'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.
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| J.M.W Turner, Ivy Bridge, 1813, Watercolour on Paper |
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| John Constable, 1821, The Hay Wain, Oil on Canvas |
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.
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| Paul Nash, We Are Making a New World, 1918, Oil on Canvas |
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| Paul Nash, The Menin Road, 1919, Oil on Canvas |
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.
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| Clare Woods, Rock of the Night, 2006, Gloss & Oil Paint on Aluminium |
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| Clare Woods, Gwen's Bobby, 2006, Gloss and Oil Paint on Aluminium |
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| Clare Woods, The Gump, 2006, Gloss and Oil Paint on Aluminium |
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.
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