its way through the countryside, the hillocks that chart its course are made to recede and project in an alternating rhythm of triangles, marking the recession into the distance. And the bold strokes of dark trees in the foreground form a dramatic screen through which one views the calm, hazy blue of the distant horizon.
Classically designed yet emotional in feeling, Claude Lorrain's paintings had an
enormous impact on later European attitudes toward nature as an ideal paradise. The
Frenchman Claude, the foremost landscape painter of the seventeenth century, arrived
in Rome in 1613 and spent his entire career in central Italy. The pastoral beauty of
the Roman countryside infused his harmonious landscapes. His compositions, closed on
both sides like the wings of theatrical scenery, force the viewer to follow rivers or
roads toward misty horizons. In order to convey such subtle atmospheric effects,
Claude refined the exacting technique for blending translucent layers of oil
paints.
The imaginary vistas devised by Claude usually capture an all-pervading effect of
dawn or dusk light. Here, while a distant city peacefully basks in the morning sun,
merchants oversee their cargo of musical instruments, luxurious furniture, potted
plants, and barrels of wine. This union between industrious people and bountiful
nature reflects Arcadian themes of the ancient poet Virgil.
Virgil's Eclogues, written in the first century b.c., extol the wonders of nature. His Georgics, praising toil and industry, emphasize humanity's relationship to a fruitful world. In the epic Aeneid, Virgil recounted the origins of Rome, inferring the poignancy of change from a now-vanished glory. As with Virgil's poetry, which recalls a mythic golden age in the past, Claude's paintings, even when set in his contemporary world as is this work, reflect a nostalgic yearning for an uncomplicated time long ago.
The Italian tradition of religious and literary allegory in landscapes was paralleled in the Low Countries by an interest in precise, detailed representations of nature. This guide now takes a step back in time to the Renaissance in the Netherlands.
The meticulous precision of this panel resulted from a religious conviction held by
northern Europeans during the Renaissance: that the physical things of this earth are
manifestations of God's creation. Underscoring the importance of contact with the
world of the senses, Saint Thomas Aquinas had written in the thirteenth century,
"Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee received." Rogier van der Weyden and
many of his fellow artists thus believed that knowledge of God might be obtained by
understanding and minutely depicting nature in all its wondrous variety.
Certainly intended for private devotions, this exquisite panel is so tiny it could
easily be held in the viewer's hands. On this small surface the artist created an
entire world in microcosm, covering miles of space from the bones lying in the
foreground to the glowing sky over the sea.
In this painting the legend of Saint George, the Christian soldier who rescued a
princess from a dragon, has been transferred from its setting in ancient Turkey to the
fifteenth-century Belgian countryside. Beyond a series of overlapping hills one comes
upon a walled city surrounded by a bay of the ocean and dominated by a castle perched
atop a fantastic mountain. Thrusting forward, the overhanging crags defy gravity as
does George's prancing steed, eternally fixed in midair. Although the geology and
anatomy of the scene are impossible, Rogier van der Weyden made the picture believable
through his attention to realistic textures and a clear, luminous atmosphere.
Details, such as the citizens in the town and the blades of grass, are depicted on
such a small scale that they are all but invisible to the naked eye. Indeed, it has
been suggested that a magnifying glass was used to paint them. These microscopic
details derive from the medieval tradition of illuminations painted in manuscript
Bibles and prayer books. (Quote from Eugene TeSelle, Thomas Aquinas: Faith and Reason
[Nashville, 1988], 54.)
Artists in seventeenth-century Holland, a republican nation that was largely
Protestant, found little patronage for royal or liturgical themes. Instead, Dutch
painters competed in an open sales market by appealing to the tastes of middle-class
buyers. Thus many artists specialized in subject matter drawn from daily life.
Rembrandt was unusual among his Dutch colleagues in that he worked in a wide range
of subjects. He is famous for his portraits as well as his historical or biblical
paintings. Landscapes and still lifes also intrigued this versatile genius. The Mill,
like the dozen or so other landscapes from his studio, represents an imaginary scene.
Its distant range of mountains, for instance, does not exist in low-lying, sea-level
Holland.
The exact meaning of the painting is uncertain, but the dramatic focus on the mill
suggests Rembrandt intended it to have an allegorical character. The sky, with storm
clouds competing with sunshine, evokes cosmic forces of evil and goodness in its clash
between darkness and light. The Dutch sometimes compared windmills, operating
continuously to pump water or grind grain, to governments working tirelessly for their
people; so, the allegory may have political overtones, too.
