N.B., Click on images to zoom.
The Side of the Valley
Oil Painting on Panel
The landscape above is close to a village in North Wales called Beddgelert. A path runs directly south from the village into the Aberglaslyn valley (known colloquially as the 'Artist's Valley', because of it's renowned beauty).
A walker leaving Beddgelert would arrive at this particular spot on the left of the path well before arriving at the more picturesque part of the valley.
And although this particular view does not conform in any way to the standard tenets of the 'Picturesque' it is nevertheless very striking, and interesting to paint. The trees are rather scrubby, and the forms of the rock-strewn land are somewhat haphazard.
A walker leaving Beddgelert would arrive at this particular spot on the left of the path well before arriving at the more picturesque part of the valley.
And although this particular view does not conform in any way to the standard tenets of the 'Picturesque' it is nevertheless very striking, and interesting to paint. The trees are rather scrubby, and the forms of the rock-strewn land are somewhat haphazard.
It could be said that if a painter's primary interest is in the formal qualities of painting (i.e., structure, composition, colour, form, tone, line, etc) then, in a way, any subject is as good as any other.
But historically, different subject areas were each afforded a very different value in Western Art. In fact for several centuries after the Renaissance there evolved a firm hierarchy in figurative art, with History painting at the top (and Landscape, my own favourite, coming fairly well down the list).
As in.....
As in.....
- History painting (including narrative, religious, mythological and allegorical subjects).
- Portrait painting
- Genre painting (scenes of everyday life)
- Landscape painting
- Animal painting
- Still life
This hierarchy was formalised and promoted by all the national academies in Europe between the 17th and the 20th centuries, and in particular the most influential, the French Academy.
It can be argued that History painting, with it's interest in myth, symbolism, allegory and so on, is an essentially literary concern, and I suspect that this literary proclivity is the reason why, even nowadays, people feel the need to detect and to understand the 'meaning' of a picture.
So people will see a painting of, for example, a couple of apples and a bowl, and ask the question, 'what does it mean?' I can perfectly understand why the Realists, including the Impressionists, got sick to death of the obligation to read hidden messages, symbols, significances, and so on in a painting, and instead opted to simply paint a subject that was visually interesting (or beautiful, or powerful).
So people will see a painting of, for example, a couple of apples and a bowl, and ask the question, 'what does it mean?' I can perfectly understand why the Realists, including the Impressionists, got sick to death of the obligation to read hidden messages, symbols, significances, and so on in a painting, and instead opted to simply paint a subject that was visually interesting (or beautiful, or powerful).
It seems to me that during those centuries, artists dealing with the visual world suffered from a kind of inferiority complex, and craved the 'intellectual cachet' of the literary and intellectual world. Painting could not simply be about the visible, but it had to have literary meaning to 'raise it up' and to make it somehow intellectually serious.
Fortunately, this rigid hierarchy has fairly well disappeared nowadays. But we still find that the search for a meaning other than visual is still widespread. And unfortunately many of our art pundits come not from a background of actually making art, but from literary/academic backgrounds, hence their tendency to look for 'meaning'.
In my own painting I try to avoid any 'literary' meaning completely, preferring to look at the real world, and try, in the most straightforward way, to represent it.
See it, paint it!
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quiz quiz quiz “details, details............” quiz quiz quiz
In which portrait painting does this still life occur, and who painted it?
(The answer will be in the next posting.)
And here's the answer from the last posting -
'Annunciation' (1438-1445) by Fra Angelico.
Museo du San Marco, Firenze.
Museo du San Marco, Firenze.
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
"Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery."
John Ruskin