Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Stockholm Volume 26:2 - The Tessin Lecture: Inventing the Landscape. The Origin of Plein-Air Painting in Italy in ...
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
The Tessin Lecture: Inventing the Landscape.
The Origin of Plein-Air Painting in Italy in the Early 19th Century
Anna Ottani Cavina
Professor Emerita of Art History, University of Bologna
Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Stockholm
Volume 26:2
Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Two Male Studies by Jacques-Augustin-Catherine © Tate/CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported)/ https://
is published with generous support from the Pajou for the 1785 and 1787 Concours du Torse at www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-venice-the-
Friends of the Nationalmuseum. the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture campanile-of-san-marco-st-marks-and-the-pa-
© Beaux-Arts de Paris, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/ lazzo-ducale-doges-palace-late-d15258, (accessed
Nationalmuseum collaborates with Svenska image Beaux-arts de Paris (Figs. 3–4, p. 21) 2021-01-28) (Fig. 12, p, 67)
Dagbladet, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, © CC-BY Brian McNeil/Wikimedia Commons
Grand Hôtel Stockholm, The Wineagency and Joseph Ducreux’s Self-Portraiture – Capturing (Fig. 13, p. 67)
the Friends of the Nationalmuseum. Emotions in the Wake of Enlightenment and © The National Gallery, London/CC-BY-NC-ND
Revolution (Fig. 14, p. 68)
Cover Illustration © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre)/
Model and cut by Pär Engsheden (b. 1967), sewn Jean-Gilles Berizzi (Fig. 2, p. 24) Graphic Design
by Margareta Webrink, (b. 1956), Gown, 2018. BIGG
Silk taffeta. Two parts, gown and cape, 154 x 130 x Landscape Paintings by Jean-Joseph-Xavier
130 cm (h x w x d) strapless gown, 154 x 130 x 165 Bidauld and Achille-Etna Michallon Layout
cm (h x w x d) cape. Gift of Sara and Leo Danius. © Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY/ Agneta Bervokk
Nationalmuseum, NMK 197/2019. Public Domain (Fig. 2, p. 28)
Translation and Language Editing
Publisher Five Perspectives on Contemporary Craft in Sweden Clare Barnes, Wendy Davies, Bianca Marsden-Day
Susanna Pettersson, Director General © Daniel Milton (Fig. 1, p. 53) and Martin Naylor
© Tomas Björkdal (Fig. 5, p. 56)
Editors Publishing
Ludvig Florén, Magnus Olausson and Martin Olin Sara Danius’s Nobel Gowns Ludvig Florén, Magnus Olausson, and Martin
© Carl Bengtsson/Skarp Agent (Figs. 1–4, 57 Olin (Editors) and Ingrid Lindell (Publications
Editorial Committee and 59) Manager)
Ludvig Florén, Carina Fryklund, Eva-Lena
Karlsson, Ingrid Lindell, Magnus Olausson, The Tessin Lecture: Inventing the Landscape. The Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum is published
Martin Olin, Daniel Prytz and Cilla Robach Origin of Plein Air Painting in Italy in the Early twice a year and contains articles on the history
19th Century and theory of art relating to the collections of the
Photographers © bpk/Hamburger Kunsthalle/Elke Walford Nationalmuseum.
Nationalmuseum Photographic Studio/ (Fig. 1, p. 61)
Linn Ahlgren, Erik Cornelius, Anna Danielsson, © bpk/Nationalgalerie, SMB/Jörg P. Anders Nationalmuseum
Viktor Fordell and Cecilia Heisser (Fig. 2, p. 62) Box 16176
© bpk (Fig. 3, p. 62) SE–103 24 Stockholm, Sweden
Picture Editors © Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH/ www.nationalmuseum.se
Rikard Nordström and Marina Strouzer-Rodov Public Domain (Fig. 4, p. 63)
© Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images © Nationalmuseum, the authors and the owners of
Photo Credits (Fig. 5, p. 63) the reproduced works
Cover Illustration © Landesmuseum Hannover/ARTOTHEK
© Carl Bengtsson/Skarp Agent (Fig. 6, p. 64) ISSN 2001-9238
© Musée Granet, Ville d’Aix-en-Provence/ Ber-
A New Cabinet Piece by Frans Francken II nard Terlay (Fig. 8, p. 65)
© Courtesy of the Seville Cathedral Chapter/ © The Ruskin Museum, Coniston (Fig. 9, p. 65)
Daniel Salvador Almeida (Fig. 3, p. 16) © Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen/Public
© Kunstmuseum, Basel/Public domain Domain (Fig. 10, p. 66)
(Fig. 7, p. 18) © Josse/Leemage via Getty images (Fig. 11, p. 66)
Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 26:2, 2019
T H E T ES S I N LE CTU R E / I N V E N TI N G TH E LA N D S CA P E
The Tessin Lecture: Inventing the Landscape.
