The, Landscape, The Seat Of Mr. Featherstonhaugh

I believe Cole purposely avoided the appearance of unity in this painting. The separation between the two landscapes was not a peaceful transition. He wanted to show the diversity between the natural land from the cultivated land.

Cole has no restrain in describing the beauty of all the elements found in the American scenery. He talks about the mountains, the sky, the streams, the sunset, waterfalls, all of which are overflowing in richness, full of magnificence, and unsurpassed by any other. For Cole the scenery and nature are subjects which must be present in the souls of every American. While he considers himself and even others underserving of “such a birthright”, he is thankful for the beauties given to us by nature. Cole suggests to his audience that the reason behind him painting natural scenes relates to the experiencing of a particular emotional response while doing so. This is a response which can only be compared to a “calm religious tone”, full of “tranquility and peace.” Witnessing the beauties of the American scenery, anywhere one goes, makes one realize how “the sublime and beautiful are bound together in an indissoluble chain. In gazing on it we feel as though a great void had been filled in our minds.” Cole places great emphasis on the importance for all members of society to learn how to cultivate “a taste for scenery.” This can be achieved by appreciating the physical beauty of nature and the ability of said beauty to provide mankind with a different perspective about life and with

Classical landscape by Charles Sheeler is an exterior oil on canvas of the Estate of Mrs. Edsel B. Ford, Grosse Pointe Farms (figure 1) filled with deep, hidden irony. It was painted in 1931, and is based on a watercolor study. It’s a calm, clean, and serene painting that takes your breath away. It’s depicting a place someone would want to be in, a place where things get done, and a place where one can go to achieve this idea of the American dream. Charles Sheeler used American industry as a major theme of his art, his work “lends itself to an analysis in terms of geometric forms” he examines his subject matter so closely in order to fully understand the composition, the effect, and the design he wants to depict. Sheeler painted the plant’s exterior as an idyll, a beautiful, picturesque scene of the industrial age booming; however, in reality the United States was in the middle of the worst years of the Great Depression. Therefore, this painting done in Sheeler’s hyper-realistic artistic style is not actually depicting what the factory actually looked like.

Humanity is but a facet of the sublime macrocosm that is the world’s landscapes. In the relationship between man and landscape, nature is perpetually authoritarian. In her free-verse poems, The Hawthorn Hedge, (1945) and Flame-Tree in a Quarry (1949), Judith Wright illustrates the how refusal to engage with this environment is detrimental to one’s sense of self, and the relentless endurance of the Australian landscape. This overwhelming force of nature is mirrored in JMW Turner’s Romantic artwork, Fishermen at Sea (1796). Both Wright and Turner utilise their respective texts to allegorise the unequal relationship between people and the unforgiving landscape.

Antoine Watteau’s La Perspective (View through the Trees in the Park of Pierre Crozat) uses many elements of the Rococo style of painting to instill a sense of intimacy. In this painting, members of the elite society gather unceremoniously in a wooded clearing. The people make casual exchanges as they mingle in the park. Trees and foliage dominate a majority of the painting. A small white building can be seen in the background through a clearing in the trees. Watteau uses color, composition, setting, and pose in the painting to create intimacy.

Though the viewers focus first on the centered figures, it is easier to first analyze the surrounding settings to understand them. The stone wall foreground and the open fields of the background each embodies one of the girl’s thoughts. The back landscape is filled with warm, airy colors of blue and orange, as if it were under a bright sun. On the other hand, the foreground’s stone walls and concrete floor has dark, cold, shadowy, earthy colors that seem to appear as if under a stormy cloud. The sunny land suggests free, pure, spacious land previous to the industrialization. Yet, the darkened foreground due to the overcasting shadows resemble the currently dirty,

4. Space- Perspective is demonstrated in many ways. This artwork takes up almost the whole canvas. The horses on the edge look like they were maybe even squeezed in. All of the characters in this artwork look to be congregated to the middle of the painting, besides the villages in the distance. Linear perspective is used in the placement of the villages in the background and in all the men and horses, which are grouped in the middle of the screen. Looking at the features in the painting I notice the use of overlapping and vertical placement, which both imply depth. The horses overlap each other as well as the gentlemen and other elements of the painting. The brown horse’s head overlaps the black one hiding its mouth. The villages and hills in the background appear to be very far away (diminishing size); they look smaller and distant from the rest of the main aspects of the painting.

