Saturday, February 29, 2020

Painted Views - Seventeenth-Century Scenery

Giovanni Battista Viola
Landscape with Figures
ca. 1620-22
oil on panel
Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham
 
Francisque Millet
Classical Landscape with Figures by a Fountain
ca. 1660-65
oil on canvas
Chiswick House, London

Jan Both
Italian Landscape with Monte Socrate
ca. 1635-41
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

David Teniers the Younger
Landscape with Two Shepherds
ca. 1650-60
oil on canvas
Wellington Collection, Apsley House, London

Gaspard Dughet
Landscape with Shepherds
ca. 1660
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

Karel Dujardin
Landscape with Livestock
1655
oil on panel
York City Art Gallery

Nicolaes Berchem
Hilly Landscape with Herdsmen
before 1683
oil on canvas
National Trust, Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire

attributed to Philips Wouwerman
Hawking
ca. 1650-52
oil on panel
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow

Jan Brueghel the Elder
Travellers on a Country Road with Cattle and Pigs
1616
oil on copper
Wellington Collection, Apsley House, London

Peeter Gysels
Landscape with Figures crossing a Brook
before 1691
oil on copper
Wellington Collection, Apsley House, London

Jan Wijnants
Landscape with Bare Tree
1659
oil on canvas
Wallace Collection, London

from A Letter to Sir Henry Goodyer

I write not to you out of my poor Library, where to cast mine eye upon good Authors kindles or refreshes sometimes meditations not unfit to communicate to near friends; nor from the high way, where I am contracted, and inverted into my self; which are my two ordinary forges of Letters to you.  But I write from the fire side in my Parler, and in the noise of three gamesome children; and by the side of her, whom because I have transplanted into a wretched fortune, I must labour to disguise that from her by all such honest devices, as giving her my company, and discourse, therefore I steal from her, all the time which I give to this Letter, and it is therefore that I take so short a list, and gallop so fast over it; I have not been out of my house since I received your pacquet.  As I have much quenched my senses, and disused my body from pleasure, and so tried how I can indure to be mine own grave, so I try now how I can suffer a prison.  And since it is but to build one wall more about our soul, she is still in her own Center, how many circumferences soever fortune or our own perversnesse cast about her.  I would I could as well intreat her to go out, as she knows whither to go.  But if I melt into a melancholy whilest I write, I shall be taken in the manner: and I sit by one too tender towards these impressions, and it is so much our duty, to avoid all occasions of giving them sad apprehensions, as S. Hierome accuses Adam of no other fault in eating the Apple, but that he did it Ne contristaretur delicias suas.

– John Donne (1608)

Paul Bril
Landscape with Troglodyte Goatherds
ca. 1610-15
oil on canvas
National Trust, Petworth House, Sussex

Cornelis van Poelenburgh
Christ on the Road to Emmaus
ca. 1640
oil on copper
National Trust, Hatchlands, Surrey

Jan Weenix
Landscape with Huntsmen and Dead Game
(Allegory of the Sense of Smell)
1697
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Jacob van Ruisdael
Le Coup de Soleil
ca. 1669-75
oil on canvas
National Trust, Upton House, Warwickshire

Painted Views - Seventeenth-Century Narratives

Francisque Millet
Christ with Jairus
before 1679
oil on canvas
York City Art Gallery

from A Sermon Preached upon Easter-day, 1622

Then we which are alive, and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we be ever with the Lord. (I Thessalonians iv. 17)

The dead hear not Thunder, nor feele they an Earth-quake.  If the Canon batter that Church walls, in which they lye buryed, it wakes not them, nor does it shake or affect them, if that dust, which they are, be thrown out, but yet there is a voyce, which the dead shall heare; The dead shall heare the voyce of the Son of God, (sayes the Son of God himself) and they that heare shall live; And that is the voyce of our Text.  It is here called a clamour, a vociferation, a shout, and varied by our Translators, and Expositors, according to the origination of the word, to be clamor hortatorius, and suasorius, and jussorius, A voyce that carries with it a penetration, (all shall heare it) and a perswasion, (all shall beleeve it, and be glad of it) and a power, a command, (all shall obey it.)  Since that voyce at the Creation, Fiat, Let there be a world, was never heard such a voyce as this, Surgite mortui, Arise ye dead.  That was spoken to that that was meerely nothing, and this to them, who in themselves shall have no cooperation, no concurrence to the hearing or answering this voyce.   

– John Donne

Anonymous French Artist
Landscape with the Sisters of Phaeton transformed into Trees at His Tomb
17th century
oil on canvas
National Trust, Bodysgallen Hall, Llandudno, Wales

Adriaen van de Velde
Migration of Jacob
1663
oil on canvas
Wallace Collection, London

Nicolaes Berchem
Infant Jupiter with the Nymphs on Mount Ida
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Wallace Collection, London

attributed to Dirck van der Lisse
Pan and Syrinx
before 1669
oil on panel
National Trust, Nostell Priory, Yorkshire

Paul Bril
Diana and Callisto
ca. 1620-30
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Frans Francken the Younger and Joos de Momper the Younger
Landscape with Minerva expelling Mars to protect Peace and Plenty
before 1635
oil on panel
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, West Midlands