The Origin of Plein-Air Painting in Italy in the Early 19th Century
Anna Ottani Cavina
Professor Emerita of Art History, University of Bologna
You do not see artists painting land-
scapes out in the countryside any more:
folding stool, drawing portfolio case,
wide-brimmed hat and strange parasols
to beat the glare of the summer sun. We
remember them with some regret, as they
made intense studies of the Tivoli water-
falls, the green of the woods on the hills
of Rome, the milky blanket of fog further
north.
These days, you do not meet such
painters any more, stopping to study a sky-
ful of clouds, water reflections on plains,
green grass and green hills. Considering
the countryside, with its apparent and
transitory beauty, is an activity to which
time is no longer devoted, or at least not in
the way painters used to feel challenged to
decipher and describe what they saw when
they left their studios to paint outdoors.
As early as the 17th century there were
artists equipped to do their oil painting en
plein air. François Desportes (1661–1743),
in Louis XIV’s France, would go to the
parks around the royal castles taking with
him his special léger bagage consisting of
his palette, a few paintbrushes and small
metal boxes with prepared pigments. He
would plant the steel point of his cane
into the ground. Then he would fix an iron
easel on to the cane with plenty of sheets
of paper for painting, attaching them at
the top with a small nail.1 Desportes, in the
17th century, was an exception. Between
the 18th and 19th centuries, however,
artists leaving their studios to paint out Fig. 1 Georg Friedrich Kersting (1785–1847), Caspar David Friedrich in His Studio, 1811. Oil on canvas,
in the countryside had become a shared 54 x 42 cm. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, HK-1285.
61 Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 26:2, 2019
T H E T ES S I N LE CTU R E / I N V E N TI N G THE LA N D S CA P E
Fig. 2 Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), Woman at a Window, 1822.
Oil on canvas, 44.1 x 37 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, A I 918.
Fig. 3 Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1751–1829), Goethe at the Window on
Via del Corso, Rome, 1787. Watercolour, chalk and ink over pencil on paper,
415 × 266 mm. Goethe Museum, Frankfurt am Main.
experience. This was especially the case sought-after testing ground for talented d’après nature, seeking a point of fusion
in Italy because this breakthrough, this artists from across Europe, who sought between vision and emotion, a repre-
radical change that was the start of plein- inspiration and innovative methods both sentation of natural reality. Much better
air landscape painting, painting outdoors, in and around Rome. than my words, that emotion is captured
this revolution in terms of avant-garde For many artists descending from by Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), the
experiments in subject, composition and northern Europe, the Italian landscape great artist of the French Revolution. On
technique occurred when artists from the could be said to have acted as a detonator, arriving in Italy, David confessed: “The
north (German, English, Scandinavian) unleashing their creativity. In the wake of scales dropped from my eyes”. As if to
met the light, geometry and colours of Schelling and Rousseau’s philosophical say: “I am seeing with new eyes”. The en-
the Italian landscape. So that landscape theories, artists left their studios and counter with Rome, Naples and the Italian
oil sketches, done on the spot, became a steeped themselves in nature, painting live countryside (”a magic land”, wrote Thomas
Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 26:2, 2019 62
T H E T ES S I N LE CTU R E / I N V E N TI N G TH E LA N D S CA P E
Fig. 4 Léon Cogniet (1794–1880), The Artist in His Room at the Villa Medici, Fig. 5 Hubert Robert (1733–1808), Artists Painting Outdoors at Tivoli Falls, 1784.
Rome, 1817. Oil on canvas, 44.5 x 37 cm. Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund. Oil on canvas, 55.8 x 46.3 cm. Private collection, New York, NY.
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, 1978.51.
