Historical and Contemporary Paintings of the English Landscape

'Before it can ever be the repose for the senses, landscape is the work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock.' (Schama, 2004; 6-7)

  My recent work has predominantly dealt with ideas relating to the landscape with a particular emphasis on the English Landscape. Within this post I aim to analyse the changing nature of depictions of the Landscape, using selected works from historical and contemporary English artists including: J.M.W Turner, John Constable, Paul Nash and Clare woods.

The Romantic landscape:

'My job is to paint what I see, not what I know.' J.M.W Turner (Seferis, 1999; 105)

In 1757 Edmund Burke published A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, leading to the theory of the picturesque towards the end of the century. For landscape artists, the sublime was essentially the evocation of awe, terror, and beauty, while the picturesque referred to the landscape in its natural state. 

The British Landscape painters, J. M. W Turner (1775-1851) and John Constable (1776-1837) were influential exponents of romanticism, an artist movement of 18th and 19th Century, emphasizng an emotional response to nature. Turner who travelled extensively, often infused his dramatic seascapes and landscapes with literary or historical allusions, while Constable preferred straghtforward depictions of placid rural scenery. Despite their differences in temperament and technique both artists evoke the same worship of nature that imbues the literature of their contemporaries the romantic poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats. 

J.M.W Turner, Ivy Bridge, 1813, Watercolour on Paper

John Constable, 1821, The Hay Wain, Oil on Canvas

Analysis:

Both Turner and Constable have employed naturalistic colours within their compositions as a way of portraying typically pastoral Scenes within the 19th Century. The scenes portrayed do not appear abstracted or removed from the reality of a landscape, the trees, grass, river and other aspects of the composition appearing as one would expect them to appear in reality. There is an overriding sense within both works of the glorification and dramatization of nature portrayed via the via the extensive sweep of the landscape as well as the drama inherent within the cloud formations, the sweep of the forest as well figures present within each scene who appear at one within their surroundings.

The Post war English Landscape: 

'I turned to Landscape not for the landscape's sake but for the 'things behind', the dweller in the innermost...' Paul Nash (Wallis & Schwabsky, 2006;19)

After the World Wars many English Artists returned to the subject of landscape as a way of summoning up a lost spiritual order, the landscape acting as a subject in order to find solace after the unprecedened technologically enabled massacres of both conflicts. Depictions of landscape offered artists a sense of escape and self-loss aswell as a place to find a wider communal identity. 

The British Artist Paul Nash (1889-1946) depicted paintings of landscapes to great aesthetic and psychological effect. In two of his paintings, We are Making a New World (1918) and The Menin Road (1919) both of which depict the shelled wartime landscape of Flanders, Nash hints at the redemptive quality of nature in the face of technological chaos.

Paul Nash, We Are Making a New World, 1918, Oil on Canvas

Paul Nash, The Menin Road, 1919, Oil on Canvas

Analysis:

In contrast to the landscapes of Turner and Constable, Nash's landscape has been ripped appart as a result of the effects of warfare inflicted via the use of technology. The landscapes have been decimated and destroyed  appearing as pitted and scarred wastelands. The colours that Nash has employed appear subdued and sullen, whilst the shapes he employs are blocky and crude. Yet amongst this destruction there are signs of renewal as well as the healing power of nature. In both paintings the sun appears from behind the clouds shining down spectacularly upon the battlefields below. On the ground plants are putting out new shoots implying the regenerating, healing effects of nature in the face of the damage that has been heaped upon it by mankind.

The Contemporary English Landscape: 

'My relationship is a fascination or love with both the beauty and the horror. I'm caught on the cusp. I need both. I'm at a point of emotional transition. I am interested in working out anxieties and fears, stupid fears, not big major fears, ones that you can't really explain that just happen.' Clare Woods (British Council, 2015)

The contemporary painter Clare Woods (1972 - ), uses landscape as her subject matter, often derived from photographs taken of rural life. Woods' fascination invoves the accumulated intensity of the past in the present that persists in many parts of Britain. They allude to pagan and folk traditions, hinting at our endless struggle to attempt to control and tame it. Very often her paintings contain complex and ambiguous spaces mixing abstract and representational subject matter. 

