My journey through the drawing course at the Open College of the Arts

Look at the work of Claude Lorrain and Turner. Write notes on how those artists divide their landscape into foreground, middle ground and background.

Discovering the works of Claude Lorrain

My research strategy began with a look at Bridgeman education library, because the task implied looking at paintings and analysing them. The initial search for Claude Lorrain returned 33 result pages. Skimming through the first pages, I estimated that there were about 20 to 30% landscape paintings and asked myself which criteria I might apply to select some for a closer look out of the sheer mass. Then I realized that my search had returned results from many other artists as well. A change in search strategy to put the artist name in quotation marks was successful and returned 2 result pages with 122 hits, considerable reduction in volume already.

Claude Lorrain lived from 1600 to 1682. I had no prior knowledge about him and my initial questions were nationality (probably French?), which art period he belonged to, and what might be his relationship to Turner, who lived much later. I suspected that Turner was educated in a different artistic context but might have been influenced by studying Lorrain.

From a first glimpse over the image results, I found that there were many biblical and religious topics in Lorrain’s work, and I found the style very “classical”. My uneducated use of the term points to my perception of paintings guided by clear principles and rules, not much experimentation and not many surprises either.

From the thumbnail image gallery I decided to select paintings which appeared to have some details in the foreground and were not too dark. I also tried to select those I found in some way representative for Lorrain’s style. I had noted that Lorrain often used dark elements in the foreground and very light colours in the background, which has the effect of opening up the image into a wider background space. Often there are very large trees in the foreground which occupy much of the painted space, especially when Lorrain chose a portrait format.

Lorrain also created extreme size contrast with other elements in the paintings. A nice example for these techniques is the painting ‚Landscape with Hagar and the Angel‘ (1646). The foreground shows two very large trees, which are at about the same distance like the two figures (Hagar and the Angel), but the figures are much smaller. There’s a bridge at considerable distance, whose size on the painting is about that of the figures. This creates space and distance because the viewer automatically assumes that the bridge must be far away if it appears so small. Then there are some far away mountains. These are painted in very light colours and without any detail, so they are very faint. Combined with their small size, compared to the other image elements, this supports the viewers perception that they must be very far away.

In paintings, Lorrain used colour to support evoking space. It was interesting to see the techniques employed when colour was not available, as in the drawings. I selected ‘Landscape with Abraham expelling Hagar and Ishmael’ (c1665-67), a drawing using pen and ink and wash over chalk on paper. It is a small drawing of around A5 size. Lorrain uses the same basic technique of darker/more intense tones for elements in the foreground, mid-tone washes to indicate the placement of bushes in the mid-ground and light washes without detail for background elements.

The strong contrast in the centre of the drawing between the dark tree and the very light sky of the background supports the impression of great distance. Also, the low horizon line seems to be a characteristic feature of Lorrain’s style. The horizon line is a bit below the middle of the paper sheet, and this seems to be similar in other drawings and paintings. With the low horizon, a bit more than half of the image space is reserved for the sky, even if partly covered by trees or other elements in the middle ground. This also seems supportive in generating space and distance in drawings and paintings.

As a third example, I selected a landscape painting with buildings in order to look closer at Lorrain’s treatment of these elements. ‘Aenas and Dido in Carthage’ (1675), oil on canvas, is quite a large painting, 120 x 149 cm. It can be seen as a late work, it was painted 7 years before the artist’s death. I assumed that the painting incorporated all the technical mastership accumulated over the artist’s life.

Indeed, the same principles are applied again: The human figures in the foreground are the area with most intense colouring and finest detail. In the foreground, space is created through size contrasts between large buildings and trees, and the relatively small figures.

In the middle ground, elements are smaller. A presumably large building has the size of the figures, and presumably large ships are painted small size. The painting is rather complex in that it comprises more than three basic levels – rather five. These are
– The foreground: figures, trees
– The space between foreground and middle ground: some figures
– The middle ground: A large building and ships, water painted with details of the surface
– Between middle ground and far away background is another level: An area of land enclosing the water like a natural harbour. Colour intensity here resembles the middle ground, but no detail is included except the contours of trees and another building.
– The far away background: Contours of hills and water horizon line meeting the very light sky area. There’s no detail in this level, and only pale colours are employed. This creates considerable contrast to the more intense colouring and details of middle ground elements adjacent to background areas.

After studying some of Lorrain’s works, I wanted to know a bit more about the artist. From the very accessible Wikipedia summary I learnt that Lorrain was a french painter, draughtsman and engraver of the Baroque era. He had spent much of his life in Italy, presumably learning from the Italian masters. Lorrain is indeed reported to have influenced later artists, including JMW Turner and John Constable.

Landscape paintings by Joseph Mallord William Turner

Using the artist name in quotation marks as a search term, Bridgeman education library returned 677 results on 11 pages. I was overwhelmed and very unsure how to go about selecting images. I decided to skim look and select those that caught my interest as I went along.

