LANDSCAPE PAINTING

The "Old Masters" seldom painted a landscape except as a background for figures. Now it has become one of the most important divisions of painting and there seem to be more landscapes than figure subjects put on

canvas.

In the early days people probably cared less for nature than we do. We have studied her more and know more of her secrets. Then, too, we feel the need of her soothing and healing influence in these hurrying, rushing times more than they did in the sixteenth century.

So as we follow the history of landscape painting we notice that the early works were crude and flat. As men began to take up landscape painting as a separate work, the representation of nature upon canvas became better and better. Trees and foliage became less stiff and conventional and pictures of nature began to live. At length some one discovered that he could paint the atmosphere and atmospheric effects.

These interpreters of nature by their profound study, were able finally to faithfully reproduce the most fleeting aspects of earth and sky and thrill the beholder almost as nature herself would do.

Thus to communicate to others the feelings he has had in working and to make others see as with his own eyes is the wish and triumph of the artist.

We must not suppose that the early masters knew nothing of nature. Very little escaped those wonderful observers. Leonardo da Vinci, in his "Treatise on Painting," at the beginning of the sixteenth century speaks of the "transparent medium interposed between the eye and bodies" and of how the color and appearance of distant objects is changed by the air, that, “like a veil, tinges the shadows."

But somehow they did not get the results that the later landscape men, by earnest study, have given us. In this department of painting the moderns have outdone the ancients; men living among us to-day can work marvels which Michelangelo and Raphael never attempted.

By an example of Claude Lorrain, followed by one of Constable, one of Turner, and one of Corot, we shall be able to trace, to some extent, the progress of this branch of painting, now so highly esteemed.

THE ENCHANTED CASTLE

By Claude Lorrain of the French School
(Born 1600, died 1682)

When you look at this picture I think you will feel at once that it is well named. It does not look like any castle you would see nowadays. If you should find such a building you would expect to see driveways leading to it and well-kept grounds instead of the wildness and neglect shown in the picture.

It is more like what you might dream about as a castle in fairyland where some princess is imprisoned, awaiting her deliverer.

It is surrounded by many of the beauties of nature. There are fine trees, and on the shore a woman sits musing and looking across the waters beyond. It seems solitary. You would not wish to live there without plenty of companions.

And you would be right in thinking there never was just such a place in reality, but only in some one's vivid imagination. You might find something nearly like it in the Swiss or Italian Lakes but with a difference -the difference between something real and something ideal.

The artist was a hard student and painted and sketched without ceasing, directly from nature herself, but when he came to paint a picture he built it up from parts of many separate places, so combined as to produce beautiful effects such as we see in the one selected.

When pictures are painted in this way, without reproducing any particular place, they are sometimes spoken of as generalized.

Look at this well for it is a type you should learn to recognize. When you see such pictures you may safely conclude that they are Claude Lorrain's or imitated from him, for he was the first to produce them. The skies and trees in all are similar.

When Claude paints a tree, he does not intend to copy a tree exactly as he sees it but to make it more perfect than the original. If there are dead limbs he leaves them out, although we have all noticed how picturesque old and dead or twisted trees often are. It is thought that the reason he avoided these accidents was because they would attract attention too strongly and interfere

with the quietness and repose which he endeavored to put into his work.

He was convinced that to take nature just as he found it would never produce beauty and so, as Sir Joshua Reynolds writes of this man's work: "His pictures are a composition of the various drafts he had previously made from various beautiful scenes and prospects." Being the first man to create ideal scenes in this way, and his principle of generalization having been followed ever since, he is often spoken of as "the father of modern landscape art." Moreover he was among the first to give all his time to landscape work.

You will notice in studying this picture that it is not purely a landscape, for the artist has introduced other things, namely, a castle and figures. This is the case in all his pictures and of those of many of his imitators. In some cases the castles and columns occupy most of the picture, and the fact that these are nearly always of a classical style of architecture has led people to speak of his pictures as classical.

However, this is not what is meant technically by classical painting. Classical painting rather refers to the manner in which the painting is done. Anything which is done very carefully, and exactly following rules laid down by predecessors in art is called classical. But it is correct enough in another sense to call a work classical because it has a classical subject, as in the case of Claude's paintings.

The castles lend something of stateliness and dignity to the pictures and are a part of them. They belong there. If you place your thumb over the castle you