As a formal analysis, this artwork has a figure in the center of the page, which can be assumed to be the focal point due to its positioning in the center of the picture plane. Also, this artwork is monochromatic, and the only color used is the hue green. Towards the top left-hand corner, there are darker shades of green, which make this part seem to be in front of the rest of the picture by using overlapping to convey depth. Also, towards the right side of the picture, the people seem lighter and appear farther away than the dark shaded buildings Additionally, since the figure in the center of the work is larger and more detailed than the other figures, it appears that the center figure is closer to the viewer.

Further more, in the painting, “the Gleaners”, the entire screen is filled with contrast elements. First of all, the main figures in the front labor scene are full of rich vigor, contrasting to the background with silent objects such as hay, trees and farmhouse. Secondly, the color brightness of the front contrast to the back, as well as the comparison of relative sizes between figures and scenery, applying the principle of perspective. What’s more, the most classic is the horizontal line, the intersection of the sky and the ground, contrasting with the light source, from the top left. Consequently, 2D and 3D spatial effects are combined precisely. Meanwhile, the sense of space of the image is strengthened as well.

Cole focuses on the American landscape and mixes idealism and realism into his paintings to really get viewers to admire nature and its beauty. He believed that landscape painters needed to have strength determination, and courage to overcome Mother Nature’s more turbulent side.

I am analyzing the form and content of a stylized painting entitled The Palisades by John William Hill. This was found in the collection section of themetmusuem.org which was painted during the pre Raphaelite movement; when artist emphasized meticulous detail in what was observed rather than imagined nature. This artwork shows the aesthetics of nature, depicting a peaceful scenery with spacious green acres during the year of the 1870s. During the late 18th centuries, natural resources weren’t highly industrialized and that in itself shows how nature was essential for all human species. I argue that this painting shows how everything in nature connects and communicates with one another.

• The focal point of the painting is the sun-drenched valley and river. The emphasis comes from the diagonal of the tree to the left that directs the view of the scene down the valley toward the farmland.

All of the subjects, a few trees, the bushes, the shore and some grass have been outlined as well. They can be seen in motion, as shown in the trees waving in the wind, people kissing, playing instruments, and dancing. The figures also face several directions, with some facing away just like Cézanne’s painting. Some of them are also distorted, like the girl playing an instrument in the foreground. Her head appears much too small for the rest of her body.

The next question we usually ask ourselves is “why?” why the color, why the worn out look of the farmhouse, why the surroundings, in general why is the painting depicted like this? That brings up the need to analyze the work of art at hand. When focusing on this painting, you can see a few birds soaring over the farmhouse. They’re quite small so there’s some difficulty telling if they’re flying towards or away from the farmhouse. It is still very probable that they flew over it at some point in time though. The lines in the painting are mostly depicted in the trees, and outer walls of the farmhouse. Standing firm the trees look, and or represent strength and dominance. It makes you wonder if there’s still hope for the dead looking environment surrounding the farmhouse. When first observing this painting; the thoughts were generally negative such as; sad, abandoned, lonely, and depressing, etc. The painting is indeed centered, and the focal point is obviously the farmhouse.

When the landscape is presented by composers in an evocative manner, an individual is able to view the land in a different perspective in relation to how it represents people and landscape. In Judith Wright’s Flame-tree in a Quarry, the poem comments on the destruction of the landscape due to the need for industrial progress and resources, making the audience to question the relationship of the people and the land, developing the concept of life and death. Whereas in Wright’s poem Train Journey, it reflects the feelings of being disconnected from nature, revealing the audiences perspective of the landscape as being the roots that they must accept in order to define themselves, in which is seen through a liberating and transformative experience