American landscape painting style of the 1850s – 1870s
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The term luminism was introduced by mid-20th-century art historians to describe a 19th-century American style of painting that developed as an offshoot of the Hudson River School. The historian John I. H. Baur identifed the style in the late 1940s, calling it "luminism" in a 1954 article.[5] The National Gallery of Art's landmark 1980 exhibition American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1825-1875 included many artists now primarily associated with the Hudson River School, such as Frederic Edwin Church.[6]
As defined by art historian Barbara Novak, luminist art tends to stress the horizontal, and demonstrates the artist's close control of structure, tone, and light. The light is generally cool, hard, and non-diffuse; "soft, atmospheric, painterly light is not luminist light". Brushstrokes are concealed to minimize recognition that the painting is an artefact. Luminist paintings tend not to be large to suggestba sense of timeless intimacy. The picture surface or plane is emphasized, recalling primitivism. These qualities are present in different degrees depending on the artist’s work. Novak suggests that luminism is most closely associated with transcendentalism. The difficulty of precisely defining luminism has contributed to over-use of the term.[7]
Luminism shares an emphasis on the effects of light with Impressionism. However, the two styles are markedly different. Luminism is characterized by attention to detail and the hiding of brushstrokes, while impressionism is characterized by lack of detail and an emphasis on brushstrokes. Luminism preceded impressionism, and the artists who painted in a luminist style were in no way influenced by Impressionism.
Luminism may also represent a contemplative perception of nature. According to Earl E. Powell, this is particularly visible in paintings by John Frederick Kensett, who shifted the visual concern for landscape to an interest in quietism, making pictures of mood that depict a poetic experience of nature. Furthermore, his painting Shrewsbury River “reduces nature to cryptographic essentials of composition . . . while rarified veils of light, color, and atmosphere reflected in water offer an experience of silence", a description akin to the sublime.[8][9][10] Similarly, Martin Johnson Heade's painting Thunder Storm on Narragansett Bay represents the greatness of nature and the sublime arising from an intimate engagement with nature.[11]
The artists who painted in this style did not refer to their own work as "luminism", nor did they articulate any common aesthetic philosophy beyond the principles of the Hudson River School. Many art historians find the term "luminism" problematic. J. Gray Sweeney argues that "the origins of luminism as an art-historical term were deeply entwined with the interests of elite collectors, prominent art dealers, influential curators, art historians, and constructions of national identity during the Cold War."[12] Alan Wallach has called for a wholesale rethinking of "luminism" as a historical phenomenon.[13]
Communion, oil and metal leaf on panel, by Steven DaLuz (2017?)
Contemporary luminism or Neoluminism
Characteristics of luminism – such as majestic skies, calm waters, rarefied light, and magnificent landscapes also appear in contemporary American painting.[14]in artists like James Doolin, April Gornik. and Steven DaLuz.[15].[16][17]. The influence of luminism can be seen in the works of several American experimental filmmakers including James Benning and Sharon Lockhart, particularly in Benning's Ten Skies (2004) and Lockhart's Double Tide (2009).[18]
↑ Barbara Novak, "On Defining Luminism", in Wilmerding, 23–29
↑ O'Neill, John P., ed. (1990). Barnett Newman: selected writings and interviews (1. paperback printinged.). Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. pp.170–173. ISBN978-0520078178.
↑ Sweeney, J. Gray (January 1988). "A 'Very Peculiar' Picture: Martin J. Heade's Thunderstorm over Narragansett Bay". Archives of American Art Journal. 28 (4): 2–14. doi:10.1086/aaa.28.4.1557614. JSTOR2712898. S2CID191802468.
↑ J. Gray Sweeney, "Inventing Luminism: 'Labels are the Dickens'", Oxford Art Journal 26, no. 2 (2003), p. 93.
↑ Alan Wallach, "Rethinking 'Luminism': Taste, Class, and Aestheticizing Tendencies in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Painting", in Nancy Siegel ed., The Cultured Canvas: New Perspectives on American Landscape Painting (Dartmouth: University of New England Press, 2011), pp. 115–147
Wilmerding, John (1989). American Light: The Luminist Movement 1850–1875 (Reprinteded.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN978-0691002804.
Frederic Edwin Church was an American landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters, best known for painting large landscapes, often depicting mountains, waterfalls, and sunsets. Church's paintings put an emphasis on realistic detail, dramatic light, and panoramic views. He debuted some of his major works in single-painting exhibitions to a paying and often enthralled audience in New York City. In his prime, he was one of the most famous painters in the United States.
The Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. Early on, the paintings typically depicted the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area, including the Catskill, Adirondack, and White Mountains.
