Do You Need to Go Outdoors to Paint? Maybe Yes, Maybe No.

Wooded Upland Landscape by Thomas Gainsborough. Is this a real place?

When visiting the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach several years ago, there was an intriguing label telling how Thomas Gainsborough created models of landscapes using such items as broccoli and mirrors to serve as references for his paintings. It seemed that no one else had heard of this, and this made me think that it was something I imagined. But while doing some research on the internet, I came across a reference to this. It was on ibiblio, and while I couldn't ascertain exactly what collection it was from, it seems as it is from a booklet produced by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. From the booklet:
 

• Thomas Gainsborough, though he was London's most fashionable society portraitist, preferred his beloved English countryside. "I'm sick of Portraits," he lamented, "and wish very much to. . . walk off to some sweet Village, where I can paint Landskips." In spite of his romantic longing for nature, he seldom if ever painted actual views. In accordance with much eighteenth-century art theory, Gainsborough was convinced that nature in the raw was an unsuitable subject. Only after an artist had refined a scene through his sensibilities could he begin to paint.

• Gainsborough's late works, such as this vista of butter-yellow clouds wafting through a mauve sky over a verdant valley, are fantastic reveries. Such idyllic scenery and extraordinary colors do not, of course, exist in the real world; so, Gainsborough invented them in his studio. He experimented with theatri­cal lighting effects, illumin­at­ing his subjects with candles shimmering through colored fabrics.

• Another painter recorded that Gainsborough "framed a kind of model of landskips, on his table; composed of broken stones, dried herbs, and pieces of looking glass, which he magnified and improved into rocks, trees, and water." Here, shiny hard coal may have served for the wet banks of the brook, a crushed mirror for the glistening ripples, and broccoli and brussels sprouts for the foliage. Thus, from a scale model, Gains­borough did indeed "magnify and improve" nature, creating a quiet escape from life's travails. (Quotes from The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough, ed. Mary Woodall [Green­wich, Connecticut, 1963], 115, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art [1797 edition], ed. Robert R. Wark [New York and London, 1966], 220.)

Wooded Upland Landscape by Thomas Gainsborough (British, Sudbury 1727–1788 London) Date: probably 1783. Gift of George A. Hearn, 1906. 
More information at the Metropolitan Museum of Art website.

 

 

 

At the other end of the spectrum is landscape work by a contemporary artist, Rackstraw Downes. We saw an exhibit of his works a few years ago at the Portland (Maine) Museum of Art. He paints from life, in a photorealistic style. His subject matter is often not picturesque, but is of  places in our environment such as landfills, trash-strewn railroad sidings, etc., with a technique that reminds us of the Dutch painters such as Vermeer.

Lincolnville Beach - Rackstraw Downes 1977

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: H. 12-1/4, W. 44-1/2 inches

 

Bequest of Douglas Dillon, 2003
More information at the Metropolitan Museum of Art website.