Jones) was something astounding, a reve- Friedrich Kersting (1785–1847) painted rather a landscape of the soul, a variation
lation. Some of them (like Jones himself ) the great Caspar David Friedrich (1774– on the theme of melancholy (Fig. 2). A
would never again reach such heights of 1840) in his monastic, austere studio, remarkably similar perspective can also
innovation once they left Italy. In fact, on painting a landscape, without even looking be found in the portrait of Goethe who
meeting the Italian landscape and light, out of the window, turning his back to the overlooks Via del Corso in Rome, drawn by
the artists radically rethought the potenti- window, even! (Fig. 1) Tischbein (1751–1829) (Fig. 3).
al of landscape and how a painted landsca- At the very beginning, painters had Things really change in an enchanting
pe is never simply a mirror of what we see, two ways of opening up to nature: framing painting by Léon Cogniet (1794–1880), a
but inevitably rather a landscape of ideas, nature in a window, or taking a folding French painter who had won the Prix de
an altered landscape. chair, paintbox and parasol against the Rome and therefore had the privilege of
Mediterranean sun and heading off along living in Rome at Villa Medici. Cogniet is
Framing Nature in a Window the woodland tracks. The change is radical in his room – frock coat and slippers – the
Leaving the studio and painting in nature in terms of perception and technique. window suddenly opens out, on to the
was not at all in the tradition of the land- Friedrich, for example, frames his young bright view of Rome (Fig. 4). It is already a
scape painter. From Poussin to Friedrich, wife Caroline Bonner looking at the river portrait of a piece of nature, framed by the
they used to paint huge canvases slowly, Elbe. But, beyond the window, the land- window. The artist is reading a letter from
indoors, inside their studio. Georg scape is not yet the main character; it is home. Apologising to his teacher, Pierre-
63 Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 26:2, 2019
T H E T ES S I N LE CTU R E / I N V E N TI N G THE LA N D S CA P E
Fig. 6 Johann Martin von Rohden (1778–1868), Waterfalls at Tivoli, 1805. Fig. 7 Simon Denis (1755–1813), View of the Roman Campagna. Study, c. 1800.
Landesmuseum, Hannover, PNM 572. Oil on paper mounted on cardboard, 48.7 x 63.8 cm. Purchase: Sophia Giesecke
Fund. Nationalmuseum, NM 7336.
Narcisse Guérin (1774–1833), who was in their canvases and easels as a storm Portraits of Skies
Paris, Cogniet confessed that, despite him- arrives. The painting is dated 1752 The sky is one of the great themes that
self, something had happened to him.“You (National Gallery, London). As early as fascinates the artist who paints outdoors.
ask me what strikes me most about Rome, that date there was someone painting And it is precisely the mobility of the sky,
the ancient sculptures, the paintings of en plein air. the continuous and very rapid changes:
the masters, the people […] I would say the Finally, the Tivoli falls in a silent, clouds, storms, sunsets, colours... to modify
beauties of nature...”2. For a painter who magnificent painting by Johann Martin profoundly the technique “pour saisir la
had absorbed David’s preference for his- von Rohden (1778–1868) (Fig. 6). Pure nature sur le fait”, for capturing the fugi-
torical subjects, such an intimate rapport landscape, no narrative, no religious or tive moment, as Valenciennes wrote in his
with nature was a surprising and totally mythological pretext. Just a celebration of treatise, “Do you have to paint a sunset?
new thing. nature, intact, harmonious and beautiful: You have to do it in no more than half an
the Italian landscape. This is the real topic, hour.”3 So painters work extremely fast. It
Painting Outdoors at a time when the landscape goes from is the legitimation, or rather the triumph,
At the end of the 18th century, painting being a background feature to become the of the unfinished, the triumph of new work
outdoors was not at all an obvious, current principal subject. processes.
practice. A charming painting by Hubert Despite its political and economic The technique changes and the sup-
Robert (1733–1808) clearly proves that decadence, Italy was still the place where port changes too. No longer the canvas, no
the artists, sitting and painting, with their modern art was staged, but the protago- more oil on canvas that dries too slowly.