The Mill is one of those rare paintings that are significant not only for their beauty but also because they have profoundly influenced the history of taste. As a part of important art collections, The Mill has been well known to generations of connoisseurs and artists who valued it as one of Rembrandt's greatest creations. The nineteenth-century British landscapists Turner and Constable, for instance, were ecstatic in their praise, and both made free use of the picture's composition in their own works.
Landscape paintings served as metaphors of national pride in seventeenth-century
Holland, then a newly created country. Seascapes were also popular because the United
Netherlands was a great trading power that depended on shipping for its wealth and
prestige. On the open ocean and through the inland network of canals and rivers, Dutch
ships carried goods and passengers for trade and commerce. Jan van Goyen perfectly
captured this bustling traffic; in his view of the harbor city of Dordrecht, a
sailing ferry unloads and takes on passengers from rowboats.
Van Goyen was one of the foremost early landscape specialists, being particularly
adept at suggesting the moods of the land in different seasons or under varying
weather conditions. Here the sky is overcast and the water calm, an atmosphere
carefully created through Van Goyen's subtle range of ochers and grays that also
serves to unify the color scheme.
A glance around this room gives evidence of the amazing variety among Dutch
landscapes. In addition to Van Goyen's topographically correct cityscape, there are
moonlight nocturnes, winter snow scenes, storms at sea, and picturesque woodlands. The
view of an ancient obelisk and domed church in Rome by Saenredam, moreover, recalls
the extent of Dutch contact overseas. Such foreign and exotic vistas also reflect
Holland's primary position during the seventeenth century in science, exploration, and
the publication of books and maps.
Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, Dutch, 1597-1665 Church of Santa Maria della Febbre, Rome, 1629 Oil on panel, .378 x .705 m (14 7/8 x 27 3/4 in.) Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.34Cross the Rotunda to the east side of the Main Floor of this building to see eighteenth- and nineteenth-century landscapes.
Thomas Gainsborough, though he was London's most fashionable society portraitist,
preferred his beloved English countryside. "I'm sick of Portraits," he
lamented, "and wish very much to. . . walk off to some sweet Village, where I can
paint Landskips." In spite of his romantic longing for nature, he seldom if ever
painted actual views. In accordance with much eighteenth-century art theory,
Gainsborough was convinced that nature in the raw was an unsuitable subject. Only
after an artist had refined a scene through his sensibilities could he begin to
paint.
Gainsborough's late works, such as this vista of butter-yellow clouds wafting
through a mauve sky over a verdant valley, are fantastic reveries. Such idyllic
scenery and extraordinary colors do not, of course, exist in the real world; so,
Gainsborough invented them in his studio. He experimented with theatrical lighting
effects, illuminating his subjects with candles shimmering through colored
fabrics.
Another painter recorded that Gainsborough "framed a kind of model of landskips, on his table; composed of broken stones, dried herbs, and pieces of looking glass, which he magnified and improved into rocks, trees, and water." Here, shiny hard coal may have served for the wet banks of the brook, a crushed mirror for the glistening ripples, and broccoli and brussels sprouts for the foliage. Thus, from a scale model, Gainsborough did indeed "magnify and improve" nature, creating a quiet escape from life's travails. (Quotes from The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough, ed. Mary Woodall [Greenwich, Connecticut, 1963], 115, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art [1797 edition], ed. Robert R. Wark [New York and London, 1966], 220.)
John Constable
British, 1776-1837
Wivenhoe Park, Essex, 1816
Oil on canvas, .561 x 1.012 m (22 1/8 x 39 7/8 in.)Widener Collection, 1942.9.10
This English country estate belonged to some of John Constable's closest friends, who
commissioned him to record their home's appearance during August and September 1816.
Constable's picture demonstrates his stated wish to be "a natural painter"
because it was created almost entirely outdoors in front of the motif.
Centered in the panoramic design, the red brick manor house is accentuated by a
vertical line of light that reflects from the pond and shines on the lawn between
stands of elm trees. This brilliant sunshine warmly dappling the cool shade of the
woods and glowing on the meadows gives evidence of the artist's careful observation
of the characteristics of the actual site. The magnificent cumulus clouds scudding
across the sky, for example, place the scene near the coast and reveal the source of
the moisture that makes the terrain so fertile.
