The Influence of 17th-Century "Classic" Painting

Epigraph: Gray's Journal of Lakes Tour, p. 1079, and Claude glasses

The "Classic" Canon: ("classic" = Italian landscape, classical themes, classical "universality")

• Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, Gaspard Dughet (Poussin), Salvator Rosa

Understanding the "Classical":

• Orthodox icons ("apatheia")
• Italian Renaissance istoria and perspective—e.g., Domenico, Fra Angelico, Crivelli (cf., Canaletto in the 18th century) (rationality)
• Changing the "subject" of painting: Claude
  • expanding the picture space
  • displacing the subject
  • opening the vanishing point to light
  • "repose" (contrast Baroque painting, e.g., Caravaggio)

Also, Northern Influences: 17th-Century Netherlandish landscape, Rubens (cf., still-lifes)

18th-Century Picturesque Art

The State of the Art at Mid-Century:

• Richard Wilson
• Thomas Gainsborough

Varying the "Atmosphere" in the later 18th Century:
(roughness, intricacy, and variation vs. repose):

• Topoi of the Picturesque
  • Trees
  • Waterfalls
  • Clouds
  • Rocks and Quarries
  • Ruins
  • Night
• Favorite Places
  • Estate
  • Wales
  • Lake District—e.g., Gilpin, The General Idea of Keswick-Lake; Turner, Buttermere Lake; Farington, Waterfall at Rydal; Wright of Derby, Rydal Waterfall; Wordsworth, Evening Walk, ll. 71-84)

 

Resources for Discussion

Salvator & Wilson's Destruction of Niobe's Children

Summer House at Rydal Lower Falls

Pictures of Artists Making Pictures

William Hodges, A Crater in the Pacific

Andy Goldsworthy:

• Early morning calm knotweed stalks pushed into lake bottom made complete by their own reflections Derwent Water, Cumbria 20 Feb. & 8-9 March 1988
• Balanced Rocks Morecambe Bay, Lancashire May 1978

Collage

David Carson