Art Appreciation – April/May 2025
April’s meeting was an opportunity for members to choose a picture on the theme of Landscape and Nature. Members were frustrated by the projectionist’s inability to get the u3a projector to work but we managed to crowd round the laptop and see the pictures at close quarters. Further training is required! There were some fascinating and occasionally surprising choices.
Perhaps the most predictable, but no less enjoyable, selections were two landscapes by John Constable, probably this country’s best known and loved landscape artist. There was an early picture of the village of Higham, and one of his most famous pictures, ‘The Lock’. Both showed his love of the countryside of his home area, Dedham Vale, on the Suffolk/Essex border, his appreciation of nature as well as the local architecture, and his fascination with clouds and skies.
Another artist who clearly loved the East Anglian landscape in which he lived was John Crome, who spent his life in and around Norwich in the early 19th century. His painting of ‘Mousehold Heath, Norwich’, was completely characteristic of that part England. He influenced many other artists of the period who are often termed ‘The Norwich School’.
Eric Ravilious is also well known for his views of the English countryside, particularly Sussex and the South Downs where he lived. He produced book illustrations often from wood engravings, and later moved into watercolour painting. ‘Furlongs’ is a watercolour of the Sussex countryside is typical of his bold style overlaid with detailed pattern reminiscent of his woodcuts to give light, shade and volume to his scenes.
In contrast with these rather intimate portrayals of the English landscape, we looked at Albert Bierstadt’s awe inspiring ‘Looking Down the Yosemite Valley, California’, painted in 1865, a time when the American west was being opened up, and the grandeur of the landscape was being appreciated by many for the first time. Views such as this contributed to the move to create national parks in an attempt to preserve wildernesses before they were overtaken by settlers whose farming, railways and industry would transform places such as this.
A lesser known artist is Jacob Jan Coenrad Spohler who produced innumerable paintings of characteristic Dutch scenes of canals and windmills, many of which conveyed the bitter cold of winter. A different view of winter was presented by Caspar David Friedrich’s dramatic painting ‘The Wreck of Hope’, showing the destruction of a ship in a sea of Arctic ice. Unlike some of the other artists we looked at, he was not painting from observation but entirely from his imagination.
The power and beauty of the natural world is revealed by Hokusai in his famous print, ‘The Wave’. Another extraordinarily beautiful portrayal of nature is his ‘Chrysanthemums and Bee’. His work had a huge influence on Monet and other European artists, as seen in Monet’s ‘Massif de chrysanthèmes’.
A much bleaker view of landscape, utterly devoid of nature, was CRW Nevinson’s ‘The Road from Arras to Bapaume’ painted in 1917. Nevinson served with the Friends Ambulance Unit and this painting is clearly influenced by his wartime experience. It shows a straight road leading away from the viewer to the horizon, with soldiers and military traffic heading to and returning from the trenches.
The contemporary artist Peter Doig was not familiar to most members but there was great appreciation for his paintings ‘Architect’s Home in the Ravine’ and ‘The White Canoe’. Doig is Scottish but has lived in Canada and Trinidad and his landscapes are bold, colourful and atmospheric. Along with Ravilious, his style is often categorised as being Magical Realism. We will look out for his work in the future.
A very different view of landscape and nature was given by a series of pictures portraying the study of the heavens from the middle ages onwards. The beauty and mystery of stars and comets was shown by artists, and so too was the admiration for astronomers as they used scientific instruments to help them explore and understand the phenomena they observed.
Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 13th May when David Gearing will give a presentation on Raphael.
Lynne Vick, Convenor