portfolio case on their knees, in front of nists were no longer Italian. As Walter But oil on paper or watercolour that is
the Tivoli waterfalls, were a bizarre, new Benjamin wrote in his book Berliner liquid, fugitive and maintains the effect
presence (Fig. 5). This is clear from the Kindheit um Neunzehnhundert, only of the sketch. Consequently, the new lan-
street urchins, to the right, looking at them non-native people know how to capture guage is abbreviated, essentially expres-
with great curiosity. the wonder of the ruins, the sublimity of sing colour, and the perception of rea-
Again, still in front of the Tivoli water- the Vesuvius or of the Alps, the charm of lity can no longer fade into the defined
falls, Richard Wilson (1713/14–1782) has the Roman countryside. The natives have characteristics of the landscape. Because
painted a picture that could be autobio- those wonders in front of their eyes every painting from real life en plein air meant
graphical: two painters quickly collecting day. They are used to it. discovering the thousand variations in the
Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 26:2, 2019 64
T H E T ES S I N LE CTU R E / I N V E N TI N G TH E LA N D S CA P E
Fig. 8 François-Marius Granet (1775–1849), Sunset in the Roman Campagna. Fig. 9 John Ruskin (1819–1900), Sunset at Herne Hill through the Smoke of
Paper mounted on cardboard. Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence, 849.1.G.50. London, c. 1876. Oil on canvas. The Ruskin Museum, Coniston.
landscape’s way of shaping and reshaping and even the hour in which the sketch was Smoke of London (Fig 9.) Ruskin exhibited
itself, eventually undermining the idea executed. For example: “Tivoli, la nuit”, or a prescient and modern environmentalist
of landscape governed by a rational order “Il faut faire la nature en ravage”, which awareness in setting the polluting smoke
based on the constituent principles of a means: “We need to paint distraught, rest- from early British industry in the fra-
humanistic system. How awareness was less nature, nature upset!”4 Denis prefers a meless space of the sky to make it appear
arrived at was changing. And, again, this dramatic representation of the landscape, phantasmagorical and menacing.
was happening in the Italian context, a theatrical, romantic representation. His
where the landscape was occupying particularly important role emerged in the The Roman Countryside
spaces that had hitherto been controlled 2001 exhibition that I curated at the Grand Among the many topics much loved by
by history. And where artists who were Palais in Paris (Paysages d’Italie). Along plein air painters, I would quickly like
not Italian – French, English, German, the same lines, the d’après nature studies to focus on some exemplary sites: the
Scandinavian – were alerted by the by François-Marius Granet (1775–1849) Roman countryside, Venice, Naples and
Mediterranean light to the essence of – who came to Rome in 1802 – are based the sublime, anticlassical beauty of the
this new relationship. on a reality that is more atmospheric mountains. What kind of Rome did they
On the subject of skies, in the limited (non-topographical) and impressionistic paint, what kind of city did they depict in
space I have available on this occasion, I rather than objective evidence. Taking this their paintings?
have chosen a few memorable “portraits abbreviated way of painting to its extreme, These travelling artists preferred
of skies”. The first is Simon Denis Granet was introducing a liquidity that had small paintings, depicting an anti-monu-
(1755–1813) and the recent purchase of hitherto been considered unthinkable so mental, anti-heroic, more intimate city of
the Nationalmuseum (Fig. 7). Denis was as to dissolve the prospective structure of Rome. Even when framing the canonical
born in Antwerp. He came to Paris in 1775, the composition in a painting of light (Fig. sites, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the
then to Rome and Naples in Italy, where he 8). large and luxurious Roman villas, their
would have a prestigious career, becoming To conclude this sequence of skies – perspective – their views – are lateral,
painter to the king. This painting belongs or more precisely fragments of sky – never focusing on the grandeur. Instead,
to his Roman period during which, after I have chosen the extraordinary freedom they try to capture the light, the geome-
Valenciennes but before Granet, Denis of John Ruskin, who loved to paint “to the tries of Italian architecture, the sun and
painted sketches like this. Often, on the last touch, in the open air, from the thing the gardens rather than the triumphal
back of the painting, he indicates the day itself”5. In Sunset at Herne Hill through the architecture of the Palaces.
65 Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 26:2, 2019
T H E T ES S I N LE CTU R E / I N V E N TI N G THE LA N D S CA P E
Fig. 10 Constantin Hansen (1804–l880), The Gardens of Villa Albani, Rome, 1841.
Oil on canvas, 34 x 50 cm. Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, KMS3843a.
