Notes
'There is nothing comparable in beauty to the lines of the Roman horizon, to the gentle slope of its planes, to the soft, receding contours of the mountains by which it is bound. The valleys in the Campagna often take the form of an arena, a circus, a hippodrome; the hills are carved like terraces, as if the mighty hand of the Romans had moved all this earth. Shadows are never heavy and black; no mass of rock or foliage is so obscure that a little light does not always penetrate. A singularly harmonious tint unites earth, sky and water: all surfaces, by means of an imperceptible gradation of colors, coalesce into their extremes without one being able to determine the point at which one nuance ends or where the other begins. You have, no doubt, admired in the paintings of Claude Lorrain this light which seems ideal and more beautiful than nature itself? Well, that is the light of Rome!'
-F.R.Chateaubriand, Lettre à M. de Fontanes sur la Campagne Romaine, 1804 (as quoted in In the Light of Italy: Corot and Early Open-air Painting, eds. P. Conisbee, S. Faunce and J. Strick, exh. cat., 1996, p. 15).
This inspiring description from one of France's most beloved poets typifies the kind of collective sentiment held by foreign artists and writers who, for generations, travelled to Italy and began what can best be described as a love affair with the country and its scenery. The years spanning 1780-1850 witnessed a rise in plein air or open- air painting in Italy. One of the purest and most poetic visual art forms, the following selection of plein air works celebrate this genre which has just begun in the past few decades to attract more scholarly attention.
For generations, artists had flocked to Rome to immortalize the great monuments and city views, yet in the 19th Century, the Roman campagna or countryside held a stronger fascination with artists and writers. Lured by the wildness of nature and its unexpected character, and attracted to the ancient ruins recalling the city's ancient past, these artists, armed with paint boxes, brushes and easels, followed well-established itineraries into the countryside often more than a day's journey from Rome. (fig. 1)
It can be convincingly argued that true landscape painting was born in Italy. As early as the 17th Century, the French masters Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin found their vision of Arcadia in the countryside outside of Rome. These ideal, highly 'classicized' landscapes were loosely based on a specific area of the countryside, yet the majority were largely studio constructions. Their works were highly influential and attracted an immense following of artists whose training in classical landscape was based on the principles set forth by these great masters.
The formal evolution of the landscape sketch as a largely preparatory tool for artists to occupy a central place as an artistic genre was largely due to the efforts of Pierre-Henri Valenciennes (1789-1819). A major proponent of classical landscape painting and trained in the manner of Lorrain, Valenciennes was both an artist and a theoretician whose treatise entitled Eléments de perspective, published in 1800, played a key role in introducing new generations of artists to the practical aspects of open air painting. Valencienne's revolutionary ideas liberated students from the restrictions of studio painting and inspired artists to work outside and sharpen their skills of perception by recording the ephemeral conditions of natural light with changing weather conditions. Central to the philosophy was less of a focus on detail and more emphasis in creating an overall atmospheric effect. In the treatise, he urged students to capture the effects of light in two hours. He writes, 'Begin the study with the sky, which will give the coloring of the background, next to the coloring of the adjacent planes, and arrive progressively at the foreground. Following this procedure it is impossible to paint the details' (as quoted in Galassi, Corot in Italy Open Air Painting and the Classical Landscape Tradition, 1991, p. 27). Guided purely by their senses and without the controlled lighting of the studio, painters were forced to employ techniques of rapid sketching hence, the presence of wonderful fragmented and loose brush strokes. Further, in order to address the constantly changing conditions and lighting, artists took on a more simplistic and less blended color palette that captured the overall feel of a particular moment outside.
The widespread appeal of plein air painting is strongly linked to the international flavor of the movement which represents another interesting facet of this art form. From France to Sweden, from England to Germany, artists such as Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Emmanuel Larsen, and Gustave Palm all convened together in Rome. Despite coming from widely different artistic backgrounds, in plein air painting they found a common ground, a single voice. From this, a special comradery was born among the artists. Many artists found solace and inspiration, painting alone amongst the sights and sounds of nature exemplified by André Giroux's Peintre dans la forêt (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) (fig. 2). Yet the rich exchange of ideas and companionship was important, and for others, the open air experience was more enjoyable in the company of fellow painters (fig. 3 & 4).
In a recent exhibition, Sarah Faunce suggests that these artists were most interested in 'exploring the facts of vision, which in itself led to the discovery of a new way of representing the world' (S. Faunce, ed., Plein Air painting in Europe 1780-1850, exh. cat, 2004, p. 22). Furthermore,it has been argued that the shared techniques employed imbue these sketches with a recognizable 'look'. Faunce insightfully identifies these characteristics as 'the sense of being a fragment in a larger whole; the sense of being a moment in actual time; the sense for the viewer of being virtually present in the artist's space; and subject matter which often consisted of little more than a stretch of wall or a single hillside but which, unlike a drawing isolated on the page, was a painting of a place set in light and air' (Faunce, 2004, loc. cit., p. 22).
In the plein air vocabulary of a painter, the elements of nature figured greatly as identifying motifs. The sun, moon, air and clouds took on a more important role, at times becoming the subject of the work itself such as in Paul Huet's lovely series of Sky Studies (lot 147 & 148). Even the simplest compositions, such as Devambez's Le laboureur (lot 140) or Camuccini's Mountain View with a Path (lot 138) are permeated with an energy thanks to the bright palette that is so reminiscent of the hot summer sun.
Plein air painting reveals the fascinating and often intensely personal dialogue between a painter and his natural surroundings. These painters, temporarily distanced from their home base, were freed from the pressures of the commercial art world and their sketches remind us of the pleasures of painting. The appeal of acting on impulse and with a certain spontaneity was a highly influential concept for the Impressionist painters who decades later would formulate a new interpretation based on the tenants of open-air painting.
'My happiest hours have been when I run out into the open air to paint a little, with my paintbox and stool under my arm, to paint after nature.' - Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg
(fig. 1) Map of Rome and surrounding towns often frequented by plein air artists.
(fig. 2) Penry Williams Civitella Gazette, 1839, (C) Copyright The British Museum.
(fig. 3) André Giroux, Forest Interior with a Painter, Civita Castellana, 1825-30, Gift of Mrs. John Jay Ida in memory of Mr. and Mrs. William Henry Donner, Image (C) 2005 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington.
(fig. 4) Hubert Robert, Artists drawing at Tivoli (detail), Private Collection.
PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF JOHN R. GAINES