Woods revels in the colour, texture and malleability of the glossy paint. The compositions, skeins and blobs of paint trigger submerged memories allowing for a consideration of nature and the fashion in which we perceive and interact with its forms and processes employing a visual language that shifts between representation and abstraction, precision and accident. 

Clare Woods, Rock of the Night, 2006, Gloss & Oil Paint on Aluminium

Clare Woods, Gwen's Bobby, 2006, Gloss and Oil Paint on Aluminium

Clare Woods, The Gump, 2006, Gloss and Oil Paint on Aluminium

Analysis:

Within Wood's work paintings nature has been rendered almost completely abstract. Although elements of the compositions are recognisable as being derived from the landscape the paintings do not correspond to how one traditionally imagines the landscape to be. This is exacerbated via the use of colouration consisting of naturalistic and non-naturalistic colours which blend and merge together. The effect created is one whereby abstracted and representational landscape elements come together in order to form the overall scene. This juxtaposition of both abstract and figurative elements combines to create an additional psychological space which although referencing the landscape is starting to allude to something else by the time it has reached Wood's canvases.

Conclusion: 

The four examples of English painters that I have used above demonstrate the fashion with which the English Landscape has been depicted in a different fashion from the 19th Century to the present day. Via the use of colour and form as well as the evolution from a figurative to a more abstract language it could be argued that depictions of the landscape although very much still concerned with nature have changed radically. The depiction of the landscape has evolved from a purely representational and romantic vision, depicted as beautiful, awe-inspiring and evocative, to showing the destructive effects of human technology.  Moving forwards to the contemporary day, has led to a much greater and ambiguous, psychological interpretation via the juxtaposition of representational and abstracted elements, naturalistic and non-naturalistic colour as well as precision and accident.


British Council (2015) Clare Woods (internet) available at: visualarts.britishcouncil.org/collection/artist/clare-woods-1972

Schama, S. (2004) 'Landscape and Memory.' London: Harper Perennial.

Seferis, G. (1999) 'A Poet's Journal: Days of 1945-51.' New York: Harvard University Press.

Wallis, S & Schwabsky, B. (2006) 'Clare Woods: deaf man's house.' London: Koening Books. 

W G Sebald, John Clare and New Work

'In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.' (Debord, 2013; 1)

The subject of place has been a recurring concern for me within my recent practice. In particular I have been attempting to select specific places that resonate with my current research interests, places that I have visited on and off through out my life, which tie in with ideas surrounding the landscape and the layering of memory personal or otherwise that occurs or may have occurred within such places.

A book that I have frequently returned to as a point of reference is W G Sebald's The Rings of Saturn. The book is constructed around the pilgrimage of a lonely wanderer (Sebald) along the English East coast of Suffolk. The landscape Sebald encounters is strikingly deserted containing within it long empty beaches, closed down hotels, sleepy holiday resorts, high unemployment and dilapidated manor houses. The narrative deals with memories and descriptions of human events and history, describing the extermination of Herring in the Baltic Sea, the English bombing of German cities in WWII, Ethnic genocide in the Balklands, devastation in the Congo due to colonization and opium wars in China. 
 
'The past seems to flow into his work with a strange hallucinatory quality, one set of recollections embedded in another set of memories, one narrative voice metamorphosing into another, as though consciousness comes into its most vivide imaginative life in a state askin to dreaming.' (Cook, 2014; 10)

Each of the ten chapters begins at the East Coast, but head towards painful death, extinction and disaster. This repeated sense of repetition via the construction and deconstruction of identity creates a circular sense of movement. The sense of oscillation and movement repeating over and over again revolves around the impossibility and ruthless destruction of human history. Sebald's contention is that the past of a civilisation works on an individual in the same way as personal trauma. No landscape could be consoling or sublime but every tract of European soil is ingrained with the the traces of the natural history of destruction. 


The subject of memory and the idea of returning to the past is explored in Iain Sinclair's, book Edge of the Orison, in which he re-traces the steps of the romantic poet John Clare who in 1841 undertook a three and a half day journey in order to escape from his incarceration in an asylum in Epping Forest and the subsequent walk back to his home village of Glimton on the border of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. Clare's journey is more of a personal exploration than that of Sebald.