Fig. 11 Constantin Hansen (1804–l880), View from Villa Mattei. Oil on paper
laid on canvas, 34 x 43 cm. Private collection, Rome.
The repertoire has changed funda- When did this idea of an eroded, elusive low resolution, as it were, ready to blend
mentally. Here is the famous Villa and unfinished city, make an appear- into the crystal-clear evanescence created
Albani, reproduced without emphasis ance that was so close to Georg Simmel’s by the Romantic painters. An emblem of
by Constantin Hansen (1804–1880). The description: “Venice rootlessly floating in beauty tarnished by time, an ideal place
monumental villa is almost invisible, pu- the sea, like a plucked flower”?6 for every decadence, providing privileged
shed to the margins of a frame that exalts This idea of Venice, so natural to us as access to Byzantium. Yet so magical and
the geometry of the gardens (Fig. 10). The to seem obvious, emerged in the early 19th dazzling as to be favoured by the Impres-
same happens to Villa Mattei, which lies century. In literature, this icon of Roman- sionists and Monet, eventually becoming a
behind us as our gaze is drawn from the tic imagination was forged by Lord Byron; cliché, reinforced by postcards.
grand terrace towards the hills of Rome on in art it was shaped by the work of J. M. W. That was not the perception at the
the horizon (Fig 11). Turner (1775–1851) on his first encounter time. Before Turner – with Canaletto being
These artists invented a new Italian with the city in 1819 (Fig. 12). Turner is 44 the quintessential proponent – it was the
landscape that was full of charm, more years old – he is an acknowledged painter. land side that was emphasised. Venice was
suited to the new middle class and to the He captures the transparencies of Venice, seen by everyone as a tangible collection
small size of our homes. A Rome to pack in, its forms merged in space, the iridescences of buildings, a mass of tightly packed
when you return home, an intimate idea of of the Ducal Palace. And delivers to us a crystalline architecture, as depicted in the
Rome to be kept in your heart. city of water, sky, light and silence. Because paintings of Antonio Canal (Canaletto)
that is what artists do. They have antennae (1697–1768), the painter who, with the
Inventing the Italian that pick up the imminent future and, in objectivity of a reporter, stressed the land
Landscape: Venice forging an image of a city, in a way they aspect of this amphibian city, portraying
The perception of Venice also changes shape its destiny. a Venice that had people being active and
radically to appear to us from that point Turner’s watercolours of Venice show present. A productive Venice, a “Vitale
as a city between water and sky, vibrant, it as ethereal and transcendental. An icon neptunische Stadt”, a glorious “republic
oriental. Fluid and unconventional com- that had been forever hidden, suddenly of beavers”, as it appears to the young
pared to an Italy that was established and ‘liberated’ by the paintbrush of an artist. A Goethe, who captures the synthesis of
conventional. Venice that was blurred and ephemeral, in life and form before Turner reveals its
Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 26:2, 2019 66
T H E T ES S I N LE CTU R E / I N V E N TI N G TH E LA N D S CA P E
Fig. 12 Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), Venice: The Campanile of
San Marco (St Mark’s) and the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) – Late Morning,
1819. Graphite and watercolour on paper, 223 x 287 mm. Turner bequest 1856,
CLXXXI 7. Tate Gallery, London, D15258.
Fig. 13 Giovanni Batista Lusieri (1755–1821), Eruption of Vesuvius. Private
collection.
decadent, visionary beauty, dreamlike with of beauty with the volcano always active, in forgotten parts of the city. The subject
its shades of periwinkle, opal and topaz in flames, as a great new romantic theme is always an ordinary place, a non-place
that would later be associated with Ruskin, (Fig. 13). revisited with the clarity of other times.
Klimt and Thomas Mann. Naples was also an encounter with Thomas Jones relates his emotions while
In other words, Turner introduces an antiquity, because of the discoveries and standing in front of a wall (Fig. 14). He
interpretation of the city that is so perfect, excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii, exalts the secret beauty of a balcony in
absolute and never “seen” before, that it a sort of “resurrection”, in the mid-18th Naples, conceived as a fragment, which ex-
later became canonical. Because artists century, of the ancient cities buried in the tends beyond the perimeter of the frame.