Constable's realist painting marvelously evokes the look and feel of Wivenhoe
Park. The estate itself, however, was a cleverly calculated, man-made landscape. Its
parklike grounds, enlivened by cattle and swans, look like a pastoral painting by the
seventeenth-century master, Claude Lorrain. And, when Wivenhoe Park had been laid out
in 1777, that is precisely what it was designed to recall. Full-grown elms were
transplanted into seemingly random groves, and streams were dredged and dammed for
picturesque ponds.
Cultured Europeans in the 1700s and early 1800s had decided that nature was too natural for their tastes and, instead, must imitate the well-groomed idylls of Claude's art. In their romantic gardens, meandering brooks and rolling fields replaced the geometric planting beds and symbolic sculpture of earlier, formal garden styles. The new landscape architecture, called English gardening, appeared in locations as far-flung as Catherine the Great's palaces in Russia and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Virginia.
Joseph Mallord William Turner
British, 1775-1851
Mortlake Terrace, c. 1826
Oil on canvas, .921 x 1.222 m (36 1/4 x 48 1/4 in.)
Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.109
William Turner's Mortlake Terrace documents the view from a London garden overlooking
the river Thames. Like John Constable's Wivenhoe Park it was commissioned by a wealthy
property owner, and both landscapes recall the worship of nature that imbues the
literature of their contemporaries, the romantic poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron,
and Shelley. There, however, the similarity ends. Constable, who often worked
outdoors, preferred straightforward depictions of rural scenery. Turner, who painted
in the studio from imagination and sketches, infused his seascapes and landscapes with
daring drama.
A gleaming disk of white-hot paint here represents the setting sun in the western
sky. Most earlier landscapists would have masked its brilliance behind clouds or
trees, but not Turner. The sun's forceful rays glare from the river and then flash
over the top of the embankment, visually dissolving the very substance of the stone
wall.
Mortlake Terrace demonstrates a major shift in humanity's relationship to nature
because it depicts a new kind of habitation, suburbia. The river's north bank still
reveals an expanse of open fields and woods, but its south bank is crammed with
suburban town houses.
After the late 1700s, a population explosion accompanied Enlightenment science with its inoculations against disease and knowledge of public hygiene. Simultaneously, the Industrial Revolution forced many workers to abandon their farms and settle densely around factories. These urban people found themselves cut off from experiencing the countryside except during excursions. Many of the nineteenth century's most productive schools of landscape painting would cluster around huge metropolises such as London, New York, and Paris, as artists supplied city dwellers with reminders of fresh air, far horizons, and quietude.
Thomas Cole
American, 1801-1848
The Notch of the White Mountains (Crawford Notch), 1839
Oil on canvas, 1.016 x 1.560 m (40 x 61 1/2 in.)
Andrew W. Mellon Fund, 1967.8.1
As early nineteenth-century Americans sought ways to express their emerging national
identity, painters and writers turned to images of their vast land. The wild beauty of
unspoiled areas, such as the mountains and river valleys of the northeast, became
emblematic of the young country's future. The promise of seemingly inexhaustible
territories and resources was tempered, however, by economic and political conflicts
as soon as the United States began to expand.
Crawford Notch in New Hampshire had gained notoriety in 1826 when a catastrophic
avalanche took nine lives. To commemorate the tragedy, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a
short story that may have spurred Thomas Cole's interest in the locale. The painter,
rather than concentrating on the human drama, minimized the figures to underscore
man's insignificance in the face of nature's power. Amid vivid autumn foliage, the
barely discernable settlers, a lone rider, and the stagecoach passengers all seem
oblivious to any possible impending cataclysm. Only brooding storm clouds hint at a
disaster that may come.
In this work, Cole, the first important artist of the Hudson River school,
portrayed civilization encroaching upon the wilderness. Crawford Notch reflects a
prevailing belief that the destruction of America's virgin forests was tantamount to
sacrilege. By juxtaposing gnarled trees with freshly hewn stumps, Cole underscored the
environmental consequences of man's conquest of nature.
A later painting in this room, George Inness' Lackawanna Valley, can be read as
another eulogy for the rapidly vanishing wilderness or as an enthusiastic affirmation
of the new technology. Commissioned in 1855 as an advertisement by a railroad
company, it shows an entire forest felled around Scranton, Pennsylvania, partly in
order to fuel the city's factories and trains. Note that logs, not coal, fill the
engine's tender.