Since Lorrain’s influence on Turner has been noted, I asked myself whether to expect the same principles of division into foreground, middle ground and background as I had seen in Lorrain’s works. Turner lived from 1775 to 1851, around 150 years after Claud Lorrain. Turner was born 100 years after Lorrain’s death.

The first painting was selected for its resemblance with Lorrain’s work. It is titled ‘Bolton Abbey’ (date not indicated).

It is similar in the more intense colouring of fore- to middle ground, compared to the paler background. It also employs sort of a framing effect with the large tree to the left and the stems to the right.

But there are also differences in the composition. The division into foreground, middle ground and background is less strict. The transitions are more fluent, and the elements of each level in the landscape are more related than what I saw in Lorrain’s works. Also, foreground elements are closer to the viewer than in Lorrain’s paintings. The greenery is painted with more details. Furthermore, the sky occupies less of the image space – maybe the upper third, compared to more than the upper half in Lorrain’s paintings.

The next painting was selected because I perceived some differences in comparison to Lorrain’s technique: Salisbury Cathedral (no date indicated). The sky is very dramatic, which takes the focus off the rather unimpressive landscape. There is no framing on the sides which results in a very open space impression. Still the spacial division into three levels is present. The foreground contains more intense colours and most detail, the middle ground paler colours and few details. The distant background shows the very pale contours of a hillside behind (!) the impressive cloudscape, and the cathedral. The cloudscape has dark and intense colours in some areas, which creates another depth level closer to the actual middle ground.

Turner used a different medium: watercolour instead of oils. The principles of creating space seem to be the same, but the visual effect is very different. Watercolours tend to be less intense, the overall impression is lighter. I asked myself whether there are different techniques for creating space, specific to watercolours vs oils.

Further looking through the image library, I found several images with almost a reversal of Lorrains principles of using intense colouring in the foreground and paler tones in the middle and backgrounds. I selected three quite similar paintings, unfortunately all without a date indication.

Pallanza, Lake Maggiore: Almost no detail and pale colours in the foreground, some detail in the middle ground. Then dark, intense blue sky in the far-away background, in sharp contrast with the light sky, but the contrast is between background elements, not between background and foreground elements as in Lorrain’s paintings.

Lake of Brienz: Figures in the foreground with few details – about the same level of detail as the castle in the middle ground. Intense colours connect the foreground to the middle ground and the middle ground to the further background. There is much sense of distance, but created with a technique that seems very opposite to that employed by Lorrain.

View along an Alpine Valley: Another painting with dark blue spots which seem to capture the viewer’s attention. They are applied to middle ground and distant elements. Turner does not use the classical (or Baroque?) technique of using detail to establish foreground elements. He hardly used any detail at all in these landscape watercolours. This may have to do with the medium, as watercolour tends to support a more generous approach. It may also have to do with what Turner was interested in.

Compared to the above watercolours, the Landscape with Trees and Figures (c1796) appears very structured and classical, and has much more detail overall. There’s a tree to separate foreground and middle ground. Colour intensity is higher in fore- and middle ground. Paler tones are in the distant background, with the exception of considerable colour contrast in the sky.

The ‘Scene on the Loire, near the Coteaux de Mauves’ (c. 1830) was painted later in Turner’s life. Here he used intense colouring for the figures and the ship in the middle ground and also set some accents in the sky. Pale colours were employed for the water throughout, both close and distant. There are large objects in the background and small objects in the foreground.

This brought up the question how Turner arrived in establishing the three depth levels, despite seemingly contradicting the principles established in Lorrain’s paintings. I think this was possible because Turner painted enough detail to permit the viewer to draw on his or her knowledge about landscapes, eg using the water horizon line for orientation. Then, the larger object further away was paler than the smaller one close by. And Turner painted middle ground elements that covered areas of the background elements, another technique to create depth.

Another impressive example of Turner’s treatment of depth levels was the watercolour titled ‘Venice: Grand Canal with Santa Maria dell Salute’ (undated). The level of detail is approximately constant across the entire painting, though somewhat less in the further background. The colours seem to become more intense towards the background, for example the water area and again in the dramatic sky. Quite the opposite of typical colour intensity handling in Lorrain’s landscape painting

But there are also very classical paintings by Turner, eg ‘Cilgerren Castle’ (c. 1798-99), oil on canvas. This showed more resemblance with Claude Lorrain’s style. There are size differences and tonal contrasts which establish foreground and middle ground, and paler colours are used towards the far background. Also, the immediate foreground is the area with most details, as the leaves and greenery details in the upper right and lower left of the painting.

My conclusions from this journey through selected works by Turner are that the three depth levels are much less separated, compared to Lorrain’s compositions. But the breach of seemingly classical principles does not obstruct the viewer’s depth perception. I think this is encouraging, because it shows that there’s considerable freedom in the techniques to create “credible” landscapes.

It might have helped to know the dates of the Turner works I selected, because I got the idea that Turner developed his style away from classical principles into a much more liberal interpretation of depth composition. This would have become more traceable if image could be seen as they were created over time.

Sources

Bridgeman Education Library, http://www.bridgemaneducation.com

Wikipedia article on Claude Lorrain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Lorrain; retrieved 15 January 2013