John Frederick Kensett was an American landscape painter and engraver born in Cheshire, Connecticut. He was a member of the second generation of the Hudson River School of artists. Kensett's signature works are landscape paintings of New England and New York State, whose clear light and serene surfaces celebrate transcendental qualities of nature, and are associated with Luminism. Kensett's early work owed much to the influence of Thomas Cole, but was from the outset distinguished by a preference for cooler colors and an interest in less dramatic topography, favoring restraint in both palette and composition. The work of Kensett's maturity features tranquil scenery depicted with a spare geometry, culminating in series of paintings in which coastal promontories are balanced against glass-smooth water. He was a founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction in painting of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, rivers, trees, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works, landscape backgrounds for figures can still form an important part of the work. Sky is almost always included in the view, and weather is often an element of the composition. Detailed landscapes as a distinct subject are not found in all artistic traditions, and develop when there is already a sophisticated tradition of representing other subjects.
Fitz Henry Lane was an American painter and printmaker of a style that would later be called Luminism, for its use of pervasive light.
Martin Johnson Heade was an American painter known for his salt marsh landscapes, seascapes, and depictions of tropical birds, as well as lotus blossoms and other still lifes. His painting style and subject matter, while derived from the romanticism of the time, are regarded by art historians as a significant departure from those of his peers.
White Mountain art is the body of work created during the 19th century by over four hundred artists who painted landscape scenes of the White Mountains of New Hampshire in order to promote the region and, consequently, sell their works of art.
David Johnson was an American painter, a member of the second generation of Hudson River School painters.
William Stanley Haseltine was an American painter and draftsman who was associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting, the Hudson River School and Luminism.
Alfred Thompson Bricher was an American painter associated with White Mountain art and the Hudson River School.
The Webb Gallery is an exhibit building located at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. Webb Gallery is the Museum's primary showcase for American art and serves as a gallery for special exhibitions.
Edmund Darch Lewis was an American landscape painter known for his prolific style and marine oils and watercolors. Lewis was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in a well-to-do family. He started training at age 15 with German-born Paul Weber (1823–1916) of the Hudson River School. At age 19 he exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and was elected an Associate of the Academy at age 24.
Morning at Grand Manan is an 1878 oil painting by Alfred Thompson Bricher. It is part of the permanent collection at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and is currently on view in the Paine Early American Painting Gallery.
Niagara Falls, from the American Side is a painting by the American artist Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). Completed in 1867, it is based on preliminary sketches made by the artist at Niagara Falls and on a sepia photograph. It is Church's largest painting. The painting is now in the collection of the Scottish National Gallery. Church was a leading member of the Hudson River School of painters.
Niagara is an oil painting produced in 1857 by the American artist Frederic Edwin Church. Niagara was his most important work at the time, and confirmed his reputation as the premier American landscape painter of the time. In his history of Niagara Falls, Pierre Berton writes, "Of the hundreds of paintings made of Niagara, before Church and after him, this is by common consent the greatest."
Twilight in the Wilderness is an 1860 oil painting by American painter Frederic Edwin Church. The woodlands of the northeastern United States are shown against a setting sun that intensely colors the dramatic altocumulus clouds. Church scholar John K. Howat describes the painting as "one of his finest ever" and as "the single most impressive example of Church's depictions of unsullied North American woodlands and their most famous representation in nineteenth-century painting".
Approaching Thunder Storm is an 1859 painting by American painter Martin Johnson Heade. It was his largest painting to date. The painting is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is praised for its dramatic depiction of the threatening mood of blackening skies and eerily illuminated terrain prior to the storm itself. The painting has been connected to mounting tensions before the Civil War, which were often expressed in terms of natural imagery.
Light in painting fulfills several objectives, both plastic and aesthetic: on the one hand, it is a fundamental factor in the technical representation of the work, since its presence determines the vision of the projected image, as it affects certain values such as color, texture and volume; on the other hand, light has a great aesthetic value, since its combination with shadow and with certain lighting and color effects can determine the composition of the work and the image that the artist wants to project. Also, light can have a symbolic component, especially in religion, where this element has often been associated with divinity.
Orchid and Hummingbirds near a Mountain Lake is a painting by Martin Johnson Heade, which he completed sometime between 1875 and 1890. Some scholars see the sensual depiction of the orchid and the nearly touching beaks of the birds as conveying romantic or even sexual overtones. Others see Heade's interest in orchids and hummingbirds as an exploration of dominance and survival in nature, perhaps inspired by Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory. The work is now in the collection of the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, having been donated as part of the Carolyn A. and Peter S. Lynch collection.
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