Philips Wouwerman
Conversion of St Hubert
1660
oil on canvas
National Trust, Penrhyn Castle, Bangor, Wales

Nicolas Poussin
Landscape with Nymphs and Satyrs
ca. 1627
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Abraham Govaerts
Landscape with Nymph and Satyr
before 1626
oil on panel
National Trust, Belton House, Lincolnshire

Jan Brueghel the Elder
Entry of the Animals into the Ark
1615
oil on copper
Wellington Collection, Apsley House, London

Claude Lorrain
The Adoration of the Golden Calf
1660
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

Joos de Momper the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder
Mountainous Road Scene with the Story of St Peter and Cornelius
before 1625
oil on panel
National Trust, Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire

Johannes Glauber
Classical Landscape with Diana and her Nymphs resting after the Chase
ca. 1675
oil on canvas
National Trust, Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk

Gaspard Dughet and Carlo Maratti
Landscape with the Union of Dido and Aeneas
ca. 1664-68
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Friday, February 28, 2020

Painted Views - Eighteenth-Century Idealizations

Hendrik Frans van Lint
Landscape with an Italian Hill Town
ca. 1700-1725
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Francesco Zuccarelli
Pastoral Landscape
ca. 1760
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

George Augustus Wallis
Landscape near Rome
1794
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

George Augustus Wallis
Villa Adriana
ca. 1780-90
oil on paper
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

from The Rambler

    Every government, say the politicians, is perpetually degenerating towards corruption, from which it must be rescued at certain periods by the resuscitation of its first principles, and the re-establishment of its original constitution.  Every animal body, according to the methodic physicians, is, by the predominance of some exuberant quality, continually declining towards disease and death, which must be obviated by a seasonable reduction of the peccant humor to the just equipoise which health requires.

     In the same manner the studies of mankind, all at least which not being subject to rigorous demonstration admit the influence of fancy and caprice, are perpetually tending to error and confusion.  Of the great principles of truth which the first speculatists discovered, the simplicity is embarrassed by ambitious additions, or the evidence obscured by inaccurate argumentation; and as they descend from one succession of writers to another, the light transmitted from room to room, they lose their strength and splendor, and fade at last in total evanescence.

– Samuel Johnson (1751)

Claude-Joseph Vernet
Figures in a Landscape
ca. 1750
oil on canvas
Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg
The Rainbow
1784
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg
Landscape with Figures
1763
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Joseph Wright of Derby
Caernarvon Castle by Moonlight
ca. 1780-85
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

Francesco Guardi
Landscape Capriccio
ca. 1780
oil on canvas
Courtauld Gallery, London

Richard Wilson
Snowdon from Llyn Nantlle
ca. 1765-66
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Richard Wilson
Landscape with Phaëton's Petition to Apollo
ca. 1763-67
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Richard Wilson
Landscape with Banditti round a Tent
1752
oil on canvas
National Museum Cardiff, Wales

Richard Wilson
Landscape with Banditti - The Murder
1752
oil on canvas
National Museum Cardiff, Wales

George Morland
Gypsy Encampment
ca. 1788-98
oil on canvas
York City Art Gallery

George Morland
Gypsy Encampment
ca. 1790-95
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Painted Views - Nineteenth-Century Preferences (II)

François-Marius Granet
View of a Garden seen from within a Roman Vault
ca. 1802-1824
oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg
View of the Forum in Rome
1814
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Achille Michallon
Etna after the Thunderstorm
1817
oil on canvas
Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham

John Martin
The Bard
1817
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

Ramsay Richard Reinagle
Landscape with Animals (An African Scene)
1828
oil on canvas
Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery, Yorkshire

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Modern Italy - The Pifferari
1838
oil on canvas
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow

Henry Dawson
The Cliffs of Dover
1850
oil on canvas
York City Art Gallery

from The View They Arrange

my husband thinks we have too many chairs in our house. I know
we need more, my friend has enough chairs, many many more than
we have. I told my husband: chairs, picture frames – they are the same.

when my friend and her husband have talked about looking for
a different place to live, one with space for the families of their
six children, he says, "but I want this view." on the interior walls,
facing away from the sea, are paintings of this view – "well, it's not
exactly our view, but close" – taken somewhere on this small stretch
of land near the lighthouse, the painting of their house really of
the one next door, a corner of their house visible in the background
(receding in the perspective). in the Whistleresque painting, the house
next door is a train rushing forward through the night fog.

– Dale Going (1994)

Alexandre Calame
The Lake of Thun
1854
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Distant View of Corbeil from behind the Trees - Morning
ca. 1870
oil on canvas
Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow

Charles-François Daubigny
The Waterfall
ca. 1870-75
oil on panel
York City Art Gallery

Edward Lear
Thermopylae
1872
oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Narcisse-Virgile Diaz de la Peña
Clearing in a Forest
1874
oil on panel
Courtauld Gallery, London

Lockwood de Forest
Study of Ruins in a Landscape
1878
oil on board
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Henri Rousseau
Toll Gate
1881-82
oil on canvas
Courtauld Gallery, London

Georges Seurat
Man painting a Boat
ca. 1883
oil on panel
Courtauld Gallery, London