'I had imagined that the worlds end was at the edge of the orison and that a days journey was able to find it so I went on with my heart full of hopes, pleasures and discoveries expecting when I got to the brink of the world that I could look down like looking into a large pit and see into its secrets the same as I believed I could see heaven by looking into the water.' John Clare (Sinclair, 2006; 1)

During the walk Clare orientated himself by lying down at night with his head facing towards the north, in order to know which way to go in the morning. He kept heading towards the horizon (spelt 'orison') to bring him back into the circle of his knowledge, the local landscape that grounded his identity. During the walk he ate grass in order to survive and by the end he was hallucinating due to his exertions and hunger. Via the process of escaping and walking away from the place of his incarceration it could be argued that Clare was attempting to open an alternative life and follow a different path as well as recovering an older version of himself.

Although both of the walks of Sebald and Clare operate on a personal level, Sebald's past and the memories he unearths repeatedly return to the past history of destruction inherent within a nation from which he is unable to escape. Everything he glimpses on his journey leads him back to this revelation. For Clare however his walk represents a personal journey forward away from the madness and incarceration of his present life, into his past in order to escape the present and ground himself within the familiar landscape of a life that no longer exists. In both cases it is the landscape that holds the clues and keys to their lives, manifesting itself in two very different ways. 


Experimentation with the circular tondo composition:

Study (Untitled), 2015, Oil on MDF, 39 x 39cm

Study I (Untitled), 2015, Oil on MDF, 39 x 39cm

Making use of two older pieces of work and in a similar vein to the two studies I created using Mousehold Heath as my subject matter, within these two tondo pieces I transposed a series of semi-opaque painted rings onto the surface of a landscape scene. I hoped that this process related back to the idea of something being formed via the process of layering and accumulation. 

As discussed within my previous entry by placing geometric shapes on top of elements derived from the landscape my aim was to create a disturbance of the viewing field by combining two disparate elements creating a tension within the composition. I deliberately made the rings opaque so that the underlying painted landscape showed through in order to create the visual impression of something operating beneath a surface, as well as a way of implying something that was embedded.

By using a circular rather than a conventional rectangular or square composition I hoped to create more of an immersive sense as well as turning the landscape into something that was more abstracted and removed from a conventional depiction.

It was pointed out to me during a group critique that the rings had a similar visual feel to tree rings, implying an accumulation and sense of growth, as well as the passage and movement of time. As with the two works that I created on paper I am uncertain as to whether this effect of superimposing geometric shapes on top of my painting is completely effective however I feel that as an experimental piece it creates an intriguing visual dynamic. I am keen to continue to experiment with using a circular composition but am uncertain as to whether the use of overlaid patterns is creating the effect that I am hoping to achieve.

Themes relating to the idea of a hallucination are picked up upon in relation to Sebald's writings and the account of Clare's walk away from madness. Both walks contain the idea of the past flowing into the present and vice-versa, creating a hallucinatory interpretation whereby the past and the present blend together creating a strange mix of fantasy and reality. 


Cook, J. (2014) 'After Sebald Essays and Illuminations.' Ipswich: Full Circle Editions Ltd.

Debord, G. and Self, W. (2013) 'Society of the Spectacle.' London: Notting Hill Editions.

Sinclair, I (2006) 'Edge of the Orison.' London: Penugin.  

Painting, perception and sub-conscious processes

'Perhaps it's that you can't go back in time, but you can return to the scenes of a love, of a crime, of happiness, and of a fatal decision; the places are what remain, are what you can possess, are what is immortal. They become the tangible landscape of memory, the places that made you, and in some way you too become them. They are what you can possess and in the end what possesses you.' (Solnit, 2005; 117)


Initially I started this unit by creating a series of paintings inspired by my own surrounding landscapes, landscapes which have been a familar backdrop to my childhood and teenage years. I am particularly interested in places and landscapes with some sense of historical association or narrative attached to them relating to C19th  ideas of the romantic landscape and the sublime. In doing this I hope to embue the work with more of a sense of personal narrative and involvement.

Mousehold Heath is an area consisting of approximately 200 acres of heathland and woodland, situated in North East Norwich and a designated Local Nature Reserve. I chose to use it as my subject matter due to its close proximity and the historical associations attached to it being a popular subject for the Norwich School of artists including John Sell Cotman and John Chrome, as well as being a place that I have visited many times in the past. I was interested in considering what would happen to the visual composition of my paintings via the introduction of  elements which may create a distortion of the visual perception, creating the impression of the crossover between the past and the present.