George Inness, American, 1825-1894
The Lackawanna Valley, 1855, oil on canvas .860 x 1.275 m (3378 x 5014 in.), Gift of
Mrs. Huttleston Rogers, 1945.4.1
Martin Johnson Heade
American, 1819-1904
Cattleya Orchid and Three Brazilian Hummingbirds, 1871
Oil on wood, .348 x .456 m (13 3/4 x 18 in.) Gift of The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz
Foundation, 1982.73.1
In this small treetop landscape viewed high above the jungle floor, Martin Johnson
Heade offers an intimate glimpse into the hidden recesses of nature's secret garden. A
blue-gray mist veils the distant rain forest, silhouetting birds' eggs in a nest and
the mosses and lichens clinging to dead branches. Perhaps inspired by the writings of
Charles Darwin and other nineteenth-century scientists, the artist studied topography,
climate, and species of orchids and hummingbirds during several expeditions to South
America, painting them later in his New York studio.
The precisely rendered flora and fauna seem to come alive in their natural
habitat. While Heade took great pride in his first hand observations, his paintings
are not merely objective, scientific illustrations. The exotic, tropical setting
establishes a luxuriant mood enhanced by flowing forms and vibrant hues. Just
as Heade's painting defies strict categorization as still life or landscape, so
educated people were becoming aware of the fascinating but bewildering
interrelationship among nature's elements. Ecology, the study of organisms and their
shared environment, found its earliest major expression in Cosmos, written by the
nineteenth century's preeminent naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt.
At the start of his global explorations in 1799, Humboldt wrote, "I shall try to find out how the forces of nature interreact upon one another and how the geographic environment influences plant and animal life. In other words, I must find out about the unity of nature." In 1859, the year that the last volume of Humboldt's Cosmos appeared, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. Complexity and controversy, not to mention increased specialization, came to characterize scientists' and artists' perceptions of the world. (Quote from Douglas Botting, Humboldt and the Cosmos [New York, 1973], 65.)
Gustave Courbet
French, 1819-1877
La Grotte de la Loue, c. 1865
Oil on canvas, .984 x 1.304 m (38 3/4 x 51 3/8 in.)
Gift of Charles L. Lindemann, 1957.6.1
In nineteenth-century France, a series of political and artistic revolutions shifted
both the discourse and the definition of landscape painting. Gustave Courbet
exemplified the challenge posed by the avant-garde to the conservative arts
establishment of France during this tumultuous period. He depicted rural events and
scenery, based primarily on peasant life, in a direct style that emphasized
forthrightness and physicality. By presenting seemingly raw subjects in his rough
technique and placing them on the heroic scale usually reserved for idealized,
instructive subjects from history, Courbet affronted the canons of the official art
world.
Long interested in the natural history of his region, including its geology, Courbet was scrupulously accurate in La Grotte de la Loue, representing a famous site near Ornans, his native village in the remote, mountainous region near the Swiss border. The setting is the source of the Loue River and its surrounding massive rock formations, which offered a scene of intense and primitive beauty. Eliminating all but rocks and water in his densely geometrical composition, Courbet heightened the contrast between the dark cavern and still water inside and the rugged limestone rocks and flowing white cascade outside the cave. Except in the diminutive spear fisherman, Courbet used the unorthodox palette-knife technique, troweling on irregular layers of pigment to create a roughly worked surface that imitates the textures of the setting and evokes the physical presence of the terrain.
Claude Monet
French, 1840-1926
The Bridge at Argenteuil, 1874
Oil on canvas, .600 x .797 m (23 5/8 x 31 3/8 in.)
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.24
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the communities in the Seine River
Valley-places such as Bougival, Louveciennes, and Argenteuil-were increasingly
accessible via new railroad lines. The region was gradually transformed from rural and
agricultural to suburban, serving also as a weekend recreation site for Parisians of
all social classes. Fierce debates ensued over what was happening to the French
countryside as industries sprang up and city folk flocked there on day trips to
"enjoy" nature. Landscapes of the Paris environs by the French
impressionists, fusing the contemporary scene with new, prismatic color techniques,
seem to absorb the confluence of people, progress, and place that defined these
rapidly changing times.
One of Claude Monet's important subjects was Argenteuil. A suburban town still
surrounded by vineyards, it was being transformed by gypsum quarries and other
industries and by its reputation as a leading center for boating and sailing. Monet
lived there for six years during the 1870s, making more than 150 paintings of the town
and its river during this, his defining period.