sometimes reveal the unseen so that a year 79 after Christ. But in order to bring to light the geometry
certain Italian landscape becomes visible Finally, Naples was also the city of of an ordinary house, to reveal the beauty
because of the iconic transposition handed luminous and geometrical constructions that transcends a given view, Jones intro-
down to us by the painters. portrayed by Thomas Jones (1742–1803), duces a precise axis in the centre where the
who came from Wales, the most innovative orthogonal lines meet. The poor balcony is
Naples and modern, but totally unsuccessful artist built as an altarpiece and has the centrality
Another of the memorable places that of the period. Jones produced his finest of an Enthroned Madonna. A wall of vol-
artists invariably visited was Naples, a work during the years he spent in Naples, canic stone with washing strung on a line
city providing every possible prospect: around 1782, living in rented rooms, forms both the visual fulcrum of the com-
an excessive, anticlassical, sublime kind depicting anonymous streets and houses position and the colour basis underpinning
67 Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 26:2, 2019
T H E T ES S I N LE CTU R E / I N V E N TI N G THE LA N D S CA P E
5. John Ruskin, Artist and Observer (exh. cat.),
Christopher Newall (ed.), National Gallery of
Canada, Ottawa 2014, p. 38.
6. Georg Simmel, Zur Philosophie der Kunst.
Philosophische und kunstphilosophische Aufsätze,
Potsdam 1922, pp. 72–73 (partially translated in
Georg Simmel, Roma, Firenze e Venezia, in
Massimo Cacciari, Metropolis, Rome 1973, p. 197).
“Venedig hat die zweideutige Schönheit des
Abenteuers, das wurzellos im leben schwimmt, wie
eine losgerissene Blüte im Meere…”
7. The Diary of Thomas Jones. Artist’s journey
in 18th-Century Italy (Il diario di Thomas Jones.
Viaggio d’artista nell’Italia del Settecento), Italian
translation and first annotated edition, Anna Ottani
Cavina (ed.), Milan 2003.
Fig. 14 Thomas Jones (1742–1803), A Wall in Naples, c. 1782. Oil on paper laid on canvas, 11.4 x 16 cm.
Bought 1993. National Gallery, London, NG6544.
the painting. White, blue, a slightly faded a great painter. Because the painted land-
green: colour refractions from the wall, the scape reflects an awareness of the real
sky and the foliage in the corner. The tiny world combined at the same time with an
window is one of the great microcosms of endless ability to create other worlds.
painting. Today it belongs to the National Notes:
Gallery in London. But, in 1782, such a 1. “il portoit aux champs ses pinceaux et sa palette
painting was incomprehensible. Jones toute chargée, dans des boîtes de fer-blanc; il avoit
could not find a patron anywhere; none une canne avec un bout d’acier long et pointu, pour
la tenir ferme dans le terrain, et dans la pomme
of his paintings could be sold in Italy, and
d’acier qui s’ouvroit, s’emboîtoit à vis un petit
he brought all of them back to England. châssis du même métal, auquel il attachoit le
As he himself wrote in his unforgettable portefeuille et le papier. Il n’alloit point à la
Memoirs7, he considered himself a campagne, chez ses amis, sans porter ce léger
painter “born out of due time”, confessing bagage, avec lequel il ne s’ennuyoit point, et
dont il ne manquoit pas de se servir utilement”
a keen awareness of man’s solitude.
(Claude-François Desportes, La vie de M. Desportes
Thomas Jones, a genius. A genius born out écrite par son fils, in Louis Dussieux, Mémoires
of due time! So, it was painters who shaped inédits sur la vie et les ouvrages des membres de
our landscape, helping us to see it with l’Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture,
new eyes. Paris 1845, II, p. 109).
2. Quoted in Le temps des passions. Collections
This is what happened with the land-
romantiques des musées d’Orléans (exh. cat.),
scape of Provence, France, where a para- Musée des Beaux-Arts, Orléans 1997, p. 64.
doxical road sign, a brown road sign, plan- 3. Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, Ėlémens de
ted on the verge of the Highway l’Autoroute perspective pratique,… Paris 1800, p. 634.
du Midi, describes it as “Paysages de 4. Paysages d’Italie. Les peintres du plein air
(1730–1830) (exh. cat.), Anna Ottani Cavina (ed.),
Cézanne”, thus telling us that what made
Grand Palais, Paris 2001, p. 130.
the landscape materialise was the vision of
Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 26:2, 2019 68You can also read