John Crome, Mousehold Heath, Oil on Canvas, 1818-1820

John Sell Cotman, Mousehold Heath, Oil on Canvas, 1810

A contemporary artist who I have been considering as part of my research who is directly interested in sub-conscious processes is the painter Jules De Balincourt. What emerges within many of his paintings via the simultaneous use of abstract and figurative elements is a strong sense of dislocation and the visual impression that his unconscious mind is coming to bear upon the work. There is a strong sense of polarity and contradiction within his paintings, partly due to the strong non-naturalistic colours he employs as well as a sense of spatial distortion on account of the different shapes and overlays that are layered within his compositions.

Untitled (Berlin), Jules De Balincourt, 2006, oil and spray paint on canvas

Waiting Tree, Jules De Balincourt, 2012, Oil on Canvas

In waiting tree the initial image he has painted becomes the foundation for something different due to being painted directly on top of a pre-existing figurative painting. The transparency of the image alongside this ghostlike quality creates a strong impression of a person or a phantom haunting the scene. The tree appears to be a visual metaphor, storing past memories of the community of people who have lived in its near vicinity. 

'Often what helps me when I start a painting is knowing that the initial image can be changed, mutated, or negated, and it simply becomes a foundation for something completely different... This is what happened with Waiting Tree... Essentially I painted space around the tree in an effort to block out the awkward figurative painting that had been there before.' (De Balincourt, 2013; 14)

Untitled (Study from Mousehold Heath), Oil on Paper, 55.5 x 76cm

Untitled I (Study from Mousehold Heath), Oil on Paper, 55.5 x 76cm

Although partially influenced by and as a direct reaction to De Balincourt's painting these two painterly studies loosely based around studies taken from Mousehold Heath were an attempt to create some way of breaking up the painterly surface of the picture in order to allude to an underlying tension or drama contained within the landscape and also as a way of breaking up the composition via the introduction of opposing shapes and forms.

As well as De Balincourt's Waiting Tree image I also considered op art (a term coined in 1944 by Time Magazine) as a basis for the geometric patterns which I placed on top of the landscape elements within my paintings. Op art is a form of abstract art relying on optical illusions in order to fool the eye of the viewer so that when looked at it creates the impression of movement, hidden images, flashing and vibrations, patterns and distortion.

'Op artists thus managed to exploit various phenomena, the after-image and consecutive movement; line interference; the effect of dazzle; ambiguous figures and reversible perspective; successive colour contrasts and chromatic vibration; and in three-dimensional works different viewpoints and the superimposition of elements in space.' (Popper, 2009)

Victor Vaserely, 1937, Zebra, gouache on board.

Bridget Riley, 1962, Untitled (Based on 'Primitive Blaze'), Screenprint

Analysis:

I am wondering whether the use of these two opposing forms is helpful or whether they serve as a visual distraction, which rather than alluding to sub-conscious processes act in a very different way from the subtle layering that is present within De Balincourt's Waiting Tree image. 

The use of geometric shapes and patterns act in direct contrast to the organic drips, smears and flat areas of colour that make up the landscape and the effect is disorientating. I am unsure whether this alludes to memory or is in fact more indicative of a hallucination or optical illusion. There is a strong visual sense that there are two sets of conflicting factors at play and whilst the drippy, colourful, psychedelic nature of the landscape creates the strong impression of an exaggerated reality, there is no indication that the pattern is related to memory within the landscape. Similarly the use of very strong colours does not relate back to the actual places being depicted, meaning that there is a discrepancy between the places and the painting studies.


As a further consideration the patterns sits awkwardly on top of the figurative landscape elements meaning that rather than unifying the composition it creates a sense of confusion as well as being visually jarring. In moving forward I wonder if there is some way of subtely incorporating a tension within the work that could sit within the places depicted rather than as a separate entity sitting on top. As with previous works the use of colour appears to be an overriding consideration and preoccupation within my work, my natural tendency being to amplify and exagerrate it.


De Balincourt, J et al. (2013) 'Jules De Balincourt.' New York: Skira/Rizzoli.

Solnit Rebecca (2005) 'A field guide to getting lost.' Edinburgh, London: Canongate.

Popper Frank (2009) 'Op Art.' (Grove Art Online.) Oxford: Oxford University Press.