In this painting the artist combined life and land into a vibrant, cohesive view. While river and sky occupy much of the canvas, the toll bridge over the Seine also commands an important place. Small figures stop there to look out over the river, where a mast and three other boats identify leisure activity. The atmosphere of the day, however, is the organizing principle of the image: clouds scattered across a bright blue sky and sparkling reflections of light on the waves remind us of the impressionists' central devotion to fresh, seemingly spontaneous views of nature's light and atmosphere. Also contrived to seem "natural" is the point of view, in which scale corresponds more to artistic than objective qualities and we, like Monet, occupy an undefined position on the riverbank over the water.
Claude Monet
French, 1840-1926
The Japanese Footbridge, 1899
Oil on canvas, .813 x 1.016 m (32 x 40 in.)
Gift of Victoria Nebeker Coberly, in memory of her son John W. Mudd, and Walter H. and
Leonore Annenberg, 1992.9.1
In 1883 Claude Monet rented a farmhouse and two acres of land where he painted some of
his greatest work. This was at Giverny, a hamlet some thirty-five miles farther from
Paris than Argenteuil. At Giverny the fields and meadows near Monet's house were
crisscrossed by intimate tributaries and ribbons of willows and poplars. Monet planted
the property (which he bought in 1890 and expanded later) with spectacular gardens
and created a pond (subsequently ornamented with a Japanese footbridge) that came to
serve as his ultimate subject.
The Japanese Footbridge is one of eighteen paintings in Monet's first series
depicting the pond and gardens on his property, subjects that gradually absorbed all
of his artistic and horticultural interests. Here the artist carefully observed
reflections of irises, willows, and other plantings on the border of the pond as well
as the lily pads and blossoms floating on its surface. Noting the pond's textures and
colors with deft variations of touch, he distinguished reflected foliage, painted in
choppy, vertical strokes, from the actual presence of flowers and lily pads, which he
painted in horizontal drags of unblended pigment. Also recorded across the very bottom
of the painting is the arc-shaped mirror image of the footbridge.
Monet's other serial paintings, examples of which hang in this room, explore individual themes of impressive range. Two of his thirty extant views of Rouen Cathedral (completed and shown in 1894) and three images of Waterloo Bridge and one of the Houses of Parliament from his London campaigns of 1900-1904 hint at the way Monet's late subjects shift from depictions of places and things to artistic concerns of color, atmosphere, and mood.
Paul Cézanne
French, 1839-1906
Le Château Noir, 1900/1904
Oil on canvas, .737 x .966 m (29 x 39 in.)
Gift of Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer, 1958.10.1
Aix-en-Provence, Cézanne's birthplace in the south of France, and nearby sites
such as the famous mountain of Sainte-Victoire figure prominently among the artist's
landscape subjects. But late in his life Cézanne sought out isolated locations
around Aix, where the land was more rugged, remote, and perhaps indicative of his own
moodiness. The subject of this painting, an unfinished, abandoned house set in dense,
rocky woods, had a haunting quality that appealed to the artist.
In this view Cézanne presents an intense vision of the steep, solitary
woods east of Aix. Treetops, trunks, and jagged branches form an interwoven screen
that both conceals and reveals the house on its site against the foothills of Mont
Sainte-Victoire. Cézanne manipulated the composition through color, using cool
tones in the foreground that shift with the warm ocher hues of the house and
promontory to produce an enlivened yet disturbed image.
Cézanne knew the region of Aix intimately; he had walked it and painted it throughout his life. Particularly in his mature work, he evoked the fundamental order as well as the essential restless and chaotic quality of nature. Part of the genius of Cézanne's art comes from his ability to capture these simultaneous yet seemingly irreconcilable aspects of his motifs. His classic vision was a link that united naturalist and realist treatments of the late eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries with the ordered views of nature made by the old masters, while also providing a direction for painters of the early twentieth century.
EAST BUILDING UPPER LEVEL
André Derain
French, 1880-1954
Mountains at Collioure, 1905
Oil on canvas, .813 x 1.033 m (32 x 39 1/2 in.)
John Hay Whitney Collection, 1982.76.4
As it had been for Paul Cézanne, the French landscape was a primary
inspiration for the group of early twentieth-century artists including André
Derain and Henri Matisse who were later called fauves, or "wild beasts." The
term, originally used by a critic, referred in part to their vivid colors and free,
vigorous application of paint on canvas.
Mountains at Collioure dates from the summer of 1905, when Derain joined Matisse
to paint landscapes at the French Mediterranean fishing port of Collioure, located at
the foot of the Pyrenees. In a period of intense collaboration and experimentation the
two artists worked side by side, producing some of the most astonishing art of the
twentieth century.
Here, Derain's exuberant view of olive groves and mountains inland from Collioure
is a classic example of fauve style. The foreground field, trees, and foothills are
rendered in choppy strokes of intense colors-green, blue, mauve, and pink notations
that suggest a highly charged experience of the natural world. The mountains are
conceived as flat areas of unmodulated color in alternating warm and cool tones, and
the whole scene is set beneath an active sky of jade and turquoise.
Derain's bold brushwork in the trees and grasses, defined by the white priming layer visible on the canvas, energizes the surface of the painting while endowing it with a bright, interior light. His unabashed composition realizes the power of "deliberate disharmony" but not disunity, for through rhythmic color and interwoven line Derain tied his painting together into a brilliant, luminous whole. (Quote from Derain's letter to Maurice de Vlaminck, Lettres à Vlaminck [Paris, 1955], 154-155.)
Joan Miró
Spanish, 1893-1983
The Farm, 1921-1922
Oil on canvas, 1.238 x 1.413 m (48 3/4 x 55 5/8 in.)
Gift of Mary Hemingway, 1987.18.1
Joan Miró's love for his parents' summer home at Montroig, a peasant village in
northeastern Spain, established his custom of spending summers there and winters in
Paris. This charming landscape's rural motifs-goat and donkey, plow and ax, furrowed
field and fenced poultry yard-represent Montroig, where he began the picture. Its
stylistic sources, however, are to be found in the avant-garde art of Paris, where
Miró completed the painting.
Emphatic geometry and shifting perspectives reveal Miró's debt to cubists
such as Pablo Picasso. The brilliant palette owes much to André Derain, Henri
Matisse, and the other fauves. By combining such sources with his own taste for
complex, repetitive patterns, Joan Miró created an aura of fantasy.
The innumerable objects included in this crowded scene sum up Miró's memories of his earlier years at Montroig. Miró later came to see The Farm as a key work in his career, declaring it to be a bridge to his mature surrealist style. Surrealism goes beyond surface reality and logic to express subconscious feeling and dream imagery. Hot sunshine characterizes Mediterranean Spain, for instance, but here this blazing light strangely casts no shadows at all upon the ground. Moreover, the sun in the midday sky is rendered as a glowing circle that, oddly, is silvery gray, the color normally associated with the moon.
EAST BUILDING CONCOURSE LEVEL
Anselm Kiefer
German, born 1945
Zim Zum, 1990
Oil, crayon, ashes, sand, lead dust, and clay dust on lead and canvas, 3.803 x 5.601 m
(149 3/4 x 220 1/2 in.)
Gift of the Collectors Committee 1990.82.1
Anselm Kiefer's name is virtually synonymous with the revival of figurative
expressionism that swept European and American art at the beginning of the last
decade. While much of the neo-expressionism of the 1980s involves the probing of
individual psychological states, Kiefer has taken on the drama and tragedy of world
history, especially the violent events in twentieth-century Germany.
Kiefer is best known for his landscapes-dark, sweeping panoramas that allude to
the destruction of Europe in the two World Wars. Many of Kiefer's works combine broad,
deeply textured brushwork with highly symbolic materials and various techniques of
collage while incorporating subjects that range across European political and
intellectual history, mythology, and systems of faith.
The monumental landscape Zim Zum is composed of horizontal sheets of lead that are
textured, torn, wrinkled, corroded, and colored with paint, crayon, sand, dust, and
ash. Affixed across the lower half is a landscape painting on tattered canvas that
depicts a vast plain and a lake that recede sharply into the distance.
This is one of several objects Kiefer has made since the mid-1980s that relate to
the Kabbalah, a mystical and esoteric theology of Judaism. Its title Zim Zum (scrawled
across the top of the work) refers to the divine "contraction" of God,
likened to a drawing in of breath, that allowed for Creation but also for the
possibility of evil. Kiefer's landscape, like others in which he investigates the
relationship between spiritual and earthly realms, may be a meditation on the
coexistence of good and evil, which the Kabbalah sought, in part, to reconcile.
While the title Zim Zum refers to the act of creation, the scorched landscape (the artist actually burned his canvas) implies destruction on an apocalyptic scale. Kiefer underscores this thematic duality by incorporating materials such as ash, dust, and lead, traditional symbols of disintegration and transformation. Typically, landscape functions as the agent for Kiefer's exploration of history and of nature's capacity for destruction and renewal.
This self-guided tour was compiled by William J. Williams, Barbara Moore, and the
staff of the education and curatorial divisions. The published version was produced
by the editors office and the electronic version was produced by the department of education publications.
© 1993 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington